A short work week while Singapore went to the polls on Friday. The outcome was not entirely surprising, given that elections had been called a year early to capitalise on the euphoria of SG50 and the death of Mr. Lee Kwan Yew. This was a historic elections with every one of the 89 parliamentary seats being contested. What was surprising was the level with which the ruling party thrashed the opposition!!
We’re down to 2.5 weeks now for PSLE with the Listening Comprehension later in the week. I am planning to speak to my boss later today to discuss working half day in office and the balance at home till the end of next week and then working from home for the week and half of the PSLE exams.I also need to speak to him about any new projects since I literally don’t have any work in hand right now…
I also need to start looking for opportunities outside the organisation, but I think I will wait out the weeks till the end of PSLE.
We also booked our tickets to India for the end of the year, so looking forward to that trip and meeting my parents!
As the song goes….Raindrops on roses, whiskers on kittens…..from the Sound of Music, one of my favourite movies growing up. I must have seen the movie so many times that I think at one point, I could recite all the dialogues and songs, I loved it so much!
My favourite people in the world are my kids and S, followed by my parents. I think I can spend days with them, of course, sometimes each of them do things that infuriate me and irritate me, but I love them loads and can’t live without them. One of my secret worries in life is losing any of them – losing a child is a parent’s worst nightmare and I am also the same, but everytime S is late and I can’t reach him, I start imagining the worst. Another nightmare I am still not ready for is for my parents to leave me. I know, logically and practically, this will happen sometime, but I want this to happen later than sooner. I am still not ready to not have my parents at the other end of a phone call!
The next thing I can’t really live without are books, of course! I love reading and as it’s evident here and in my other blog, I need to read as much as I need to breathe. This has gotten me into lots of trouble in school (think reading in class, material that the rest of them had not yet graduated to). I was a very precocious reader, very often reading books 3-4 grades above. In the school library, I remember there was this cupboard which was mostly kept locked. I used to wonder what was in there that they didn’t want us to read and once somewhere in grade 7 or 8, I got the librarian to open it up as I had read all the books in the shelves meant for us. There I discovered adult books. I remember reading George Orwell’s 1984 around that age. It may not seem great these days for a 12/13 year old to reach such books, but in those days, given that there was no internet, India was still a socialist economy, people didn’t read for fun. I was that oddball who wanted to read, not because it was mandated by school, but because I just wanted to. We didn’t have access to many books beyond the school library and I remember I used to beg and borrow books, so much that I used to read older students school books (subjects like History, Geography and English) just so I had material to read!
I am so glad BB & GG, especially GG share my love for reading. GG is a lot like me in this respect, she will probably read a lot and widely as she grows up. BB is more a non-fiction boy – he prefers to read what his passions are – which is usually something to do with planes, cars and trains (in that order). I have to push him to read fiction.
Another favourite thing is music. Most days at work, I am plugged into earphones listening to music while working (I am listening to new age music as I type this). I usually listen to Indian music, mostly Bollywood music while at work, but I also like Fusion, New Age and Classical (both Indian and Western). I rarely, if never, listen to western rock and pop. I may change my mind sometime, if GG & BB start listening to such music at home, but as of now, it’s not something that still appeals to me.
Travelling to new places, soaking up on different cultures and learning new things are among the other things I adore. Since BB & GG’s birth, we haven’t done much travel, but the last year or so, we’ve made it a point to visit a new place each trip. Now that they move to secondary school and are teens/young adults, I envision more trips in the future. I plan to start taking them around the region and then the world’s our oyster. We do need to make periodic trips to India to keep in touch with our roots as well as visit the grandparents and other relatives (part of keeping in touch with your roots), but I want to add small side trips each time to a different part of India. India is so vast and beautiful, with so much to offer, that it’ll take a while before we discover the whole country. I have a big bucket list of places to see before I die and should start making a serious dent on that list.
So here you have – a list of some of my favourite things. I’ll leave you with the song which inspired this post, Maria’s favourite things from The Sound of Music
While travelling, I usually almost always take the aisle seat as I just can’t see myself squeezed into a corner seat for hours together. This means that I rarely see a city while take off or landing.
Last week, on a work trip to Kuala Lumpur, I decided to take a window seat. This is a ridiculously short flight with a total flying time of 45 mins which is why I decided to risk the window seat so I could take some pictures from the air.
As soon as the seat beat sign comes off, the stewardess rush to get the drinks trolley. Even before they finish the drinks run the captain starts the announcement to the crew to prepare to land! By the time they are back to collect the empty drink cans, it’s time to land…That’s how short the flight is. It takes longer to get to the airport, plus the wait and the trip to the hotel than the actual travel. For example our trip last week the outward bound flight from Singapore to KL was scheduled at 10:15. I left home at 7:30, reached the airport around 8:15, then a two hour wait at Changi, followed by the 45 minute flight (which was around 30 mins late), then an almost 60 minute drive to the hotel. So my door-to-door trip was a grand total of 5.5 hours. The total drive from Singapore to KL is 5 hours! Returning back was worse – we were stuck in the Friday evening traffic on the way to the airport and it took us 2 hours to get to KLIA from the hotel in downtown KL. We were on the last flight home, leaving the hotel around 6 and reaching home almost at midnight!
Anyway, here are some pictures I took, while take-off and just when we were about to land…
Another view of the Singapore coastline marred by haze
Another exhausting week with travel from Tuesday to Friday. For the first time in this organisation, I was sent for a training programme. I was debating internally whether I should do or not and in retrospect, I am glad I did it. My reason for not doing was my feeling of inadequacy that I didn’t have the experience the others would have and the internal feeling of being branded as an imposter. But I held my own against the others and even contributed a fair amount to the group. The group I was made up of senior people with an average of 10-15 years experience while I have a grand total 2.5 years of experience in this field!
Anyway, it’s back to office after being away for a while. This week is also an unexpected short week as Friday has been declared a public holiday because of elections in Singapore! Next week is the Listening Comprehension for BB & GG!
This was such a tiring week that I spent the weekend sleeping – catching up on sleep and probably storing sleep for the next week, which also shows promise to be equally tiring!
Last Monday, I went to Delhi for a work trip, the flight there is worthy of a post all by itself. I’ve seen examples of rude Indians, but the people on that flight took it to a new level. When we entered the gate to the flight, we were welcomed by a big group fighting and this fighting was carried into the flight. Luckily I was able to watch a couple of movies I had not seen, so this didn’t bother me too much!
The rest of the week was hectic to say the least. I don’t sleep too well out of my home, so I think I survived on around an average of 3 hours of sleep daily. This was compounded by BB & GG calling me around 3:30 – 4 am local time daily so that I could talk to them before they left for school. Hopefully the trip next week will not be so bad as it is in the same time zone as Singapore!
I didn’t see anything of the city, except on the way back to the airport, but I’ll post some pictures later this week….
Memories and Such 