Int'l Youth Day

This piece should have been published last Saturday. The United Nations declared in 1998 that every August 12 should be the International Youth Day.

A three-day delay would not make much of a difference.

Youth is the best stage of life. They enjoy it. It is the parents who worry for them.

The youth should be reliant, realistic, and resourceful.

The words of wisdom from the richest and most famous man in the world today, a drop-out in his college are needed by our youth.

This is from the speech of Microsoft founder Bill Gates when he spoke on a graduation in Harvard.

Cut them out for your students if you are a teacher. And for your children if you are a parent.

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Here are the eleven rules Bill Gates gave out which can be the best tools in life.

Rule One. Life is not fair. So, get used to it.

Rule Two. The world doesn't care about your self esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something before you feel good about yourself.

Rule Three. You will not make a six-digit salary right after school. You will not be vice-president with three secretaries and an entertainment budget until you earned them.

Rule Four. If you think your teacher is tough, wait until you get a boss.

Rule Five. Manual labor is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for it, they called it opportunity.

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Rule Six. If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault. So don't whine about your mistakes. Learn from them.

Rule Seven. Before you were born, your parents were not as boring as they are now. They get that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes, and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were. So, before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parents' generation, try cleaning the closet in your own room.

Rule Eight. Your school may have done away with winners and losers. But life has not. In some schools they have abolished failing grades and they'll give you as many times as you want to get the right answers. This does not bear the slightest resemblance to anything in real life.

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Rule Nine. Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off. And very few employers are interested in helping you "find yourself". Do that in your own time.

Rule Ten. Television is not real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to work.

Rule Eleven. Be nice to nerds. Chances are you may end up working for one.

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These are the thoughts of a man who dropped out of college and at 51 Bill Gates has the wealth much bigger than the annual budget of the Philippine government.

William Henry "Bill" Gates III was born in 1955. He is a businessman and computer scientist. He founded Microsoft and bought IBM that made him grow big very fast.

One reason for his strings of successes is his philosophy, his mindset. There are so many quotes of Bill Gates that have been published that are worth learning.

Last week, I quoted the text sent me by a friend Jimmy Golez which said, "Everybody must get rich and famous and do what he dreamed of. Then he will find out in the end, these are not the answers."

That was Bill Gates. And it carries a lot of meanings.

I think it was from Bill Gates also where, he was reported to have said, "Attitude and not aptitude determines one's altitude."

On International Youth Day, these are worthy things to ponder upon.

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Every business venture has its risk. This includes farming.

Just imagine the losses palay farmers and fishpond owners will suffer because of the month-long rains and floods.

And the weather bureau said the other night, the rains will continue up to September.*

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