When Angels Descend
All I really need to know about finance, I learned in RFP.
That is Registered Financial Planner for you, er, me – the seminar that I am attending so I (we!) can get a growth spurt in personal finance (well, that is the idea). Here are some quotable quotes from my teachers (so you will learn and so I will remember):
Fireflies
To blog, or write, or sneak out so that when my little boy smiles at me I will not be tempted to drop my pen and carry him. Or be in darkness, as I am now, writing when everyone else is sleeping.
Sometimes it is worth it, sometimes it is not, and it all depends on where the balance of my life tilts.
Make A Splash
The really successful people are the ones who follow their passion.
Take Vince Golangco, for one.
He loved to travel and would go into the craziest places and do the craziest things – true to his adage – living life to the fullest. But then WhenInManila.com happened, which was a documentary of his personal experiences through videos and the written word, and people started offering him money so he can travel and experience the cool stuff more, which is, more or less, mind blowing to the once big dork who did not know what he wanted to do in life (still a dork, but now with a slightly better clue).
Windows
Opportunities appear not to those who wait, but to those who look.
The problem is, not everyone looks. Most sit on their divans and wait for the apple to fall, although there is no tree around. Okay, sometimes there is – outside – but most of the time, the leaves are not even ruffled by the wind.
And these people – they wonder – why isn’t there anything happening in my life?
When the cost of opportunity is nominal, a pittance.
It can be bought by small talk, an exchange of looks, or a simple email. But there has to be a dash of audacity, daring, bravura.
You only need a window – an opening that will give you glimpse of what is beyond – the something that is out there, and good, and waiting for you. You also need a sprinkling of imagination to spur you on so you can take the first step.
And the second, and the third.
But some of the time, you do not even need a window – you can find or create opportunity.
The Ecothings Launch
Hubby and daughter are celebrities.
I mean their faces have graced several newspapers, including the Philippine Inquirer and the Philippine Star, courtesy of the Ecothings event, Make Your Own Notebook, which was held at the Rockwell Club last April 16 – yes, I kept copies :D. Hubby, with partners Judy Malabanan and Yvonne Castro, also appeared on several television shows promoting reducing, reusing and recycling.
I am so proud.
A New Day
Seminars. Opportunities to learn new things, new ways of thinking, new (and hopefully more effective) ways of making money, new trends, meet interesting and like minded people… how could anyone pass that up? I could not.
And I am still touched by the ripples (a.k.a. benefits, gains, blessings) that simple “Yeses!” to seminars were able to earn for me: the MavenSecrets blogging seminar which gave me this blog, the Ricky Lee Scriptwriting Seminar from long ago that so inspired me but failed to make me a scriptwriter (which friend said can’t have it all?), the Truly Rich Club seminar and materials (mostly CDs I still listen to in my car) from Bo Sanchez that I still remember to this day (that jumpstarted the personal-finance-me – who would ever think?), the Inquirer.net financial planning experiment that gave me my financial-planners-partners in MoneyDoctors, Bob Proctor’s Six-Minutes to Success and Rich Schefren and Jay Abraham’s League of Extraordinary Minds that are still giving me new insights into the human psyche and the Registered Financial Planning seminar I am currently attending which hopefully will make me financial planner extraordinaire (hopefully).
Beauty
From the window in my office, I could see a sliver of the sea.
At 4pm, it glistens, a beacon for those who care to look. The sun is directly above it and plays on its surface, and the sun’s clouds appear to be yellow graduating to orange, interspersed with white wisps and marred by the dot of a high-flying bird. I imagine the sky plunging to dark blue, at once, as soon as the sun touches the sea.
There is one space in my eye’s periphery where I refuse to look. It is an abandoned construction, the skeleton of a building, an eye sore, and despite my reluctance to look, I am quite familiar with it. It could have been beautiful, but it is not. Its remains stand tall – the symbol of human-nature-gone-bad. It told of the story of people refusing to agree, of a rift dividing partners, the drying up of money, and the final blow, hurling of lawsuit bayonets. I am sure it caused some pain to someone somewhere, maybe until now.
And it is spoiling the view of everyone who cared to look at it. Read More →
To Forever
He had her and then he lost her, when someone whispered to his ear to, well, explore the world and his options. But when he saw her showing off more skin in the tabloids, at the arm of some other man, as if saying come hither and eat your heart out, he groveled at her feet (I made this one up), tormented by the love his father before him had and then lost (and then found again), and wasted no time (well) to sweep the would-be princess (now duchess) to the bondage of marriage.
I am of course referring to Prince William and Catherine, whose love story and grand wedding have captured the world’s imagination – a world hungry for love, it would seem.