Saturday, February 21, 2009
toxic friends
There are friends that I truly consider to be real friends that I may not talk to on a regular basis but I know that if I need them they're there and vice versa. Its a good idea to do a little spring cleaning every once in awhile and evaluate friendships that you've cultivated. If the friendship isn't mutually beneficial, or you spend most of your time tip-toeing around to not piss them off, then its not worth it. Just break up. :O) It's so much better that way. Less stress.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
15-minute post
I'll be off to work in a few hours and I feel that the long weekend just passed me by.. I had so many listed agenda (study for series63, clean my closet, clean my pc files, play with the dogs, cook pasta, etc) and yet I wasn't able to do any of them because I'm not feeling too well. It's like a flu is coming along but is disguised in plain colds + body aches - fever.
I know I've pretty much done a good job with my attitude towards work in the last half of this year but tonight I think I'll have to literally drag myself to go, just because I can't be absent, not really because I hate my job (like how I felt in the past).
It will be a tough two weeks ahead for me as I prepare for yet another exam -- 63. Oh yeah, I was able to sneak in a couple of topic test earlier while my mind had not absorbed 100% of the meds and I was at least 60% coherent. hehe.
15-minutes done. Off I go.
Saturday, February 07, 2009
25 random things
Disclaimer: Okay so this has been going around faceebook for a while. And I honestly missed tagging anyone back because; 1. I couldn't think of 25 random things in one sitting, 2. i lost my internet connection for 5 days thanks to globe and 3. i was really blank and needed to wait for my moment to be able to answer this as lucidly as i can. Anyways..
1. I never liked my first name -- marie.
2. I eat the weirdest combinations of food: oatmeal and tuna spread, banana and peanutbutter, french fries and sundaes
3. I wake up really early. It doesn't matter if I stayed up late, my body clock seems to set off as soon as the sun rises. It was very useful when I was still in school, but now that I work during night shift, it's just plain bummer.
4. I have a knack for collecting notebooks of all sizes. I don't particularly use them, I just like having them.
5. I love to read. I have a massive book collection from gradeschool (sweet valley, girl talk, fabulous five, nancy drew, hardy boys) to my ever-changing tastes in highschool (christopher pike, stephen king, SVH & SVU, classics0) and college up to present (history, bronte, alighieri, meyer, evans, patterson, de saint exupery, plath, garcia marquez, coelho, grisham, albom, brown, flaubert, allende)
6. I like the moffatts. I seriously was a fanatic some 10 years back and eventhough they're no longer together as a band, I still have an appreciation for their music and what they've become.
7. I'm glad i quit my old job and found a better and brighter career. Ü I became a FINRA Registered Representative in just 6 months.Ü
8. I'm a chronic hand washer. I don't do hand-sanitizers as i feel i'm just making my hands more filthy and basically rubbing the dirt/germs all over. ick.
9. I had birthday parties (with clowns, games, the works) until I was 9 years old.
10. I'm a closet singer. I sing lots and loudly in the the shower or in the car but when it's public, like in team buildings or videoke, nobody can make me hold the mic. I'm just shy that way. Although I remember Ms. J made me sing Gabrielle's Out Of Reach during Butch's wedding reception. And out of fear i did. haha!
11. I never had a curfew. My dad would even bring me to and from my gimmicks in highschool.. even in college when I had no ride anywhere. I was also allowed to go on slumber parties/overnights anytime, even on a school night. Guess I'm lucky.
12. I miss my youngest brother Andrew (Sept. 14, 1988 - April 18 1993). I believe he's my intercessor in heaven and I look forward to the day we see each other again.
13. I was suspended for 5 days when I was in my senior year in HS. Reason: bringing Heineken during our Tagaytay Retreat. (which btw, was confiscated right out of our bags during the bag check the moment we arrived. In short, we never got to consume them)
14. I think credit cards are the manifestation of the devil. Enough said. haha
15. I write fiction. I wish I had more time to devote on this but the last serious novel i worked on was (I think) back in college. The manuscript, btw got lost. =(
16. I believe in God but am not religious. I don't really want to go into debate with anyone about this so let's just leave it at that.
17. I find comfort in being with someone who's attuned with me.
18. I have 5 dalmatians who I love so much. They're just the best things to come home to after a long day at work.
19. I think the best friends I have are the ones I met in Highschool. And so I am looking forward to the St. Scho Batch '99 10-year reunion in May! Ü
20. I used to smoke in college but eventually quit. I've been clean for more than 7 years.
21. I love to cook. Hate the food prep though. But I'd like to believe I can cook mean dishes.
22. The out of town city I've been to most times is Baguio. I was still in mom's womb when I first went there and in my whole lifetime I'm guessing I've been there more than 20 times already.
23. The only chocolate cake I liked is the home-made one from Pueblo.
24. I forgive but I don't forget.
25. I may have gone through the most difficult times in the last 8 months but I know I am a changed person because of everything that I've experienced and am thankful that I am where I'm at.
week 1 and what-nots
I got past the first week of taking in LSA (Licensed Service Agreement) calls and I managed to get an escalation from a customer who filed a complaint with FINRA regarding the kind of service he was he was getting/not getting from the firm. Not that he was actually complaining about me personally, but he was mistakenly sent an affidavit of domicile instead of the dispute forms he desperately needed. (and why do i sound like i'm washing my hands?haha)
Anyway, on to things more of you can relate to.. My birthday's coming up next month and I don't have anything planned yet. More often that just works in my favor because most of the things i spend time planning about are the ones that get killed in the planning process alone. So I'll just chill and let whatever come my way.
I am off to a long weekend next week because it's President's Day and the stock market is closed for business. I'm not too sure if there are other affected offshore LOBs but people are heading to out of town (puerto, CWC, Baguio, etc) to get away from the daily-ness called corporate life. As for me, it's Series 63 modules that's probabl gonna keep me busy. I'm not delighted at the thought but I'm not craving to join the pack fleeting Manila that weekend as well. Guess I just feel a bit too lazy to go anywhere far.. just not in travel mode sorry.
Oh yeah, I had my hair cut last weekend. Well, so much for the grand planning and all that opinion-taking ordeal, the haircut I wanted wasn't followed by the stylist. It's not such a disaster. I just feel it could've been better. ANYWAY.. I don't have pics of myself to show everyone but my hair is shorter and I have long sided bangs but still far from the style I was going for.. oh well.. maybe in 2 months I'll have it re-done. Who knows how random I can get.
Well, guess that's it. Just wanted to let you know that I haven't been abducted by aliens.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
lucky
Suddenly the old Britney Spears song played in my head.
But no, that's got nothing to do with this post (the song or Britney,i mean).
It's weird how quicky I shift emotions. Just yesterday I felt like the biggest wretch of the earth (around 10.30am onwards) and though I was kinda good at hiding how I really felt around everyone, the moment they'd left suddenly became cue for realizations to sink in and I cried. There was just too many welled up emotions waiting to burst and I succumed. So there I was, in a videotaped public area, stiffling like a crazy person. I'm not sure if I should be glad the team had gone home or be totally embarrassed that the staff at the Prometric Testing Center might've seen me from their monitors. ANYWAY. I hope they wouldn't have much of a recall in 30 days when I return to hopefully redeem myself.
Today though, I can't really claim that I'm over it because I have everyone around me as a constant reminder that I'd screwed up but at the same time I'd like to believe I've gotten into terms with the situation and I've come to accept that this is my fate and that there is a greater reason behind it that I am yet to understand.
You know when you get to a point where you become so devastated and there's nothing else you can do, really, because it's been done and you're just faced with the consequences of your actions that you just move on and accept reality with open arms?
It's a bittersweet feeling. At the same I feel lucky that life gives second chances.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
A Boy, A Girl, and An Apple
Holocaust survivors tell love story
By MATT SEDENSKY, Associated Press Writer Sun Oct 12, 3:11 PM ET
NORTH MIAMI BEACH, Fla.
In the beginning, there was a boy, a girl and an apple.
He was a teenager in a concentration camp in Nazi-controlled Germany. She was a bit younger, living free in the village, her family posing as Christians. Their eyes met through a barbed-wire fence and she wondered what she could do for this handsome young man.
She was carrying apples, and decided to throw one over the fence. He caught it and ran away toward the barracks. And so it began.
As they tell it, they returned the following day and she tossed an apple again. And each day after that, for months, the routine continued. She threw, he caught, and both scurried away.
They never knew one another's name, never uttered a single word, so fearful they'd be spotted by a guard. Until one day he came to the fence and told her he wouldn't be back.
"I won't see you anymore," she said. "Right, right. Don't come around anymore," he answered.
And so their brief and innocent tryst came to an end. Or so they thought.
___
Before he was shipped off to a death camp, before the girl with the apples appeared, Herman Rosenblat's life had already changed forever.
His family had been forced from their home into a ghetto. His father fell ill with typhus. They smuggled in a doctor, but there was little he could do to help. The man knew what was coming. He summoned his youngest son. "If you ever get out of this war," Rosenblat remembers him saying, "don't carry a grudge in your heart and tolerate everybody."
Two days later, the father was dead. Herman was just 12.
The family was moved again, this time to a ghetto where he shared a single room with his mother, three brothers, uncle, aunt and four cousins. He and his brothers got working papers and he got a factory job painting stretchers for the Germans.
Eventually, the ghetto was dissolved. As the Poles were ushered out, two lines formed. In one, those with working papers, including Rosenblat and his brothers. In the other, everyone else, including the boys' mother.
Rosenblat went over to his mother. "I want to be with you," he cried. She spoke harshly to him and one of his brothers pulled him away. His heart was broken.
"I was destroyed," Rosenblat remembers. It was the last time he would ever see her.
___
It was in Schlieben, Germany, that Rosenblat and the girl he later called his angel would meet. Roma Radziki worked on a nearby farm and the boy caught her eye. And bringing him food — apples, mostly, but bread, too — became part of her routine.
"Every day," she says, "every day I went."
Rosenblat says he would secretly eat the apples and never mentioned a word of it to anyone else for fear word would spread and he'd be punished or even killed. When Rosenblat learned he would be moved again — this time to Theresienstadt, in what is now the Czech Republic — he told the girl he would not return.
Not long after, the Russians rolled in on a tank and liberated Rosenblat's camp. The war was over. She went to nursing school in Israel. He went to London and learned to be an electrician.
Their daily ritual faded from their minds.
"I forgot," she says.
"I forgot about her, too," he recalls.
Rosenblat eventually moved to New York. He was running a television repair shop when a friend phoned him one Sunday afternoon and said he wanted to fix him up with a girl. Rosenblat was unenthusiastic: He didn't like blind dates, he told his friend. He didn't know what she would look like. But finally, he relented.
It went well enough. She was Polish and easygoing. Conversation flowed, and eventually talk turned to their wartime experiences. Rosenblat recited the litany of camps he had been in, and Radziki's ears perked up. She had been in Schlieben, too, hiding from the Nazis.
She spoke of a boy she would visit, of the apples she would bring, how he was sent away.
And then, the words that would change their lives forever: "That was me," he said.
Rosenblat knew he could never leave this woman again. He proposed marriage that very night. She thought he was crazy. Two months later she said yes.
In 1958, they were married at a synagogue in the Bronx — a world away from their sorrows, more than a decade after they had thought they were separated forever.
___
It all seems too remarkable to be believed. Rosenblat insists it is all true.
Even after their engagement, the couple kept the story mostly to themselves, telling only those closest to them. Herman says it's because they met at a point in his life he'd rather forget. But eventually, he said, he felt the need to share it with others.
Now, the Rosenblats' story has inspired a children's book, "Angel Girl." And eventually, there are plans to turn it into a film, "The Flower of the Fence." Herman expects to publish his memoirs next year.
Michael Berenbaum, a distinguished Holocaust scholar who has authored a dozen books, has read Rosenblatt's memoir and sees no reason to question it.
"I wasn't born then so I can't say I was an eyewitness. But it's credible," Berenbaum said. "Crazier things have happened."
Herman is now 79, and Roma is three years his junior; they celebrated their 50th anniversary this summer. He often tells their story to Jewish and other groups.
He believes the lesson is the very one his father imparted.
"Not to hate and to love — that's what I am lecturing about," he said. "Not to hold a grudge and to tolerate everybody, to love people, to be tolerant of people, no matter who they are or what they are."
The anger of the concentration camps, Herman says, has gone away. He forgave. And his life has been filled with love.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
frustrated
There's nothing worse than feeling you're just not good enough. And it doesn't help that a majority of the people you're with are actually excelling at something you're expected to have an understanding of when in fact you're just a little too lost than the rest of them. It's just so frustrating because you know you're not daft and yet the results show otherwise.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Quotable Evans..
Some of you may have read some of his books.. I've read a majority in his collection and is a certified fan.. ANYWAY, here's something I found today that you might appreciate:
Enjoy! Ü
Thursday, January 08, 2009
licensed (part 2)
And so I took the 7 yesterday and passed (thank God). I just about gave my friends a heart-attack by keeping them in suspense about the results because they were all scheduled to take the exam a day earlier which left me taking it on my own.. well not really because i had 8 other people from my batch but no one really close enough to share the ANXIETY with. haha.
I semi-slept the night to before to review and plus I was such a nervous-wreck I couldn't get my mind off the many what if's (what if i don't pass? will i resign? will i wait to re-take it? will i have a team to go back to? what will everyone think?). So I went to work looking like a zombie and 'twas like my soul had left my body that morning. I couldn't feel a thing. My hands were ice cold and they felt no sensation. I barely touched my breakfast for fear of barfing any moment. I refused to drink anything --I did not like the idea of taking a bathroom break in the middle of probably the most important exam of my life. I've never felt this nervous/scared/apprehensive in a long time and somehow it felt relieving knowing these feelings make the experience more real.
My first set was tough.. not a lot of computations but more on analysis which consumed most of my time. I took the mandatory 30-minute break (after the first 3 hours) feeling dejected already. At this point I already visualized a 38% final score on the whole thing. The second part was more on options which is my up of tea as compared to the terminologies and rules and regulations. I almost comsumed the entire 3 hours since i had to manually compute for the answers.
The clincher though, was the last 10 seconds after submitting my exam where I had to wait for my scores to appear on the screen.. It was the longest 10 seconds of my life. And so with closed eyes, i held my breath and prayed. There were a lot of texts on the screen when i first opened my eyes to see and I was kinda confused where to look for the results itself.. haha.. it took around 3 seconds before i finally saw the word "PASS" beside my actual score and i had to exhale a huge mass of breath since i've been holding it for a while. Again, however elated I was, I closed my eyes, bowed down my head and prayed. It wasn't all me you know.Ü
I'm registered here. Ü