My mother is passionate about business. She has a lot of business ventures ever since I can remember. So she somehow encouraged us to never get scared into dipping our toes into business. She said: “I never like to gamble because its risky. But when it comes to business, it is a risk I am willing to take. That is my type of gamble”. That is my mom — hard core, hehe… Like!

My mom predicts that I am lucky in business because I have a mole near my lip adjacent to my nostrils. That is lucky among Chinese, she said, because the air is breathe out into your mole means lucky in business. Now being at an age, glazed with skepticism for fairy tales, I’m pondering on the whole logic and connection of a mole and luck in business, I can’t find any but then again look at the Chinese people, they are the leaders in business world, I think they know what they are talking about.

So when I was in Grade 1, I tried selling peanuts in a small plastic bag for 1 peso. I didn’t market my product well and I gave most of the peanuts for free to my classmates. At age 6, I decided I have no knack as a businesswoman.   So I gave up my dream to be a wealthy peanut magnate, hehe. Though from time to time, I would sell  the chocolate cake my yaya makes for me for lunch for 12pesos but still swear off that business as something I will be passionate about. My mother also noticed my dwindling interest in business. We have a small carenderia near my mom’s office. I rarely go there and I have no interest in being the cashier for the day. I always thought that me and business isn’t a good mix.

However, in my college years I dabbled in it again. Utilizing my yaya’s superb cooking skills, I started selling lasagna complete with styro container and fork. My lasagna business was doing well for a month or two but I started getting tired of carrying the heavy load of styros with lasagna everyday and it eventually stopped.

Now, as a resident physician with a minuscule salary (yes, it is!) , my ambivalent mind started toying with the idea on dipping my dirty fingers into business again… I have a postgraduate intern who is a full-pledged businessman… Bongga nuh! He already has a boutique with his wife and an internet station in Robinsons Mall. That is quite admirable, isn’t it? We have the same duty schedule so during late night admissions of patients, he would teach me business tips. Funny! I am the resident who is suppose to be the teacher,but I got my business lessons from my intern, hehe. We are all students of life they say, hehe. He let me borrow books of  Robert Kiyosaki and our business tycoons.(For those interested in learning more about entrepreneurship, stocks and investment, click https://www.richdadcoaching.com/). I thought initially of learning how to bake and go into pastry business. (Hehe, it is obvious that I am hoping to indulge my sweet tooth if I get into this). However, I can never seem to materialize this blurry dream of mine…Until I found a person who mirrored my unreachable dream and is willingly to go into this mini adventure with me, into the risky world of business, naks!

J & Me

We first ventured into the oven-roasted chicken. The famous Chooks-to-go turned us down when we were hoping to pseudo-franchise with them because of our location. So we resorted into coming up with own marinated chicken. Then, DOK!ES CHICKEN was born. It was a learning, exhausting and exciting experience. We were entrepreneurs na…Wow! hehe… It’s a nice feeling of accomplishment as we push ourselves in achieving what we want to achieve. And now, here we are on to another venture—THE DOK!ES GRILL…  

From chicken, now we included more meat products, hehe. DOK!ES GRILL is a tapsilogan/ inasalan. Ohh, bongga , di ba?

We serve tapsilog, tocilog and chocilog at P39 with free juice! Isn’t that a student budget heaven! We also serve pork barbeque, and isaw. We also have coffee, pancit canton and noodles.

We open at 6AM until 9PM from Mondays to Saturdays.

We can be found at Mission Road, Jaro fronting STI College just near Iloilo Mission Hospital.

See you there! Pramis, solve ka sa kabusog!

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Like my mother said, business is a gamble. It is true. You can be up today and go down in a few months. But then again, what in life is in absolute certainty? None at all! Another life’s gamble is relationships. You invest your time and emotions to a person without a valid guarantee that that “merger ” would be a total success. (Unfortunately, not even a marriage contract these days is enough guarantee that the person you invested on would be there for you in the long haul). But I  learned that if we live our  lives in constant fear of the unknown, we are not living fully and, in the words of Henry David Thoreau, “sucking the marrows out of life.” There are no guarantee and certainties in life, all are just calculated risks. And the best people who are happy and living the life most people dream of are those risk-takers who are willing to take the plunge. With that, I leave u with the words of inspirations I post in our Dok!es Grill wall which I call our positivity wall.