The Money Tree


My wife gave me a Money Tree for my business while I was in the Philippines last December.

The business scene in the Philippines is heavily influenced by Filipino-Chinese. Nearly all of the biggest companies are being run by the Filipino-Chinese. Many businesses from big corporations to the small sari-sari stores* has Chinese business good luck charms from the Chinese Feng Shui Bagua, the waving cat, the frog with a coin in it’s mouth and other good luck charms. These are said to be lucky if given to the business and not bought for the business.

The money tree I got was made of plastic in a gold shiny finish. I guess signifying gold itself. As instructed by Marcia, my wife, I placed rice, chocolates that are wrapped in gold foil, and some money inside of the vase of the money tree.

As I was putting this money tree together which is made of not finely cut platic, I needed to occassionally file down some parts of it to make them fit well into the holes of the trunk of the tree, when it came to the base of the trunk going into the the golden pot, it would not fit well it just cracked open a larger hole and the tree would not stand anymore.

I checked my toolbox to see what I could find useful to fix it up. I found a metal plate from an old PC casing with holes for motherboard ports. This came from my old casing which was good as trash since it had no other use.


The holes for the audio ports were good enough to tightly fit the plastic plug for the tree base and I just bent the plate to make it fit in well inside the cover of the golden pot. And it worked out well.


Thanks babe for the money tree and hope it does bring good fortune to the company.


*In the Philippines there are sari-sari stores everywhere. Almost every home is a block or less away from their the neighborhood sari-sari store. A micro-business where sari-sari means something like “all sorts of” or “different kinds of” signifying the store sells all sorts of stuff that are most of the time food groceries, snacks and other consumables.