When I came to America, I weighed only 95 lbs.  After 6 months I gained to 170 lbs.  It must the good food in U.S. or I ate too much.  How can you blame me?  When you can eat all you want for free all three meals.  You work for Century Plaza Hotel in Beverly Hills, CA, they let you eat all you want, as long as you wear uniforms.  Some of the staffs came on their time off to eat their free meals.  I didn’t do that.  But the master chef of the hotel like me a lot.  He fed me all the great food, including the same dishes our President Nixon ate.  My first job at the hotel was a dish washer.  I tell you what I had been washing millions and millions of dishes.  It was a hot and hard job.  You had to keep up with those waiters and waitress.  They served in the banquet room.  They picked up their dirty dishes on the trays and threw them in the   room windows.  I had to scrape the food off the plates before you put them in the dish washing machine.  It was a big machine, it was about 15 to 20 feet long.  You put in one end and it came out another end.  When the dishes came out, you had to wear gloves to pick them up.  It was very hot and steamy.  After you finished cleaning all your dishes, you have to sweep, mop the floor and emptied the trashes.  That was one of my hard job.  I never complained about it.  I worked hard and did the best I could.  Well the hard work paid off.  The Executive Manager was noticed me.  He called me to his office.  He said to me that ” Mana, you are a hard worker, you never complained and you always Nice to everybody.  I am going to put you to work at the swimming pool.  With your nice personality, our guests will like to have you serving them.”  I got a raise and promotion.  The first Thai staff ever worked as a pool man.  I loved this job a lot.  Majority of the guests were rich and famous.  They called me for reserving lounge chairs by the pool.  When they showed up, I gave them towels and took them to their chairs.  They tipped me sometimes 10 dollars, sometimes 20 dollars.  I was also a server.  The hotel served hamburgers, hot dogs, french fried and ice-cream.  I made a lot of money on the tips.  I also had so much fun with the guest’s children.  When they show up to buy ice-cream, I gave to them for free, because they behaved and had nice manners.  My supervisor approved to that.  He said that if the guess enjoyed them self.  They will come back again and again.  Ice cream was a less expensive items.  It is a great way to influence them to come back.  I made and saved a lot of money with this job for my trip to Texas.  This is the beginning.

Goodbye for now!

Mana

When I was little, my dad took us to have Dim Sum a lot of time. Dim Sum is Chinese dumplings and serves in Chinese restaurant. Not every Chinese restaurant serves Dim Sum. You can find Dim Sum in big city like Dallas, Los Angeles, New York, etc. My dad wanted his family to spend time together, ate Dim Sum and drank Chinese tea ( Yum Cha ). ” Family closeness is very important” my dad said. Dim Sum is not expensive if you have just a few baskets.  But when you feed the whole family, it will add up. My dad is a big spender when it is about making family happy. He said that you have to live your life but make sure you do save some money for the future. From what my dad ‘s teaching, I come up with this philosophy:- 1. to make money.  2. to save money for the future.  3. to invest.  4. to enjoy your life.  5. to help family or other people. How do you make money? In this Country, there are so many ways to do it, if only you set your mind and go after it. When my son was 8 yrs. old, I bought a camera to take his soccer games. I decided to take pictures for his soccer team. After that I took a lot of soccer teams almost the whole league.  Then I decided to contact the little league baseball in town for team picture taking. I took a lot of baseball teams. Soon after that I started to do wedding pictures. In one summer, I made enough money to take my wife, my son and my daughter to go on vacation in Thailand and Singapore for three weeks. That is one of my money making in the past.

When I first got to Hollywood, California, I got a job at Century Plaza Hotel. This hotel is five stars hotel, a lot of celebrities and movie stars stayed there. President Nixon held Welcome Home Party for Apollo 11 Astronauts (first landing on the moon). This hotel has cafeteria to serve all employees. They can eat anything they want to for free, as long as they wear uniforms. They really take good care of their staffs. This job was perfect for me to make money and also to save money. I didn’t have to spend money for meal so I could save more. There are so many restaurants that feed their employees for free especially oriental restaurants. Most of the restaurants charge 50% for employee meal. It doesn’t matter, it will help you save and make money.  I hope that my past experience give you some idea to make some money. I have more story to tell you how I made money later on. My next post subject will be investing.

Goodbye for now,

Mana