Another new thing on my list now is to attend a real estate broker review seminar and eventually pass the board exam to become a licensed real estate broker.  This would actually coincide with the real estate website project that I am venturing into the next few months.  Wish me luck!

As for myself, I have focused myself totally in spearheading the second phase. I have gone through my last few months trying to latch on to seeing if “employment” is all worth it and realizing that the employment situation in the Philippines is not as good as I thought it would be. At least as far as my situation now goes, it would be far better if I become a business owner instead.

Yesterday, I just received the Certificate of Incorporation of my new business. This would be MrC and mine’s consulting firm and it will be PEZA certified. I am still working on the application form. The last few days, we have interviewed two accounting firms both of which we are quite impressed with. We have two more firms we are scheduled to speak with next week. We have also a law firm on retainer. I will also be renting a desk somewhere in Eastwood. It is also interesting that some interesting local opportunity also came up yesterday and they will probably call me on Monday to schedule a meeting.

After I get this new company up and running, my next major project would be the agribusiness venture. My family on both my mother and father’s side has some significant amount of land that has been idle over the years and I feel that now is the right time to do something profitable with it. Next week, I will be somewhere in Nueva Ecija to attend a wedding and then to visit my father’s family’s properties and take care of related issues. I also hope to get in touch with someone we can consult with, in order to come up with a good business plan.

The past months, I have been thinking about how I would go about being responsible for some tracts of land my mother would entrust to me once she visits me this week. First thing comes to mind is keeping documents up to date, and actually finding out where they are and probably surveying the land. Second thing is compliance with the law. I need to make sure that all taxes are being paid otherwise, it might become a big liability to us, and worst case we might even end up losing ownership of it.
Third, I need to actually visit the site and note down the improvements or crops that are currently being planted. Fourth, is to find out what I can do with the land.

One thing that comes to mind is making good use of these idle lands by planting crops. My idea as of this moment is to plant malunggay or the moringa plant. The moringa plant, is something very common to the Philippines but a bit underrated. The truth is, without sounding too much like an MLM scam, the moringa plant is indeed a “miracle tree”. Here are the nutritional facts: it is rich in Vitamins A and C, Calcium, Potassium and even Protein. It also has strong antibacterial properties which enables it to become a low cost water treatment solution. I know there are many others that are in this venture now so I wonder if there are seminars I could learn from. I am also thinking about raising goats as well. I prefer everything to be low maintenance, which means I only need to visit the place at least once a twice a month.

This is just the start of my new journey towards farming (hopefully). The next few articles would be about this topic.

 I met a young cheerful lady applying for the same position I was applying for and found out that she has been working for the past 4 years on graveyard shift.  She wanted to leave her job for the sole reason that the night shift nature of the job has affected her health and relationships.  She told me that on the average she is only getting 6 hours of sleep a day and currently she has been taking sleeping pills regularly.  To add to this, she is not even able to spend time with family even on weekends because it is the only time she can catch up with sleep and let her body recover.  Oh and the way she told me..it’s like .. her bosses –  they are already deep into it for many years..  it’s like entering the dark side and you’re sucked into a different world and it seems that there’s no more turning back.   Through the years, they have managed to form their own “social night circles”.    They live in a parallel world.  Sounds like an M. Night Shyamalan movie, indeed.

Food Cart Franchises:
I saw a Hundred and One ways to Sell Siomai/Siopao: Most of those offering franchises are for siomai stands. The prices range between 70k to 300k. For instance, a Hen Lin small stand was 300k.

Lechon and Inasal: Heck’s, Inasal, you name it! All were very busy with people inquiring. Too bad no one provided a sample.

Food Toppings: I saw A San Miguel Purefoods labeled franchise called Outbox. Sounds interesting. Next to it was a Smokey’s Hotdog stand franchise but no one was available to talk to me.

One of the best samples I tasted was the one from Scramble King, they provided a little cup of the ice dessert which I vividly remembered buying from a school vendor when I was 6 or 7 years old. It’s been years since I’ve seen or tasted scramble.

There was also another franchise selling Potato Chips in a stick (Twist Chipstix). It was freshly cut and twirled in a stick (see photo). They sold it for 50 pesos. I was not really interested in ordering it but instead I wanted to try their twister fries but it was not available. The potato chips was bland, and the barbecue powder didn’t help much. The potatoes were also not that crunchy. The sales staff were quite enthusiastic though.

Interesting food items.
There were several exhibitors that offered Coconut Sugar. They claimed it was best for diabetics as it had low Glycemic Index.

Tempting offers:
I bought a bag of Tower Yema candies, a chicharon from Marilao, Bulacan, dilis and pusit (3 for 100 offer) from another seller, and finally I bought Tin’s Ball of Ham from Belcris Foods for 300 pesos after sampling their ham.

Tower Yema Candies

are of course hard to resist so I bought one bag for 30 pesos.

Kitchen gadgets: I fancied the charcoal stoves displayed there. I saw 2 kinds: the Joy Charcoal Stove and the JY Firebricks (the oven)
Different kinds of knives for whatever uses you might think of.



For the other interesting food items, would it also make sense to sell them online? Would anyone be actually interested in them?

I literally ran away as fast as I can from those Pushy/Aggressive sales agents : Neo “Fireless” Stove? Water Purifiers for 50k ?! Citibank credit card vendors that were asking for my credit card number?!

I plan to call the ones I am interested in soon. But first I have to prepare my questions. For the franchise offerings I intend to ask them for basic figures, you know things like breakdown of expected costs, the the unit prices of their goods, delivery policies and what the expected daily sales will be, to see what kind of profit I will make. Things I will eventually need to make a sensible business plan. I also have to ask myself, since I am still working fulltime in IT (at MrC’s company), how much hours can I still give to this? Are the earnings from this worth the time and effort?

* Desks have been ordered
* Computers have arrived
* Office Chairs have arrived
* Planning for the next 6 weeks (until the end of April)
* Preparing the team and making sure they understand the existing system
* Systems and infrastructure organization

MrC is busy and under pressure to say the least.  He works from 9:30 am to 2 am, almost non-stop (except when he eats or is sitting in the taxi). But at the end of April we expect that when everything is running smoothly there is little need to be totally hands-on.

Several issues come to our attention: The aircon in our office is leaking (!!), so the owner was there to fix it.   However when I checked out the office there was no sign of them there.  I am still trying to contact them as of now. Her phone seems to be not working or able to accept calls.

Monday we will start probably in the small office of our business partner nearby, because we do not have internet yet. The provider Globe lost our application and carrier PLDT is still checking out the building in order to see whether they have available lines.

But despite the pressure, we are happy to see that in just 1 and a half month we were able to setup the team of 5 from the ground up, found and leased an office and ordered all the trimmings. That is indeed something!

As of now we are looking for office spaces with sizes between 60 square meters to 100 square meters.  Based on my initial research and talks with brokers.  Here in Mandaluyong and Ortigas the typical rent would be somewhere between 25K to 45K but can even go up thousands more if nearer to the Ortigas Center or for newer buildings.   We have seen only 1 unit so far which is within walking distance from our place.   Tomorrow, we will be looking at several more.