What a marvelous Saturday! The weather in California was pretty sunny, for the first time in some days....I know that sunny is supposed to be synonymous with California but it has not been the case for quite some days now. Don't get me started in the ridiculously low temperature- it snowed in Las Vegas for goodness' sake.
Anywho, before starting to tell you about my day in Napa today (Saturday), I need to express my feelings about driving your boss' Lexus on 280-S on peak traffic time, in deer-mating season at 85 miles\hour. Well, I did all of the above...
1) drove my boss' Lexus -yes he knows about it...no, I did not steal it...yes, it was a favor for him
In my defense, that darn thing is just as noiseless when you are driving 10mph as when you are driving 180 mph - please remember this , I will be bringing this up on my defense later
2) Driving on 280-S: As I was going on 101-North, I gracefully looked at the other side of the highway. I saw 6 miles worth of stuck in traffic cars...poor peeps they would be going crazy there for at least 2 hours - I decided I knew better (RIGHT!!!)
3) It was deer-mating season (Heck if I knew that) Are ordinary people like myself supposed to know when deers mate and when they take time off ?? I don't even know when humans mate Good Lord!
4) Well, I was saving this one for last given that I am not sure how to use this in my defense...I was kind of going 85 mph. Guilty as charged; however, before you decide to throw me to the wolves and write me your own ticket, let me just say: I was driving a LEXUS..darn expensive cars...that's when I decided that I prefer my noisy "Step forever on the gas-pedal " Honda Civic.
So, as I was graciously driving my boss' car, listening to the music and thinking "This better be counted in favor of me in the yearly report" I see Flashing , flashing , lights , lights behind me. Not the ones Kanye sings about, the ones 50-Cent sings about...mind you, if you don't know the difference, please stop reading now and we call it even.
For the ones who are still reading (that includes my mom) Mr. Officer pulls up behind me. I roll down the window Albanian style, I put a gracious smile on, and I hope that he will be charmed. I should have taken a better look at the mirror though, I should say, Friday was not my best day ever...I woke up at 7AM for a "Bright and shiny" morning meeting. I might or might not have taken a shower (considering that my mom is reading this , let's just all agree that I did - I will pay you later) So, in all this havoc, I still put a smile on and continue rolling down the window.
The following conversation takes place:
25-year old Mr. Officer (hereafter referred to simply as Mr.Officer) : Miss, did you have the music turned up really loudly?
Smily Blerina: Yes Sir, I am sorry
Mr. Officer: I have been following you for the past 10 minutes you know, did you not hear me?
Smily & Ready to Pee my Pants Blerina: No Sir, I did not. I am sorry.
Mr. Officer: Do you have any idea just how fast you were going???
Blerina: No Officer, how much?
Mr. Officer: Hmmm, you were going over 85.
Blerina: Really, I am sssooooo sorry.
Mr. Officer: Please give me your license and registration please
Blerina: Well sir, I can give you my license but I don't know where the registration might be!
Mr. Officer: What????
Blerina: You see Sir, this is my Boss' car
Really quickly , sweetly and almost teary-eyed: PLEASE DON'T GET ME FIRED!!!!!
Smart-Ass Mr. Officer: Well he might fire you when he finds out how fast you were going!!
Why don't you check the glove-compartment for his registration
Blerina relieved after she finds it there: Here you go. I don't know what to say....
Mr. Officer: Well, I tell you what. I will write you for going 70 mph, dropping 15 miles here miss. Your boss might not get as upset after all.
"Not sure if I should be relieved" Blerina: Thank you sir , that is very kind of you.
Mr. Officer - after he comes back from checking to see if the car was reported stolen and driven by a cute Albanian girl:
Well, here you go. I know this might sound silly but you should be very careful. It is deer-mating season you know, they go crazy at this time. 65 mph can save your life in these cases.
Blerina: Thank you soo much Mr. Officer, I really appreciate it. I don't know what to say.
Mr. Officer: Be safe
Blerina: Always
Well, that was it. That whole conversation is not exaggerated one bit. What's more important, he continued to follow me for another 20 minutes to make sure I was not going to drive off and kill some "excited to find her mate" deer.
Ok, getting late...will tell you about my day in Napa manana.
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Saturday, December 13, 2008
Mia vita..
My over-achieving mother and father since a young age , believe it or not, wanted the best for me. That concept was really hard for me to understand in the beginning, and to this day, I still have difficulty with it. My mother's idea of "I want the best for you" was to alienate me from my friends every single summer starting at the age of 6. As a child, I was very anxious to grow up. Little did I know that with the coming of "Yay, now I can read" came my mother's ultimatum " You are now officially eligible to join my private English courses". I say ultimatum, and you are probably laughing at me knowing how not-so-tall my mother is, but I don't think she has ever silenced you with only the use of one eye, so yes, it is easy for you to speak.
In Saranda, my lovely hometown, my mother's expensive-at-the-time English courses were quite elite for the population, yet, quite worth it, considering: her expertise in the language, her soft voice, and her very pretty deep blue eyes. Oh sorry, I might have forgotten to mention the 11,345 English language books and Encyclopedias that were always present at the office - it might have had something to do with her popularity too.
Given all the information, you can only imagine my dread when she mentioned that starting now, the now being 6 years old and able to read and write, I had to join my mother's English language courses. So, poor me, together with 10 other entry-level students of English joined Dolores' one of many torturous courses. I say torturous because each day of the entry-level course involved spelling 100 times each new word we learned. Mind you...in an entry level course Everything constitutes a new word. I gladly (at times) put up with this torture knowing that the summer would come, and the Ionian sea would welcome me in its bosom for a luxurious amazing period of three whole months. Little did I know (yet again) that summers for me, after the age of 6, would never be the same again. No more basking in the sun. No more running around with my friends rescuing lonely kittens and puppy's and bringing them home to adopt them. No more playing "housewives" in old dilapidated Saranda buildings. Instead I had to sit at home and read English books, highlight all the words I did not know and memorize 2 pages each day. Later on, when my mother would get back from work, I had to recite to her the 2 pages I had memorized and show her my dictionary of unknown words. I still remember one poem she made me memorize: "An elephant goes like this and that, he's awfully tall and awfully fat, he has no fingers has no tows, but oh my goodness what a nose!!!"...yes, elephant was one of the words I did not know so here we go...100 times!
I guess I have nothing to complain about now, considering that when I came to the United States for college, I did not have to sit in the cafeteria with the rest of the Albanians that did not speak English. Now that I think about it, that would have been very challenging indeed considering that I was the only Albanian at Menlo.
If only English were the only torture my parents put me through...no no no, three languages by the age of 6 are never enough..oh, is the math not adding up for some of you? I might have forgotten to mention that my father is Greek , and my grandmother's knowledge of the Albanian language at the time evolved around a couple of curse words she would yell at us once in a while. Naturally, I together with my other siblings (Jonika and Renato- who you will have the pleasue of knowing later on in this blogg once they annoy me enough to want to write about it) had the pleasure of speaking to our grandparents in Greek. So it was: Albanian at school, Greek with the grandparents and English with mom and dad.
As I mentioned before, it turns out that 3 languages were not enough for my parents. At the amazing age of 12 (when I was entering the glorious years of temper tantrums and "What is wrong with wearing makup?") I decided to enroll in Italian language courses.
Oh yes, very amazing years indeed, not sure how I kept up with everything. English here, Italian there, Greek at home, Albanian at school and PIANO lessons of all holy things. I am going to skip right past the political unrest in Albanian and being in fear of getting killed-or something much worse altogether-on our way to Tirana because my sister has been working on a novel around those matters for the past 3 years now; I don't want to steal her glory...she did mention that it's not autobiographical though so maybe the heroine does get not survive after all, we will have to buy the book to find out I guess.
Ok back to my piano lessons. In the midst of struggling to pay for rent and putting food on the table, my aristocratic mother (the aristocratic part might be covered in my mother's book this time, so I am skipping right past it again) decides to buy me a present for my birthday. I was not really expecting a birthday considering our dire economic situation, much less was I expecting a piano! I guess I should have been prepared for the grandiosity of presents that particular year given that my sister's high-school graduation present was " We are sending you to another continent to go to college, so now stop crying and pack your bags." Well, maybe those exact words were not spoken, but you get my point.
So here it was, a huge, awesome, brown, one of a kind, church organo- we all refered to it as a piano though- so for the intents and purposes of this blogg it was a piano. I was so in love with it, I couldn't stop staring afraid that it would vanish in the morning. I did have quite a lot of competition though; my mom was sitting right next to me on the chair staring at the exact same spot. Next morning she tells me to arrange my time in a week so that I had 5 hours a day for homework, two hours a day for foreign language courses, and 3 hours per week for piano lessons.
Very excited about becoming a grand maestro or maestra (to be gramatically correct) I agreed. I finished my homework the next day and I headed to my piano teacher's house. I knock on the door. It was opened by this cute, shiny, perfect-smile perfect-hair, perfect-everything 20-year old guy, he tells me to "please come in"....
Go in I did, with a dumbfounded expression of course, and praying to God that this Greek god (pun intended) might be my piano teacher. Providence had other things in store for me unfortunately and the Greek god was shortly after substituted by my real piano teacher- his mother. Before his mother came in her studio however, I did take a last glance at him and I saw that he was having a party at the other room. Turns out, it was his good-bye party as in less than two weeks he would be on his way to Germany to study something I could not pronounce. German was not one of the four language I spoke you see. I continued going to my piano lessons faithfully each week, and as my piano expertise continued so did my adolescent tantrums.
Between all the havoc that my piano teacher's son's memories created, I forgot to mention that my sister was safely and soundly shipped to the United States. Alabama of all states, but again, I will leave that part of her life to be recounted by her..don't want to step on any writer's toes here; she does have a violent streak in her and I don't want to wake up the Nemesis in her.
Anywho, back to crazy adolescent years. I might have forgotten to mention the fact that my mother's sense of propriety exceeded all limits. She insisted that I went to school each day with my hair combed in two side-braids. Evidently (it was only evident to my mother) ,it expressed to my teachers just how humble and modest I really was. Well, the teachers might have gotten that impression, heck if I ever found out! I was too concentrated on my friends' song every time I walked in class:
" They're creepy and they're kooky,
Mysterious and spooky,
They're all together ooky,
The Addams Family"
You see, to them I represented Wednesday from the Addams Family...
In Saranda, my lovely hometown, my mother's expensive-at-the-time English courses were quite elite for the population, yet, quite worth it, considering: her expertise in the language, her soft voice, and her very pretty deep blue eyes. Oh sorry, I might have forgotten to mention the 11,345 English language books and Encyclopedias that were always present at the office - it might have had something to do with her popularity too.
Given all the information, you can only imagine my dread when she mentioned that starting now, the now being 6 years old and able to read and write, I had to join my mother's English language courses. So, poor me, together with 10 other entry-level students of English joined Dolores' one of many torturous courses. I say torturous because each day of the entry-level course involved spelling 100 times each new word we learned. Mind you...in an entry level course Everything constitutes a new word. I gladly (at times) put up with this torture knowing that the summer would come, and the Ionian sea would welcome me in its bosom for a luxurious amazing period of three whole months. Little did I know (yet again) that summers for me, after the age of 6, would never be the same again. No more basking in the sun. No more running around with my friends rescuing lonely kittens and puppy's and bringing them home to adopt them. No more playing "housewives" in old dilapidated Saranda buildings. Instead I had to sit at home and read English books, highlight all the words I did not know and memorize 2 pages each day. Later on, when my mother would get back from work, I had to recite to her the 2 pages I had memorized and show her my dictionary of unknown words. I still remember one poem she made me memorize: "An elephant goes like this and that, he's awfully tall and awfully fat, he has no fingers has no tows, but oh my goodness what a nose!!!"...yes, elephant was one of the words I did not know so here we go...100 times!
I guess I have nothing to complain about now, considering that when I came to the United States for college, I did not have to sit in the cafeteria with the rest of the Albanians that did not speak English. Now that I think about it, that would have been very challenging indeed considering that I was the only Albanian at Menlo.
If only English were the only torture my parents put me through...no no no, three languages by the age of 6 are never enough..oh, is the math not adding up for some of you? I might have forgotten to mention that my father is Greek , and my grandmother's knowledge of the Albanian language at the time evolved around a couple of curse words she would yell at us once in a while. Naturally, I together with my other siblings (Jonika and Renato- who you will have the pleasue of knowing later on in this blogg once they annoy me enough to want to write about it) had the pleasure of speaking to our grandparents in Greek. So it was: Albanian at school, Greek with the grandparents and English with mom and dad.
As I mentioned before, it turns out that 3 languages were not enough for my parents. At the amazing age of 12 (when I was entering the glorious years of temper tantrums and "What is wrong with wearing makup?") I decided to enroll in Italian language courses.
Oh yes, very amazing years indeed, not sure how I kept up with everything. English here, Italian there, Greek at home, Albanian at school and PIANO lessons of all holy things. I am going to skip right past the political unrest in Albanian and being in fear of getting killed-or something much worse altogether-on our way to Tirana because my sister has been working on a novel around those matters for the past 3 years now; I don't want to steal her glory...she did mention that it's not autobiographical though so maybe the heroine does get not survive after all, we will have to buy the book to find out I guess.
Ok back to my piano lessons. In the midst of struggling to pay for rent and putting food on the table, my aristocratic mother (the aristocratic part might be covered in my mother's book this time, so I am skipping right past it again) decides to buy me a present for my birthday. I was not really expecting a birthday considering our dire economic situation, much less was I expecting a piano! I guess I should have been prepared for the grandiosity of presents that particular year given that my sister's high-school graduation present was " We are sending you to another continent to go to college, so now stop crying and pack your bags." Well, maybe those exact words were not spoken, but you get my point.
So here it was, a huge, awesome, brown, one of a kind, church organo- we all refered to it as a piano though- so for the intents and purposes of this blogg it was a piano. I was so in love with it, I couldn't stop staring afraid that it would vanish in the morning. I did have quite a lot of competition though; my mom was sitting right next to me on the chair staring at the exact same spot. Next morning she tells me to arrange my time in a week so that I had 5 hours a day for homework, two hours a day for foreign language courses, and 3 hours per week for piano lessons.
Very excited about becoming a grand maestro or maestra (to be gramatically correct) I agreed. I finished my homework the next day and I headed to my piano teacher's house. I knock on the door. It was opened by this cute, shiny, perfect-smile perfect-hair, perfect-everything 20-year old guy, he tells me to "please come in"....
Go in I did, with a dumbfounded expression of course, and praying to God that this Greek god (pun intended) might be my piano teacher. Providence had other things in store for me unfortunately and the Greek god was shortly after substituted by my real piano teacher- his mother. Before his mother came in her studio however, I did take a last glance at him and I saw that he was having a party at the other room. Turns out, it was his good-bye party as in less than two weeks he would be on his way to Germany to study something I could not pronounce. German was not one of the four language I spoke you see. I continued going to my piano lessons faithfully each week, and as my piano expertise continued so did my adolescent tantrums.
Between all the havoc that my piano teacher's son's memories created, I forgot to mention that my sister was safely and soundly shipped to the United States. Alabama of all states, but again, I will leave that part of her life to be recounted by her..don't want to step on any writer's toes here; she does have a violent streak in her and I don't want to wake up the Nemesis in her.
Anywho, back to crazy adolescent years. I might have forgotten to mention the fact that my mother's sense of propriety exceeded all limits. She insisted that I went to school each day with my hair combed in two side-braids. Evidently (it was only evident to my mother) ,it expressed to my teachers just how humble and modest I really was. Well, the teachers might have gotten that impression, heck if I ever found out! I was too concentrated on my friends' song every time I walked in class:
" They're creepy and they're kooky,
Mysterious and spooky,
They're all together ooky,
The Addams Family"
You see, to them I represented Wednesday from the Addams Family...
Monday, December 8, 2008
New to Blogging
So here it is. My first blog. I am excited...not much to write at this point. Oh wait, scratch that. I actually do have something to share. My new addiction with the Twilight series. I never thought that an MBA-Finance-major-twenty-something-year-old like myself would be so engrossed by these kinds of books. But than again, Harry Potter proved me wrong, so I guess I will have to reevaluate my whole perspective on what I like reading and what I don't.
For all the skeptics out there...it is such an awesome book- well books really (there are four of them). I was not sure how I felt about the fact that I, together with all the teens of the world were on the same wavelength as far as book-choices are concerned, but like I said, Harry Potter taught me some humility in the subject.
So here's the real question, are these kinds of books becoming a trend now? Am I meant to share my book preferences with the rest of the teens and preteens of the world for the rest of my life? Or rather...is there a literary revolution taking place?
Not sure what the answer is at this point, it might just good literature ! In which case, that makes me a good chooser ;) or a crowd-follower. I am fine either way.
For all the skeptics out there...it is such an awesome book- well books really (there are four of them). I was not sure how I felt about the fact that I, together with all the teens of the world were on the same wavelength as far as book-choices are concerned, but like I said, Harry Potter taught me some humility in the subject.
So here's the real question, are these kinds of books becoming a trend now? Am I meant to share my book preferences with the rest of the teens and preteens of the world for the rest of my life? Or rather...is there a literary revolution taking place?
Not sure what the answer is at this point, it might just good literature ! In which case, that makes me a good chooser ;) or a crowd-follower. I am fine either way.
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