LIFE BRIDGES

 "If you are good at building bridges, you will never fall into the abyss!" said Mehmet Murat Ildan. Understanding is the bridge between two minds; love is the bridge between two souls.

We are all bridge builders during our whole life. I am not talking about the raised platform on a ship or a bridge mounting for false teeth or, as in the bony part of the nose. I am talking about spiritual bridges establishing connections between us and other people - or, between God and us.

Another elementary example is the "birthday bridge" or the turn to the year, that takes us from the old into a new period of life. A very important bridge in life takes people to me and me to people. It does not matter if our skin is black or white, if we are rich or poor, man or woman, being sad or happy.

So obvious our daily life is that we might even forget simple things easily. Self-esteem, respect and freedom from anxiety are the necessary and conclusive foundations for this kind of bridge.

Earl Nightingale discussed topics with regards to human character development and behaviors. He was known for his deep voice and clear diction. He was the voice of 'Sky King', which was a radio adventure series.

Nightingale also co-authored a book called 'The Strangest Secret' which is considered to be one of the greatest motivational books of all time. Earl Nightingale's 'Our Changing World’ was a five-minute radio commentary program which spoke about personal development.

Every person experiences a struggling period in their lives where they learn, and understand the wonders of life precisely.

“Your problem is to bridge the gap which exists between where you are now and the goal you intend to reach”, Earl Nightingale describes the significance of the bridge and how it helps one to travel through the hard phase of our lives. The bridge is a path and a direction that motivates us to move towards enlightened life.

What comes out from dark times is a whole new person who has risen up and has crossed the bridge for a brighter world. Try to be a rainbow in someone's cloud.

Small but important bridges every daily - how easily are they to be built: gestures of love - like a medicine; a handshake together with commendation and praise, encouraging words, a warm smile, instead of a superficial "How are you?" and the expected "Fine" or "OKAY LANG!".

Allow me to say it clearly and directly to the point: Separations result from crumbled or fit for demolition bridges. Destroyed spiritual bridges can be found at any corner. Look into your neighbourhood or, don't drive away and repress this topic in your family. Insignificant trifling matters, minor arguing, misinterpretations, results in silence - and after the destroyed bridge follows an invincible wall not only between estates but also in the hearts and minds of stubborn human beings. Men as well as women build too many walls and not enough bridges.

I was born and grew up together with my parents in a parish house. Up to the time of my active performances - among many other things - I did learn this: 

"Build your own bridge to God and never doubt in Him. Always remember His promise. When a rainbow appears, it confirms His proximity and neighbourhood and His faith. God's unique bridge, a rainbow, is always there and durable, long lasting and solid. The main bridge, which affords passage to God, is the institution "church".

In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.

I LOVE LIFE!

 

Sometimes, we feel our life is turning miserably. Especially now. Living with the big "C"! Our negativism doesn't allow us to keep our eyes, ears - and, most important! - our minds, hearts and souls opened. We're reaching our breaking point. Me and you!

This breaking point can be the prelude to our strongest moment. Can be! Must not! But try it! Despite the virus! But if yes, then it is when we reach our breaking point,  we discover our real strength. Allow me to ask you, my dear readers: "What happens to you or with you when you reach your breaking point?" Do you face it or do you run away? I'll be giving you a very simple answer: If you face it - you break it. If you run away (and/or close your ears, eyes and mouth) - it breaks you!

Are you in love with life? No? Why not? Sure, in my previous column at this corner, I stated that it's okay if you feel bad. But many have taken this as a general instruction.

Everyday - a dull reality! Many of us will answer this question with a big YES! Actually, we do like to cover a newborn day already with grey veil.But, each day has a new face, but sometimes we don't have the strength to watch its countenance. Of course, not every day has adventures and highlights. Would be really too easy!

Contrary to what might be expected, I look back on experiences that, at the same time, seemed especially desolating and painful with a particular satisfaction. Indeed, everything I have learned, everything that has truly enhanced and enlightened my existence, has been through affliction and not through happiness.

If it ever were to be possible to eliminate affliction from your earthly existence, the result would not be to make life delectable, but to make it too banal and trivial to be endurable.

By observation, we can feel that many of us need help to manage our everyday life. We need something that would keep us going as we journey through life. Many times we can also learn from other people and their experiences.

And here is one more thing: Affection is the humblest love - it gives itself no airs. It lives with humble and private things: soft slippers, old clothes, old jokes, and the thump of a sleepy dog's tail on the kitchen floor. The glory of affection, the disposition of mind, the good will and tender attachment, that can unite those who are not "made for one and another"! .

For me life has been a thing of ups and downs in approximately equal measure. I don't have something sensational to report every day about my progress. Often, I wonder if fulfillment in life is necessarily tied to change for the better. But one thing is for sure: I keep staying in love with life. Maybe you can feel my great optimism .... .

HOW MUCH IS YOUR STILL AVAILABLE TIME?

Almost 20 years ago, a good friend of mine gave me a book written by the founder of the Scottish Free Church, Thomas Chalmers (1780-1847). Chalmers treated this topic with plenty of flowering words. Yes, don't be afraid and do live for something... .

Human beings live, move and have to pass away - free from worries, but unknown and unnoticed. They live such an irreproachable life - reputable, but so incomprehensible and inscrutable. Chalmers was very right!

Why do people live like that even knowing they have to leave the  platform of life one day? Why are people sometimes afraid to live and  allow something or someone to block themselves? Still in my mind is one statement of Brother Francis Castro from the Little Brothers of  Jesus. I quoted it several times already: "I feel the burning flame
inside me that makes me jump out of the bed ... and hurry to work!" 

Life's quintessence can be also this: Kindness, by helping the blind man crossing a street; hospitality, by practicing generous reception of strangers and guests (my very first impression, when I step on Philippine soil for the first time in 1976!); helpfulness, by taking care of somebody, who is weak and dependent... .

Believe me: your moment of virtue will never be destroyed by time's storm.

From writer Tiffanie Wen I learned this: “It is a commonplace observation that work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” British naval historian and author Cyril Northcote Parkinson wrote that opening line for an essay in The Economist in 1955, but the concept known as ‘Parkinson’s Law’ still lives on today.

Not only Tiffanie Wen - also I think about it every time I have a deadline. How long it takes me to write a story will by and large depend on when my deadline is and how much time I have until then. In his somewhat satirical essay Parkinson uses the example of an elderly lady writing a postcard to her niece. Since she has nothing else to do with her time, the otherwise simple task takes up her entire day.

Get more subordinates, create more work. When you have a deadline it’s like a storm ahead of you or having a truck around the corner. It’s menacing and it’s approaching, so you focus heavily on the task.

Can ‘menacing’ deadlines cure dallying?

So if the wider points Parkinson was making about bureaucracies still stand up today, what of his enduring first line? Today, while some researchers might chuckle at the mention of the ‘law’ that has come to mean so much more than its original intent, there’s also no doubt they know what it is referring to. Is there some truth to the notion that without strict time constraints, we waste time and our work takes longer to complete?

Humans have a limited capacity for memory, attention and fatigue – or mental bandwidth, according to Eldar Shafir, a professor at Princeton and co-author of Scarcity, a book that looks at the psychology of having less than we need and how it drives our behaviors. “Because our attentional capacity is limited, we divide it sporadically any way we can as we run through everyday life,” he says. But sometimes, of necessity, we need to knuckle down.

And there’s always the chance that rushing to accomplish something in too few hours can have drawbacks as well, particularly if your deadline is set by somebody else. “If your deadline is too short and you’re panicking, you will have sacrificed other things and you might work inefficiently, and things might go badly anyway,” he says.

“People like to say if it wasn’t for the last minute, nothing would get done. But research shows people’s productivity is not linear,” says Elizabeth Tenney, an assistant professor at the University of Utah’s Eccles School of Business who has written about time pressure and productivity. “When people sit down to do a task, they’ll put in a lot of effort initially. At some point there’s going to be diminishing returns on extra effort. To optimize productivity, you need to maximize benefits and minimize costs and find that inflection point, which is where you should start to wrap up.”

That might not mean taking up the full time allotted or working all the way up to your deadline, she says. “Cut yourself off rather than keep tinkering for all time.”

Hurry, jump out of the bed, now!

Do you pray?

My column in Mindanao Daily News, Mindanao Daily Mirror and Businessweek Mindanao

When tragedy strikes, it's easy to harden our hearts and cry out, "God, why did you let this happen?" Maybe then, we started praying. Before, when everything goes smooth, we would not even think a minute about praying... .

"To be a Christian without prayer, "said Martin Luther, "is no more possible than to be alive without breathing." Prayer is the only way of becoming what God wants us to be. This is the reason, why Jesus spent many hours in praying.

Unquestionable, our needs bring us to a place of prayer. Confronted with danger or tragedies, as I mentioned earlier, we look for God's help. Difficult times always cause the hearts of men to turn to God into prayer. 

Let me ask you: How long has it been since your're brought your burdens to God? Since you asked His forgiveness for your shortcomings? 

In his very interesting book "People in Prayer", Dr. John White reminds us that prayer is a divine-human interaction and it is always God who takes the initiative. White write: "God speaks and we respond. God is always speaking. To hear his voice is not usually a mystical experience. It consists merely of a willingness to pay heed to God who lays a claim to our lives."

Yes, God always speaks. It is up to us whether we will listen and respond to Him. Many think we are the ones who initiate prayer. But prayers begin and end with God. 

There was a time, I wasn't in the mood to pray any more. It seemed that God didn't listen my prayer any more. I didn't get what I prayed for. Of course, not... ! That's not the meaning of praying to God. All my wishes will be granted? Heaven forbid!

Sometimes, after we have prayed, God's answers may puzzle us. But as time times goes by and as events unfold we see God's purpose in his answers. We might get a larger vision, what HE likes. Not what WE like... .

Think about it for a moment" How does the idea that prayer begins and ends with God affect me now? Do I have the habit of listening to god? How do I respond to Him? How do I usually pray?

I confess that long time ago I have been trying to persuade God to change other people in my surroundings or circumstances. Nothing changed. Of course not, what a fatal attraction? I got confused because God never granted my requests. Meanwhile I got God's answers to my prayers. Maybe very simple: I was willing to let God change me... .This is how each one of us should start. Happy endings. Because I prayed according to His will... .

Nowadays, I live a wonderful life in my second and last home, the Philippines. I never regretted to move here for good. I said this already many, many times. I have everything I could ask for. I can do everything I wish to do. Thank you Lord.

Making the difference

SAT, APRIL 22, 2017 BY THE MINDANAO DAILY MIRROR LEAVE A COMMENT

IN MY OPINIONKlaus Doring

Our globe and its population bear innumerable strange facts. Following many people’s opinion, this world shows mostly worried characteristics and symptoms nowadays. No wonder. Just try to consume and digest today’s headlines and news from all around the globe.

It is a world with quickly bridged distances –  our Mother earth is becoming smaller and smaller. Any tourist, even with little time and with only a small budget, can travel to other faraway cultures. But joining them as well as different races and religious communities requires first of all, great care, tact, instinctive feelings, empathy, and logical ideas.

The stranger whom we meet for the first time during a business meeting, for example, maybe an uncommon, odd and extraordinary guy. He may be someone from a foreign country, who speaks another language and whose skin is of another color. He may be a migrant, a rest-less hiker or the expatriate in our neighborhood.

The foreigner beside you and me can become a provocation or a challenge. Strangeness can become exoticism. Maybe, that’s why my family and I decided to move to the Philippines. On the other hand – going abroad can open other and even better horizons. We must not feel as “a stranger in paradise”. By the way, I never did since touring around the globe many times.

However, a migrant bears a juxtaposition of optimism (even calculated optimism!), confused feelings, nostalgia, and home-sickness. Yes guys, during the first two years of my expat’s life in the Philippines, the round trip ticket was always in my mind, because no one among us can escape his native roots.

But, I am really a lucky guy. I experienced an amazing tolerance in the Philippines. A real practicing tolerance. Already, during my first business meetings, I met supportive, forbearing and  broad minded people. A wonderful mix of different cultures without giving up the own identity….

Every new challenge in a strange country means a change. Changes in life are necessary and important. Let’s alter or make a difference; let’s put one thing for another; let’s shift; let’s quit one state for another; let’s take fresh clothing. Let’s burn the “lock fat” away. And remember: nothing comes from anything.

A German in Baguio

BAGUIO CITY—Heiner Maulbecker has experienced much in his decades-long service as a hotelier in the Philippines, but nothing made him realize more the value of working with Filipinos than the 7.7-magnitude earthquake that shook Baguio in 1990.

The hotel he was then serving collapsed. He was in the thick of saving survivors and pulling out the injured and the dead (at least 80 employees were killed).

He said the main lesson the quake gave him was this: “If I ever should be faced with a natural disaster again, I hope I am surrounded by Filipinos. Filipinos jump right in. They immerse themselves and don’t wait for help from the outside world.”

His love affair with Baguio didn’t start out sweetly.

When he first made his way up in 1979, after he was appointed to professionalize the running of then Hyatt Terraces Baguio, which was losing money and taken over by Hyatt, he took Naguilian Road.

UPPER House Village along South Drive in Baguio City. RICHARD BALONGLONG/INQUIRER NORTHERN LUZON

Kennon Road had been closed for two years. Marcos Highway did not yet exist.

He was at the wheel, the road was bad, it was a rainy day in October or November, and he had an Ilocano guide by his side.

The first thing he saw when he entered Baguio was the cemetery.

He thought, “We’re going up to hell!”

On Abanao Street, he saw a big billboard announcing a Fernando Poe Jr. movie with the actor pointing a submachine gun at pedestrians and motorists.

Before he was assigned to Baguio, Maulbecker had just finished a stint with Hyatt Bangkok.

Previously, he was with the Hilton chain, serving for 10 years in Frankfurt, Germany.

Istanbul was his last posting for the Hilton.

When Baguio was presented to him, he asked, “Where the hell is that in the Philippines?” He was assured it was “the Switzerland of the Philippines.” But when he finally got to Baguio, he said, “Switzerland my foot! This is like a hick town in the US!”

When he arrived at the Terraces, it looked “like a morgue. There were no guests, no light, no flowers, no life!”

The original owners built the hotel with no expert advice.

Its opening was timed for the World Bank-International Monetary Fund conference when there was a hotel-building boom and the government was generous with loans.

He stated in his report then that the hotel had too many employees, the payroll too high, the management nonexistent, and he couldn’t fire people.

He was there to make recommendations, which he promptly did so help could come fast. The goal was to make the hotel break even.

Prioritized were the chinaware, glasses, linen. He made a budget. Hyatt took it from there.

Renovations were done, an interior designer hired to give the rooms a uniform appearance.

HEINER Maulbecker. ELIZABETH LOLARGA

New function rooms were opened to attract those holding seminars. Two cooks from Hong Kong and Japan were flown in to beef up the kitchen.

Maulbecker retrained people to level up to basic hospitality industry standards.

While changes were being made, he observed how “the Filipino employee is the best that you can have. With the proper training, you can bring the best out of them.”

He tapped Thelma Fullon, who had a Girl Scout leader background, as training manager.

He said, “She could do what I couldn’t—whack them behind the head or kick them in the back if they’re not doing well.”

His accomplishment was to turn a “derelict, sad-looking, lifeless hotel into a jumping, lively hotel.”

He also brought in Tippin Coscolluela since he couldn’t find a hotel person in Baguio who also had a national perspective and knew the Hyatt philosophy.

He connected with the people of Baguio through print and radio spots.

“But the best way,” he said, “was to bring them to the hotel.”

He formed an Executive Circle with membership cards that entitled them to monthly buffets.

There were Greek, German, Japanese nights followed by movie-themed buffets (The Great Gatsby, Wild Wild West, Tarzan) “until we ran out of countries to represent.”

Hyatt Terraces’ edge was it had “showmanship. We knew how to present food. When I attended functions here, food was just presented on aluminum foil, lechon was just chopped, chopped, chopped. That was it.”

For 10 years, the buffets went on.

He said, “The people appreciated it. All of a sudden, their response was, ‘Hyatt is our hotel.’”

Professional pride

He admitted though that “it wasn’t love at first sight. I hated it during my first year, but I saw the potential. There was a job to be done. My professional pride kicked in.”

When the work became more enjoyable, financial success followed. By then, he was also envisioning what would happen when the Americans left their US bases in the Philippines, including their R and R place, Camp John Hay.

There were meetings with the tourism secretary and other ranking officials. His message to them in behalf of his management team was: “Don’t worry, we can run that.”

The idea was to make John Hay, Poro Point and the San Fernando airport one operational unit.

UPPER House features cottages that can house 10-14 people each. RICHARD BALONGLONG/INQUIRER NORTHERN LUZON

Then President Fidel Ramos liked the idea of making Baguio the jumping point towards such destinations as the rice terraces in Ifugao and the beach resorts in La Union.

But because administrations come and go, the plan didn’t pan out.

Maulbecker rued, “It didn’t happen. It would’ve made us the center of tourism development in Luzon.”

Before he retired as The Manor’s managing director last year, he had these accomplishments under his belt: He opened the golf course while the hotel wasn’t yet ready, he opened the hotel followed by the CAP Convention Center.

Country boy

Baguio appealed to him because he’s a country boy at heart.

Born and raised in Heidelberg, Germany, he liked Baguio because “it’s like a neighborhood. I became friends with the mayor. Even if we argue, we’re still friends. Living in the Philippines is like organized chaos. But if you know how to live in chaos and survive, that’s the way to live.”

He recalled attending a Hyatt general managers’ meeting where he was the only guy without a problem.

“I was confident with my staff, I got along with the owners, I knew everyone from the city’s chief of police to the chief of the presidential staff. I learned how to tell the phonies and pretenders from the real guys. The other managers wanted transfers because their owners were a pain in the ass. Everyone wanted a transfer, except me,” he said.

He also personally knew the Presidents.

“They came up to play golf, and I’d have coffee with them. I remember having a conversation with President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo about holiday economics. I told her she can declare Christmas four times a year!”

New challenge

Maulbecker hasn’t hung up his hotelier’s hat.

He loves a challenge, and he found another one in running the newly opened Upper House Village on 88 Paterno Street, South Drive.

Upper House features cottages that can house 10-14 people each. It acknowledges the trend among Filipino families of traveling in big groups once or twice a year.

MAULBECKER is a country boy at heart. ELIZABETH LOLARGA

“Hotels can’t cater to these groups, but our village can,” Maulbecker said. There’s a shift in the visitors coming up. The new and younger generation doesn’t know what Baguio is all about.”

He added: “It’s not like 30 years ago when everybody knew one another. Today they ask, ‘What can we do here?’ So we must offer more interesting things to do and see for them and these can be in the areas of culture, music, art, nature, fitness and wellness.”

Tribute

In his message at the recent tribute to him when he retired from The Manor, he said:

“This is not really a goodbye, as Baguio is my home. I think in the past life, I was bestowed with some of the wonderful Filipino blood which allowed me to make so many good friends, and also have such great working relationships. Being a hotelier for the past 52 years was not just a profession to me, but also a passion. It was sweat, blood, tears, courage and inspiration with dedicated long hours and sacrifice. It was teamwork, innovation, quick thinking and imagination.”

He closed with these words: “It is said, happiness is often more remembered than experienced. ‘One must wait until the evening to see how splendid the day has been.’ I knew then that I was happy, but didn’t know until now, how happy, how very happy I really was.”

Read more: http://business.inquirer.net/184794/in-baguio-german-hotelier-finds-a-home#ixzz3OTiWXq8V
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