My Birthday Wishes

It's my birthday on January 9. I am nearing mid-life. According to some this is the right time to assess a life, when you are in the middle. To check if you are a blessing or a curse to others. Even Confucius told bluntly eons ago that those people who reach mid-life and are despised will find it difficult to reverse the contempt of others. This will serve as a caution. There are lot of people in their 60's that regretted the things that they didn't do when they are in their middle age. But they can not turn back the hands of time. This I don't want to happen to me.
The real challenge now is to make my life a real gift to others. To avoid the curse of turning into a tiny speck which when blown away by the wind nobody notices anymore, because of being non-contributive.
Here's my wishes:
1. Health for me and my family. I am very much aware that physical and mental weaknesses are ambition killers. They destroy the will to win. I have to make sure that my family is healthy.
2. Enough money when I retire. I am an optimist by upbringing but to rely only on SSS pension is to invite poverty on my retirement years. Worse, SSS may not be there in the year when I retire.
3. My past, present and future students to have a job or create their own job. I am always praying for them and do everything possible to make them employable. To see them earn money and help their family is for me a real accomplishment.
4. My COMSCI faculty to always think that teaching is a gift. To teach less deeply is a mortal sin on our profession. In the corporate world, you work what's define in your job description and that's it. In the academe it's much more than that. How many students you have a semester? 200? 300? That's the number of souls and brain you need to shape. That's the gift that is not available in other profession.
5. Sacred Heart College as an academic institution to survive for the next hundred years. This is a college that serve the poor and will continue to serve it as long as we keep the vision and mission burning.
6. Philippines to have a political, religious and economic leader who love the country more than themselves.
7. For the highly skilled Filipinos to have the opportunity to work with a decent wage so that they will not work anymore outside the country.
These are my birthday wishes.

ALC
1/9/2007