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If the first decade was characterized by laying the foundations of the family and the bold move to Jakarta, the second decade could be summed up as "We are rich!

It was in 1978 that Dad decided that the way to rev up his career would be to seek his master's degree. And it was not just any master's degree, it was at the prestigious Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

Now most of us hear of Wharton grads being scions of rich families who could afford to send their firstborn sons to US schools so that they could come back and take over the reins of the family business. Not Dad. With the same persuasion he used to win over clients, he made a business case and convinced SGV to give him a scholarship. Armed with Mom's wholehearted support, we all bundled off to the US to mark the big jump. For the first four months of classes, Dad stayed in

Pennsylvania while we stayed in California with Grandma and Grandpa Aliga. Dad not only separated from us, he also separated from his beloved barber (as evidenced by his long hair!), but we soon joined him for our first "white Christmas in Pennsylvania!

In Pennsylvania, our classmates at Aronimink School were fascinated by the fact that we had come from across the ocean, had traveled to exotic lands like Singapore, Thailand, and Malaysia, and actually knew what a "papaya was. They marveled that we could "speak like Americans", and asked if we lived in our own treehouse in Indonesia. One classmate constantly asked about the things we had seen in our trips, and told me, "Wow, you must be rich! I answered, "Yeah, I guess so… Little did I know how much Mom and Dad scrimped to stretch their savings so that we could be there… that our favorite stores to shop ("Goodwill and "The Thrift Store") weren't quite Rustan's… that there was an engineering calculation to optimize the washload for every precious quarter… that we were receiving subsidized meal cards at the school cafeteria. And when Elaine (Dad's second MBA - "Made Baby in America!") was born, we went from subsidized meals to free since we had crossed the threshold of the poverty level!

Even though Dad had classes, we never felt his absence, as he would still be around for dinner and weekends, and only studied or did papers when we were all asleep, with Mom also being his typist and proofreader. During breaks, we traveled across the US and squeezed as much out of the 1 ½ year stay as we could!

Our last few years in Jakarta were a whirlwind of activities - Dad with his tennis, Mom with her Jakarta Women's club, and us older kids with Joint Sound, musicals, spring concerts, Cultural Conventions… while the younger kids got started with elementary school and Warblers choir.

1986 saw us watching the People Power revolution from afar… and also signaled the need for us to finally go home. As Mom and Dad prepared to go back home, the Tierra Pura house gave us the oh-so-rare telephone line within the subdivision. Alma came home first, when she started in UP, and we all followed the next year.

In 1987, we bid a tearful farewell to Jakarta, our home for more than 11 years (13 for Dad) and made a new start in QC. Each had his/her own adjustment period to deal with, most notably Elaine's daily crying fights with Mom because she didn't want to go to school (grade 3 in Maryknoll,) and Jane's seething anger at having been "robbed of graduating from JIS, but we all accepted that this was to be our new home.

How fitting that the closure of that Jakarta chapter of Mom and Dad's life coincided with the 20th year of marriage! My classmate was right. We were rich - and still are. Rich in love and experiences, in laughter and hugs, in melodies and harmonies (and the occasional tsing-tsing-a-tsing-tsing-a-tsing from a tsing-tunado little brother!), in huge bowls of one-minute noodles, and in Mom and Dad's abilities to stretch everything we had so that we never wanted for more. All this made us richer far beyond any cash in the bank ever could.

After Dad graduated, we headed back to Jakarta for our second "Indonesia stint. Indonesia hadn't changed, but we had! Dad soon got his promotion to Partner, and we all headed into high school at JIS. Mom, not having given up on having a boy after the string of four girls, finally capped off her baby-making stint with our Jakarta-born buntut, Vernon.