Maid in London returns home a multimillionaire

Maid in London returns home a multimillionaire
By Emman Cena
Inquirer

Dec17, 2006

COME CHRISTMAS TIME, FILIPINO workers around the world are likely packing goods in a box.

Back home, the air is filled with the scent of “Stateside” lotion, soaps, chocolates and the whiff of Americana deliciously trapped inside what have come to be known as balikbayan boxes.

To 59-year old Consuelo Valencia, the concept of the balibayan box inspired her to put up the Farochilen Group of Companies 10 years ago. The business venture eventually earned her millions.

No fairy tale

But the success of Manang Consuelo, as she’s fondly called by friends was hardly a fairy tale at the start. She took courage to fly to London in May 1977 to work as a domestic helper.

She left her two young sons in the care of her husband who himself was trying to make ends meet.

Armed with the ambition and determination to give her family the best that life can offer, she rose from scrubbing floors to being one of most the most successful Filipino businesswomen in the United Kingdom.

“It was a matter of survival and sacrifice for me and my family,” says Manang Consuelo, who arrived Friday night to spend the holidays with her family.

But the sacrifice eventually paid off. Several newspapers in the UK had carried her story on how a cleaner became a millionaire in 10 years.

How it all beganHer reversal of fortune started in 1986 when after nine years of scrubbing floors in London, Manang Consuelo was offered a job with a freight shipping firm.

“At that time, nobody was doing business with the Philippines,” she says, “But I realized there were many people here (UK) who wanted to send parcels to their families.”

When the owner of the firm retired, the business was handed down to her. Through her excellent PR skills and her determination to succeed, she managed to bring the company on top of the heap with an ever-growing list of customers.

The company now collects boxes and T chests from individual customers across the United Kingdom. Manang Consuelo says their weekly shipment averages 40 containers shipped door-to-door delivery to the Philippines. This time of the year is the busiest, she says, since the movement of the balikbayan boxes is at its peak.

Also in 1986, Manang Consuelo ventured in a door to door cash delivery service through the Farochilen Remittances.

“With Filipinos in the UK sending money once or twice a month to support their families back home, this is a perfect venture,” she says. By offering a reliable face-to-face speedy delivery, high exchange rates and low remittance fees, Manang Consuelo gives the banks a run for their money.

Not content with the success of the remittance and freight business, in 1996 she also embarked on travel services, phone card dealership, real estate, recruitment and publishing house—all of which she never imagined she could ever have.

In just 10 years, the Earls Court-based freight (cargo) company expanded into a wide range of business venture now known as Farochilen Group of Companies, the biggest business of its kind servicing mainly the Filipino community in the UK.

Now its managing director, Manang Consuelo supervises the freight company and its subsidiaries including the widely known travel agency that mainly deals with flights to Asia, Singapore and the Philippines. She now also owns four house-buildings in London.

Tatak Filipino

She also launched Tatak Filipino in October 2002, a mini-supermarket specializing in food stuff imported from the Philippines and the Far East.

Once serving a single household doing household chores, Manang Consuelo, through her chain of businesses, now serves the whole Filipino community in UK.

But serving her fellow Filipinos doesn’t end there. She has donated three libraries here in the Philippines, a Catholic chapel and classrooms in Iloilo—her way of giving back, she says.

With an outstanding profile as a business tycoon who rose from poverty, Manang Consuelo has earned for herself accolades here and abroad, recognizing her dedication to work.

She placed 11th in the 100 REAL Women of Achievement in UK in 2004 and also won the Woman into Businesss Awards sponsored by the Bank of Scotland in February 2003.

To date, the rags-to-riches story of Manang Consuelo has attracted various film producers and TV networks. In the UK, a known writer has offered to write about her life while the British Broadcasting Company will soon shoot a documentary film about her.

Manang Consuelo arrived Friday night straight from London to receive her award as one of the outstanding Overseas Filipino Entrepreneurs (OFEs) sponsored by the Philippine Center for Entrepreneurship (PCE). The award was given yesterday by President Arroyo and Presidential Consultant for Entrepreneurship Jose Concepcion III at the “Go Negosyo Para sa mga OFWs at Balikbayans Fair” at Market! Market! Trade Halls A & B in Taguig City.

Go Negosyo awardee

The “Go Negosyo” para sa mga OFWs at Balikbayans is part of the continuing Go Negosyo campaign of PCE, encouraging the further development of entrepreneurship in the country. It also aims to complement the happiness of OFWs getting reunited with their families by exposing them to business opportunities.

The 59-year old is now a multimillionaire. Indeed, 29 years after leaving her family to become a maid in London, Manang Consuelo is literally made.

‘Crazy’ blogger documents his life, work in Singapore, US

‘Crazy’ blogger documents his life, work in Singapore, US
By Emman Cena
November 26, 2006
A 21

NICANOR “BATJAY” DAVID JR. didn’t dream of becoming the next J.R.R. Tolkien nor J. K. Rowling. In fact, he never imagined that the quirky and earthy notes he was once scribbling on his weblog (online journal) about his adventures and misadventures as an overseas Flipino worker in Singapore and Southern California would get followers. And followers mean hundreds and thousands of Filipino readers worldwide, mostly his fellow OFWs.

Indeed, only heavens could have planned it so well for the the instrument engineer who left the Philippines in August 2001 to work abroad. The move did not fail Batjay. In fact, it hit him big.

From the widely read blog which was bestowed “The Blogger of the Year” in 2004, he has taken the leap. His blog is now making rounds in bookstores nationwide via “Kwentong Tambay: Mga Kwento ng isang sira-ulong Overseas Filipino,” a 144-paged book which chronicles his life as a Pinoy OFW in Singapore and in the Orange Country, places he had been to for work.
Pinoy humor
Replete with the greenest of jokes, cringing punchlines and very earthy Pinoy humor, the book is based on selected entries of his blog which he started writing in September 2001. The blog (http://www.kwentongtambay.nicanordavid.com/), he says, was born out of loneliness from living abroad when he was just a struggling OFW newbie in the Lion City.

“It was my first time living abroad and one of the ways I coped was to write about how my life was, living in a strange land,” says Batjay who spent most of his life in Antipolo City, a place he fondly calls the Land of Kasoy, Suman and Hinulugang Taktak.Batjay had his share of the usual fits of tussles a newbie OFW gets in any foreign land.
The blessings came not handy to him, he says. Starting out, he first rented a space in the red light district of Geylang in Singapore before finding a decent home later on. Months were spent in misery and loneliness and blogging was the only thing he knew could make him forget that he was miles away from his loved ones.
“It was also some sort of sanity checking,” Batjay says of his blog which is some sort of a joke book where each quip and bawdy joke could always bring a smile to any reader.

But soon the dreaded time of waiting was to put to an end when he was joined by his wife Theresa Hazel Ramirez first in Geylang, Singapore, then in Southern California four years later when the company Batjay works in agreed to pay for the movement and settlement of the couple.

Batjay says the book was a surprise to Jet, his wife, who also works in a Southern California hospital as a nurse, and also a blogger herself.

“I had to work in secret. She didn’t know the book existed until we got e-mails from people in Manila who were congratulating me for the book,” he tells the Inquirer in an interview.

“I didn’t have any preconceived plans that someday the blog will turn into a book if it becomes popular,” he adds.

Book publishing

The idea of coming up with a book sparked when he got feedback from readers of his blog saying that it would be nice if the blog were turned into a book. That way, he would also be able to reach out to people who don’t have access to the Internet to read his blog.

So the idea moved to bigger plans and the next thing he knew, he was working out a deal with PSICOM, his would-be publisher. But it was definitely hard for the California-based writer-engineer to get things done since the actual work on the book is being done in Manila. But through the help of some friends, “Kwentong Tambay” finally made it in September and was featured in the last International Book Fair in Manila.

After two months of release, the book, Batjay says could be selling well but he doesn’t have the foggiest notion of exact sales.

“It must be selling well because I get a lot of email from readers telling me the book is always out of stock whenever they check the local bookstores. If my publisher will not be able to give me any stats soon, I’ll probably ask my mom’s manghuhula (fortune teller) about the total number of books sold,” he jests in very Batjay-ish antics.

Looking Back

It was indeed accident-made-perfect for the folksy writer-engineer when he left the country five years ago. Batjay says that his migration with his wife Jet was just a “timely accident.”

In 2001, he recalls, his friend offered him a job to work in Singapore with a very good compensation package plus free all expense vacations back home. Lured by the handsome pay and finally getting the chance to tide over his dues in the house he was then building in Antipolo, he settled all his papers and flew in August that year.

“The timing was right. I already had over 12 years of experience working. I felt I have served my country well enough and it was now time to think of my family’s well-being,” the computer engineering graduate from Mapua Institute of Technology says.

Living abroad has changed his quality of life, he says. “I earn 20 times more money here for the same amount of work I had in Manila. I don’t have the apprehensions and fears that I had when we were still based (in Manila). I don’t have to look behind my back when I’m walking in a deserted place. I feel safer,” he says.
But the Philippines will be forever his home saying that people here are funnier “even if they don’t mean to be. And the cost of living is cheaper and the women, he says, are prettier.

He also misses his mother’s menudo, “the traffic congestion in Manila that doesn’t move, Jollibee’s Chicken Joy and takatak ng yosi boy sa kalye.”
No place like home
“We may be based in the fanciest most advanced country in the world but sometimes that just doesn’t matter because the old cliché is true—there is no place like home—says the writer-engineer who adores comedians Letterman and Leno, Seinfeld, Drew Carry and Ray Romano.

Batjay says he wants to be rich and still look handsome even if he gets to be 80 and he feels high getting feedback from people who read his book and blogs.

Asked of his reaction when he knew that Kwentong Tambay is making the rounds of the local bookstores and always sold out, he answers in straightforward antic: “I almost shit in my pants.”
With the release of Kwentong Tambay, people would expect to compare him to Bob Ong, the first Filipino blogger who published his blog into a book. Reached him for his comment, he says he is way cuter and has a better singing voice. “Maybe I am taller and have a better looking butt,” he jests.
Perhaps it’s a dream come true for Batjay who will be home this December for his usual vacation holiday break with wife Jet. But the usual Batjay interceded saying: “It’s a wet dream come true.”