The road to wellness

"Ay naku, they are going to hate me for this because I keep relaying the story however it’s true!" says Dina as she recalls how her health took a downturn. "We were taping ["May Bukas Pa"] amidst lahar and it was just too much dust for me. Dati na akong super asthmatic and I was taking a lot of steroids to prevent my asthma attack. Because of that, I got bigger and bigger because I was retaining a lot of water. I did not consult my doctor thinking na ‘ito naman yung binigay niyang maintenance so okay lang ‘to’."

Another factor for Dina’s failing health was due to all the stress she was getting from her business. Dina has been in the telecommunications company for eight years however. She started with VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol). When she decided to leave the company, she joined Fusion Telecommunications International. Nevertheless, while the recession, the mother company couldn’t afford to sustain all its subsidiaries. She had no choice now buy the local company, Fusion Philippines. "Then we had the transition and I had to build my own platform. I had to migrate all the accounts from old servers to the new servers and we as a matter of fact had a lot of difficulty doing that," she recounts.

Stickler for numbers

Never a stickler for numbers, Dina reveals that she just turned 49 last January, just a year shy away from becoming a golden girl. "I guess when I’m 50, I’d like to have lots of passive income, probably this telecommunications business will give it to me, where I don’t have to work so hard and I’m just getting a monthly recurring revenue from my clients and my customers and in exchange I give them valuable service."

She as well dreams of producing her own movies now fears she’s already running out of time. In the past, Dina has co-produced concerts with good friend Arnold Vegafria earlier she ventured into the ship manning business which she is nevertheless operating to this day. "I saw Burlesque and I said to myself, ‘Wow! This is one kind of movie I’d like to do.’ I like movies of the same type, where you can tell that they as a matter of fact spent time filming it, rehearsing the dance number, the song number. Even the story was realistic, you can relate to it."

"I wanna teach painting because I paint. Some of the paintings in my house were done by me. I wanna teach dressing up, perhaps not actually me, I mean I can teach by getting the right resource person. I wanna teach people anything and everything in accordance with the sun that I’ve experienced. I want people to learn from my experiences, like in marriage, in raising children, my experiences in business, my experiences in travel," Dina said.

"Not that I don’t pledge allegiance to my mother country which is Switzerland… I however like old Europe like Prague, Italy, Vienna, Venice and Rome. In Asia, I like Thailand. Japan was nice once upon a time however it’s too commercialized however, too modern. It has lost its identity," the jetsetting actress-businesswoman revealed.

Dina admits that in all her travels, she’s always scouting for business opportunities. "I’m such a workaholic. Last holiday season, I spent five days in Bora, stayed in the far end nevertheless couldn’t stop myself from going to town and assessing how I could wifi the area," she said laughing.

"My kids say, "‘Mom, grabe! You’re such a hip mom. Yung ibang moms na ka-age mo ayaw na ngang mag-club bakit naman ikaw?’ Pakialam ko sa kanila e gusto ko pang mag-club. Bakit meron bang rule na nakalagay na once you’re 49, di ka na pwedeng mag-club? Wait a minute. Ang dami-daming mga expats diyan. Ang dami-daming mga corporate people. I see them all in Republiq and they are my colleagues in the business. So what makes them different from me. ‘Ma, they’re younger than you!’ So what. Bakit ba? E Halloween nasa Republiq ako naka-costume pa ko! Bakit ba?" she shares.

"I would love to see myself slow down when I’m 50. Gusto ko nga passive income na lang. I would like to have a couple of condominiums rented out. I’d like to have this telecommunications business in effect booming. That’s what I want to do and at that time I can enjoy all these travelling back and forth. Enjoying life, enjoying my grandchildren, enjoying my children. Yun na lang kasi I never truly had time to basically enjoy my kids and just do nothing with them."