Chapter One

Life was just so hard when I was growing up in the Philippines.

My earliest years were not happy ones. My youth was misspent on many worries and problems centered on extreme poverty. I cannot recall any happy moments from my childhood and teen years. I know that's kind of sad to say, but that's the way it was.

I was the ninth child of twelve. My father was a village carpenter. My mother was just a traditional Filipina subservient wife doing everything humanly possible to take care of all of us. We were like a small army. As Napoleon noted, an army travels on its stomach. Napoleon also said, "Let China sleep, for when she awakes, let the nations tremble." What he didn't say was, "A walk is as good as a hit."

I would tell Napoleon that while I'm not quite sure exactly what he meant by his most-famous quotes, I've trembled and I've been hit time and time again. My stomach has often ached for even the smallest morsel of food. Have you ever been truly hungry even one day of your life?

Back to my loving mother ... all of the housework was done manually—laundry, cooking by firewood, and so forth. And let me tell you that fetching water from the well took forever and a day. A woman's work is never done. These never-ending tasks made my mother a spent woman, tired and haggard all of the time. It was very sad to witness. It left an indelible impression upon me, so much so that I vowed I would never get married.

I recall many sad moments when I was only about seven years old. My father would go to buy lumber and other materials for his house-building contracts