The Good Lord

This is a story of how blessed I am.

In 2001, I graduated college and before I even marched for graduation, I got a job. Less than 6 months after I was hired, I got another offer – to work in Singapore. This is so much luck blessing for someone who just graduated and has a little over 3 months work experience.

In 2002, I started my own company (while keeping my job in Singapore). For 2 years, I was able to go around  Asia because, #1, I get paid more than average; #2, I get income from my business.

Everything was great! But I was never grateful and even greedy to have more. So in 2004, I experienced the worst part of my life. I was heart-broken, lost my job, consumed all of my business capital and went bankrupt. This is the time when I was so down. Living alone in a foreign country made it worse. I didn’t have anyone to lean on.

After nearly 3 years of working in Singapore, I went back to Manila (my hometown) with no money – not even P5,000 to spare for an out of town vacation in Baguio. Turns out, that moment is the best part of my life. That experience made me realize that I’ve to reach out to God and thank Him – not just because I had the best life (which I obviously blew off), but also because I had the worst trials in life that made stronger.

Almost everyday, I look back to these events and until now, they still bring me tears. These tears are out of gratitude because it changed me to be a better person, made me learn to love my family and friends more, and most of all, love God.

People say I’m lucky and successful because I have all of these – cars, expensive bike, expensive scooter, expensive watch, a profitable company, good education, and soon my dream house.

at the age of 29, i own all of the above, that is less than 6 years after I went bankrupt.

i am targetting to build the house above by next year. this is my architect’s design
based on my requirements

I am very lucky indeed, but not because I have all those material things (everyone with a will to have what I have or even more, can do it). I am lucky because:

• I have 7 dogs that wag their tails because they are excited to see me whenever I wake up in the morning and when I go home from work.
• I have a loving family who supports me all the way.
• I have a girlfriend who understands me the way I am.
• I have friends who make me laugh and talk about me behind my back (???) (i’m sure they are laughing back at me)
• I touched and changed lives of people not related to me at all
• I learned how to seek wisdom and guidance so I can serve my purpose to God.

I hope this post gets read by anyone who is losing hope. And with this single post, I can change someone’s outlook in life.

THANK YOU GOOD LORD FOR MY LIFE’S TREASURES

I can do all things through Him who strengthens me – Philippians 4:13

First Medical Solutions / Equality Services – Beware!

First Medical Solutions is an EMR software company that my company has serviced before. After demanding a lot of changes and getting the files for the website, they made a lot of excuses so they won’t pay the remaining balance. It has been more than a year now and we have received no response from them. Recently, I got an email from their consultant. Turns out, Chris Salins also owes him money and requested if I can write a letter about my experience with this company.

If this is the kind of supplier you are looking for, think twice. All this company wants is to take advantage of anyone and get more money.

Check out my previous post about Chris Salins. It has received a lot of attention and questions about their business ethics from possible suppliers they are contacting.

Here is a link to their website: equalityservices.com .. Notice their website uses “equality” which they don’t practice.

UPDATE: they have shut down equalityservices.com and is using firstmedicalsolutions.com as their domain now.

Addicted to online shopping

Spending a lot of time inside your bedroom with a laptop, wifi and a paypal account is not good when you’re in a foreign country. Last 4th of July, I wasn’t able to join the group for their celebration so I stayed home, surfed a lot on ebay and won a lot of auctions. In less than 7 days, I spent almost more than $2,000 on ebay for the following items:

• Canon 17-55 f/2.8 EF-S IS USM Lens
• 3 bags
• 1 toiletry bag
• 3 books
• 1 DVD
• a phone system
• a set of swiss army knife
• transformers robot for my sister, and anime toy for my brother

Such a shopaholic!

Cars for rent Philippines

Philippines – I’m renting out my car, a black Mazda 3, with driver for P4,000/day or P25,000 per week (7 days). The car is heavily tinted and the air-condition is ice-cold so you won’t feel the heat of the weather. It is almost new, I’ve bought it in December 2008. Here are some pics of the Mazda 3.

The car has temperature control, 6-disc CD changer and is iPod/iPhone ready.

this photo is taken from the mazda sitethe car for rent is black but the model is the same as this.

the interior is spacious and stylish and feels like a race car

I will upload the actual pics of my car soon. For more inquiries, please call (632) 6820173 or text/call (63917)8000171, look for Jade or Wendy. You may also send your inquiries via e-mail at jmaniaul [at] myoptimind [dot] com

If you are interested to rank higher on keywords such as cars for sale or cars for rent philippines, please contact our Philippine SEO Company.

Smart Bro-ken

I live in Marikina and subscribed to a Smart Broadband internet. I’ve been a subscriber for more than a year and never failed to pay on time.  One day, the service just stopped working and when tech support visited us, they said that we are no longer getting signal and we need to upgrade for the next plan (more expensive). We declined the offer, and they took down the antenna and the modem.

After a month, we went to smart wireless to completely disconnect the service. In their system, they have a report that the support team took down all hardware but still, they charged us for that month and the month after and would never want to disconnect our service until we pay the 2 months that we technically didn’t use because of their fault. Furthermore, they will bill us continously until this is settled.

I hope that whoever reads this will think twice before getting a Smart Bro service.

My Top 6 Morning Songs

I have the following songs on iTunes that I make sure I listen to it before I start to work in the morning. These songs inspire me and reminds me to seek God’s guidance, be thankful for the blessings and to remember to share the blessings I receive everyday:

1. Lead Me Lord
2. Lord, I Offer My Life to You
3. Could You Be Messiah?
4. In Him Alone
5. Prayer for Generosity
6. Take and Receive

Do you have morning songs? Please share them.

Chris Salins of First Medical Solutions – Non-paying clients: the need for a black listed client database

There are existing sites like complaints.com that allows you to post about a bad experience as a customer but is there a site wherein you can post about a bad client?

As an outsourcing company, we had completed several projects that were unpaid for by the client even after taking advantage of the project already. Last year, we were hired by First Medical Solutions to work on their website. The company’s owner, Chris Salins, negotiated for a 30% downpayment. In September 2008, the site was launched and the invoice was sent. Several follow-ups later, we got no reply  until I warned the client that we will post about this publicly over the Internet.

Until now, no payment was received and our request for turning off the website is still being ignored.

This is a call for all those suppliers who have been taken advantage of offshore clients.

Technology and me

With the end of 2008 nearing, it is tempting to reflect on the changes and innovations that affected how we live and survive this world.

10 years ago

• I don’t have access to newly published business and computer books from where I am (Philippines).
• I can chat with my friends online and find new friends around the world using ICQ and IRC
• My chatmate can fool me by e-mailing me a fake photo
• Text messaging is free and I can play snake if i’m bored with the prof
• I am one of the few students who can make a website and actually owns one (from tripod and geocities). Domain names cost $35 per year
• I can make simple GIF animations using paint shop pro
• Most of us are using hotmail
• We use egroups for online class discussions.
• Java applets was the in thing because you can create simple games and post them on your website
• To easily bring a 100MB file, you may use iOmega’s Zip disk which will cost you more than P1,000 for the disk alone and an additional xx cost for the Zip drive.
• People are interested to find new search engines like Alta Vista and are excited about them.

Now..

• I can easily buy books through Amazon.com because it is easy to get a credit card.
• I have a US phone number, can talk to anyone in the world for free using Skype
• You can see who you’re chatting or talking with using a webcam
• Text messaging is expensive and calls are cheaper. The games I can play are limitless, I can download anytime, I can use my phone as a camera, a web browser, e-mail client, voip client, etc.
• Almost everyone can build a website and web hosting and domain name costs are almost insignificant. Almost everyone also owns a blog.
• You can post videos and can easily do animation using flash.
• Hotmail is going down. People use Yahoo mail and loves Gmail.
• Egroups is now known as Yahoo groups and it is full of spam.
• Casual Flash games can be developed in a week.
• A USB Flash drive that can store 2G costs less than P1,000.00
• The only search engines you’ll ever need is Google.

10 years ago, I develop softwares for companies from my bedroom. Now I have more then 20 people working with me for website projects in the US, Singapore, the Middle east and even a project in Chile!

With the advancement of technology from the past 10 years, even Moore’s law seems outdated.  I take a lot of benefit from it by running a web development company in the Philippines. My company now provides SEO services , web design, and 2D flash animation and flash development to different companies around the world. This is globalization at work!

Now tell me, how does your company embrace these changes?

Cirtex Hosting Sucks

I’ve been using Cirtex Hosting for their support for FFMPEG for almost a year now. Within a year, my website has been down several times/day (and that happens everyday!). Luckily, we only use it for testing and as a development server.

Can anyone recommend a better FFMPEG hosting?

Manny Pacquiao is $100M richer today

Yes, Manny Pacquiao defeated Oscar Delajoya after 8 rounds.

At 11am, almost all restaurants/bars showing live pay-per-view of the event are packed. We’ve tried several and eneded up on Pier1 in Ortigas. 4 beers and several cheers with our fellow Filipinos later, Manny won by TKO and has proven that Delajoya is no match!

I wonder if Manny Pacquiao will run on 2010 elections.