“I must have been a good boss,” she said. Her businesses are now manned by workers and relatives who have stayed with her for almost 35 years. You could be a businesswoman without being rude.” It pays to be a good person that does not lie. Lacuna’s greatest realization: “It pays to be hardworking and focused. “While you are fitting puzzle pieces together, you might be building up your dream,” she added. She believes that someday, these children will find themselves looking no longer on the puzzle but on the actual place itself. “I let children touch my puzzles so they can probably aim for something like this, so they can bring honor to the country and legacy to their families,” Lacuna said. It became an overnight sensation,” she said.Ĭlad in a long dress and adorned with a good amount of make-up, on weekends, she transforms into the Puzzle Queen who personally tours visitors around her mansion and thoroughly explains to them the history behind every work of art. “Upon learning through the news that I’ve been awarded a Guinness record, the next day, people started coming by. It was due to popular demand that Puzzle Mansion became a tourist attraction in Tagaytay. “My puzzles used to be for my eyes only,” she said. If it hadn’t been for the Guinness she was awarded last year, Lacuna might never have opened her collection for public viewing. Your left and right brain functions, and you become sharper.”Īnd, prodded by the businesswoman in her, she said, “Unlike other puzzles, such as crossword, you can sell it upon completion and make more money.” Lacuna cited the benefits of completing jigsaw: “The good thing about jigsaw is it enhances mental ability to work and be organized. Lacuna’s collection is no longer limited to the classics-it now encompasses colorful globes, crystal pandas, Coke collectibles, underwater adventures, royal castles, the Vampire Diaries, 3D, and even 4D or puzzle-on-puzzle miniatures of the Golden Gate Bridge and the Mayan Pyramids. During one of their travels to Hongkong, she bought and completed what turned out to be her all–time favorite, a 5,000-piece Disney jigsaw for her only child Gino who was then 2 years old. How she got into collecting puzzles was inspired by a mother-and-son bonding experience. “At 27, I was already able to buy a house,” she said. Lacuna was able to start a clothing line that soon became “Buntis,” the leading manufacturer of maternity dresses in the country. As the eldest child, she had to earn a living at 16.īut the struggle was short-lived for someone who never gave up walking and working even until dawn. “After I graduated from a private high school, life began to be miserable when my parents could not afford to bring me to college anymore,” she said. She remembers how she used to peddle goods in small department stores and Cubao streets. Before she had the money to travel and pursue such expensive hobby, she had her own “struggle for survival.” Her patience and perseverance, her secrets to enduring the painstaking process, were built on humble beginnings. “When I love something I’m doing, I don’t stop,” she said. Like the drooping pocket watches in Salvador Dali’s La Persistencia de la Memoria (The Persistence of Memory), the puzzle Lacuna best identifies herself with, the ticking of clocks doesn’t matter to her anymore. And just like 1028, 3 a.m., at the end of the day, becomes nothing but a number. With utmost concentration, she fits them together meticulously, adding up to her Guinness-awarded collection of 1,028 puzzles. She has developed a scheme of sorting out the pieces: first by color, then by their monotone shades. Every day, she devotes three to four hours of alone time completing her puzzles, usually while watching television.
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