Page 62 - Gary's Book - Final Copy 7.9.2017_Active
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four to six hours except to Manila, which is just a chip shot on the course - about
an hour’s flight. With the Philippines being so close to Hong Kong and being a
country having several U.S. military bases, the people speak English, enjoy our
music, and are mostly Catholic. This made it the easiest culture to adjust to. (In
2016, Obama, unfortunately, blew all of this. The Philippines government
announced that they had had it with him and were no longer going to have a
military or trade relationships with the USA.)
The Philippines was typical of most Asian countries in that thirteen families ran the
country - all 7,002 islands (during high tide but more than 9,000 islands during low
tide). There were two rungs on the economic ladder - the wealthy and the
extremely poor. The wealthy families made the Kennedys and Melons appear like
paupers. In fact, in Thailand a game very popular for the wealthy was chess or
checkers - only they play by moving “people” from one position to another on a
large stadium field. Yes, this is true. There were numbered red and black boxes all
over a field, and they used an audio system to direct people. “Red box 5, move to
red box 7; remove black box 6.”
My distributor, the Delgado family, had three sons. The first son oversaw all the
hotels (Sheratons, Hiltons, etc.). The second son had the responsibility for all
service stations (Shells, Marathons and Amocos), and the third son oversaw all the
import and export shipping freighters. I recall one time that I was requested to
bring my golf clubs, so we could play during the product training meeting that
week. Upon arrival at their Manila headquarters, Mr. Delgado called a meeting to
discuss which son was going to fly me to what island and to what golf course. I
said, “You belong to the country club right here, what’s wrong with that?” That
wasn’t good enough; they had to fly to some exotic island somewhere to play golf.
They owned everything on the island! They were wealthy – I mean really wealthy -
up there with the Marcos family! Remember Ferdinand Marcos and his wife,
Imelda Marcos, who owned 600 pairs of shoes? He was the prime minister of the
Philippines when we were there. Very wealthy! They owned shopping centers,
businesses, grocery stores, restaurants - everything. Their wealth was
unbelievable!
Friendships and entertaining were very important in the Asian culture. These
relationships led to their wealth. Dow Corning and I made these distributors much
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