Adversity becomes her

(Discovery Shores Boracay, one of the many properties managed by Raintree Partners Inc., in partnership with the Tiu family of the JTKC Group.)

The Fajardos also owned the famous Luau restaurant along Roxas Boulevard, and which Mrs. W said was actually her feasibility study of a Polynesian restaurant for Cornell. “Can you imagine? My mother built my master project just so I would come home?”, Mrs. W laughingly recalls. Although she stayed for a year-and-a-half to help run it, the young Annabel returned to New York to complete her graduate studies, much to her mother’s consternation. Without her mother’s financial support this time, she had to juggle several jobs just to pay for her tuition and living expenses.

“I had to be an assistant professor in the undergraduate school. And I had to be a graduate resident in the dorm. In other words you had to supervise all these giggly young freshmen. You have to make sure everybody’s in by midnight. Then I worked as a restaurant cashier so I can get my meals for free, so I’d get extra money. Magtitipid ka, panay window shopping walang binibili. Pero masaya naman kami. So you learn. In distress times, you have to be creative.” "(Read the rest of my profile on Annabella Santos Wiesniewski.)

(Another Raintree property, the Hotel Venezia in Legaspi City, Albay.)