On Birthdays and Running Scared

Saturday, December 4, Shing, the eldest of my long-time friend and colleague, Dan, celebrated her 30th birthday with an early morning run at the Cultural Center Complex along Roxas Boulevard in Manila. The run was followed by breakfast and fellowship at nearby Jollibee. With the party theme, “I’m running cuz it’s Shing’s 30th Birthday," it was planned to be a unique celebration. But it rained the whole evening till 6 the following morning, so the run became a walk.

Running Scared was the title of her Dad’s reflection, and a natural gifted speaker even during our younger days, Dan’s reflection mirrored the topics relevant to our personal life, business, career, and I think almost in anything we do. Personally, I believe, we need to run scared so that we will achieve our goals. Complacency in business doesn’t a room otherwise, competition will eliminate you. It is in short, a euphemism of continuous improvement. His illustration of our elementary story of the race between the turtle and the rabbit struck home the message. The rabbit was complacent, proud as my son Gabo described, while the turtle run and run scared and finished victorious. Early on in our life, we could have reflected on this simple but very meaningful moral.

Dan was a part of my steel journey. We were together recruited by National Steel Corporation right after our graduation---though he graduated from Central Philippine University and I, from University of San Agustin, both in Iloilo City. We are both Chemical Engineers. We came to Iligan City together, stayed in one house together, sang and played together, watched the girls together, and dreamed and breathed steel together. Now, we are in fact, a family. But while I
pursued my steel life until now, early on, after 5 years, Dan moved to Manila and pursued his Masteral in Business Management at the Asian Institute of Management and shifted his field to Finance and Economics. But his Engineering and Steel background and training made him more sturdy and adept at his new-found field.

Another guest and close friend who came was Don. Graduating at the top of his Mechanical Engineering class at Western Institute of Technology in Iloilo City, Don also found himself at National Steel Corporation. We started our professional journey together just like Dan in April 1976, right after our respective graduations. Two years later, he was transferred to Pasig when our company bought the Elizalde-owned tin plate plant. While working at Pasig, he pursued his Masters in Business Management at UP Diliman. After finishing his post graduate studies, he joined Philippine National Bank, shifting his career from Engineering to Banking and Finance, though he always insists that his training at NSC has significantly helped him in his career. In the early 90’s, he was assigned to head PNB in London. Shortly thereafter, he was promoted as Managing director and Head of PNB Europe. He retired a few years ago and is now into mining and power plant business with his foreign partners. Dan and Don are just two of my closest friends whose bond is eternal, which started many years ago when we found ourselves journeying to steel life.