This week was a very productive week for me. For the first time this year, I managed to tick off all the items on my ‘To Do’ list and I feel so satisfied.
It was a very hectic week for me, both in terms of work as well as parenting. I have been kept busy this week, which was really good and one that I enjoyed doing. I think I like being busy to being free.
I actually live a very boring life and times like this, wonder what the point of this post is. Even though I have copious notes on what I did this week, I don’t want to be too specific because, since I blog anonymously, I don’t want to reveal too much about myself and show my face to the world. This is something all anon bloggers face I guess. We need to tread a very fine line between revealing information and revealing too much which shows the world and people whom you interact on a daily basis realise it’s them you are talking about on the pages of your blog.
Have a wonderful week folks and hope this week is just as productive as my last week!
This week was the Applied Learning Week in both BB & GG’s school for most of the week.
BB’s school had hired an external vendor to do a motivation and exam techniques camp in their school for around three days. The last day, during the last part, parents were asked to join the students and the trainer gave us tips on how to motivate them and also how to and not to scold and nag them. Quite a few students also went up on the stage and spoke to their parents. There were a lot of tears involved and then the children were asked to give their parents the letters they had written. As expected, BB did not write a letter, just came up to me, gave me a big hug and said “I love you”. I have told him I am still expecting the letter, hopefully he will give it to me later today.
GG’s school also did something similar, but without the use any external vendors. They called some junior colleges and polytechnics as well had talks by their counsellors and former students. Then on Friday, the entire cohort went on a day trip to Universal Studios Singapore, somthing they had been looking forward to since they reached Secondary 3. GG had a wonderful time with her friends and was relunctant to come home.
All in all, this is the penultimate week before the March school holidays. BB will get the balance of his marks and then we need to see what else he needs to work on before his mid-year exams.
Author Callie Logan never expected to swap her life in London for one in rural Suffolk but, after the breakdown of her marriage, she decides that a fresh start is just what she needs. Finding Owl Cottage in the tiny village of Newton St Clare, Callie determines to give up on love and throw herself into her work. But fate seems to have other ideas and she soon has two very different men vying for her attention.
First, there’s Leo who likes to live on the wild side which usually means taking his dates foraging in the local woods for their supper. Then there’s Sam Nightingale, owner of Nightingale’s bookshop. Sam, recovering from a divorce, has also vowed to embrace the single life. That is until he meets Callie.
But is Callie willing to risk her heart again and, if she is, will she make the right choice?
There is Chinese saying, attributed to Mao Zedong, which says that women hold up half the sky. But even today in 2019, there exists significant gender gaps across sectors where women have to do so much more to prove that they are just as capable as men.
A World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report says that, “women represent fewer than 50% of leaders in every industry analysed—and in some fields, like energy and mining or manufacturing, representation of women is far lower, with women holding fewer than 20% of leadership positions. And the rate of progress for women has been slow: over the past ten years, the proportion of female leaders increased by an average of just over 2 percentage points across the 12 industries studied.”
These statistics are really troubling because the report also says that at the current rate, it’ll take 217 years to close the economic gender gap. This means, all things remaining the same, true equality in the workforce won’t be reached until the year 2234. Only then will women have the same earning and leadership potential as men. Startling right? This means that possibly only our great grand- daughters or maybe even four to five generations down the line will our daughters earn the same as our sons.
The International Women’s Day is commemorated across the globe on 8th May, and is celebrated as a day when women are recognized for their achievements without regard to divisions, whether national, ethnic, linguistic, cultural, economic or political. This day first emerged from the activities of labour movements at the turn of the twentieth century in North America and across Europe. After the Socialist Party of America organised a Women’s Day on February 28, 1909 in New York, the 1910 International Socialist Woman’s Conference suggested a Women’s Day be held annually. After women gained suffrage in Soviet Russia in 1917, March 8 became a national holiday there. The day was then predominantly celebrated by the socialist movement and communist countries until it was adopted in 1975 by the United Nations.
The theme for the 2019 International Women’s Day is “Balance for Better” while the United Nations has “Think Equal, Build Smart, Innovate for Change” as their theme for 2019.
Balance for Better means having a more gender balanced world where men and women are equal in every respect. The absence of balance in all aspects of our lives has never been more glaring than now, and so this theme actually notices the absence and celebrates its presence. Balance is not a women’s issue, it’s a business issue. The race is on for the gender-balanced boardroom, a gender-balanced government, gender-balanced media coverage, a gender-balance of employees, more gender-balance in wealth, gender-balanced sports coverage and in pretty much everything we hear, see or do in our daily lives. Gender balance is essential for economies and communities to thrive. This theme is a call-to-action for driving greater gender balance across corporate ranks in both the private and public sectors around the world.
The UN theme of “Think Equal, Build Smart, Innovate for Change” puts innovation by women and girls, for women and girls, at the heart of efforts to achieve gender equality. Achieving a gender-equal world requires social innovations that work for both women and men and leave no one behind. From urban planning that focuses on community safety to e-learning platforms that take classrooms to women and girls, affordable and quality childcare centres, and technology shaped by women, innovation can take the race for gender equality to its finishing line by 2030. It begins with making sure that women’s and girls’ needs and experiences are integrated at the very inception of technology and innovations. It means building smart solutions that go beyond acknowledging the gender gaps to addressing the needs of men and women equally. And ultimately, it needs innovations that disrupt business as usual, paying attention to how and by whom technology is used and accessed, and ensuring that women and girls play a decisive role in emerging industries.
How do you plan to mark this day? I will be joining some women (and men) to make a pledge to build a world where women are equal and just as capable as men, where women not only hold up half the sky, but also will then be able to bear the just fruits of their labour, without wondering if their male colleagues make more than them for doing the same work (and sometimes more).
Happy International Women’s Day! May we live long enough to see true equality happen in our lifetimes!
Georgie and Flick are a girl’s best friend – and secret weapon. Their agency, Domestic Angels, provides invaluable help to armies of harassed women. After years of hard work, Georgie and Flick have built a small but grateful clientele – doing everything from booking the plumber to replacing dead hamsters.
Then one evening, they are visited by a pale, nervous-looking woman who makes the strangest request yet. Her husband has combined a takeover with a leg-over. Would Georgie and Flick help her get her own back? It isn’t long before word gets out. Inundated with requests from angry wives, Georgie and Flick begin to wonder whether all these men are really as black as they are painted.
Meanwhile, the disgruntled husband of a client has rumbled them. It may be that they aren’t the only masters of revenge after all…
Memories and Such 
