Category Archives: Life

Depression

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I was not going to publish this post, this was supposed to be something just for me, but I think, since this blog is a my digital diary, I will publish it.

I think I am suffering from depression. This is not my imagination, but something that’s been bothering me for a while now – in fact from the beginning of this year. On hindsight, this was one of the biggest reasons I left my previous jobs, thinking a change of place and pace would ease all that was happening inside me. Web MD defines depression as “Depression is a serious and pervasive mood disorder. It causes feelings of sadness, hopelessness, helplessness, and worthlessness. Depression can be mild to moderate with symptoms of apathy, little appetite, difficulty sleeping, low self-esteem, and low-grade fatigue. Or it can be more severe.”

Depression is apparently more common in women than in men and twice as many women are likely to develop clinical depression as compared to me. Some of the symptoms of depression are:

  • persistent sad, anxious, or “empty” mood
  • loss of interest or pleasure in activities, including sex
  • restlessness, irritability, or excessive crying
  • feelings of guilt, worthlessness, helplessness, hopelessness, pessimism
  • sleeping too much or too little, early-morning awakening
  • appetite and/or weight loss or overeating and weight gain
  • decreased energy, fatigue, feeling “slowed down”
  • thoughts of death or suicide, or suicide attempts
  • difficulty concentrating, remembering, or making decisions
  • persistent physical symptoms that do not respond to treatment, such as headaches, digestive disorders, and chronic pain

Image from Wikipedia

I’ve mentioned before just how toxic the environment was in my previous place and I think that environment was the cause for all this. The way I was treated in my previous work place is the underlying cause for this. I have now decided that after they give me the one thing I still haven’t gotten from them – my testimonial – I will cut all contact with the organisation and the people there. Unfortunately quite a bit of my coworkers are my friends on Facebook and now I have to decide how to get rid of them from my life without seeming to get rid of them. Any ideas?

The symptoms that I’ve been experiencing look like this – No interest in anything any more, especially the things I used to enjoy doing; Sleep patterns all over the place. Most of the time, I just want to sleep – even if I have just gotten off bed less than a couple of hours back. Then some days I just can’t sleep at night even if I am yawning away to kingdom come!; No energy to do anything and a feeling of tiredness all the time

I just took this test at the Health Promotion Board website and my test results reads “Your responses suggest that you have some depressive symptoms. You may feel down from time to time but these symptoms are unlikely to impair your daily function. It might be wise to reassess your symptoms in a few weeks.”

I told S about this yesterday and he wants me to see a doctor this week. I’m not sure if I want to, but in this case, I guess I may just have to give in.

I initially wrote this post yesterday and didn’t want to publish it. But looking back, the very act of putting my feelings down on paper has put me on the path to healing! I’ll go and see a doctor today but I know in my gut, I will get better soon

Yearning for school – Part 1

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When I wrote about my school going life earlier this week, it made me nostalgic about my school. So this post is dedicated to my alma mater – J.B. Vachha High School. JBV is it was (and is still) called is the short form for the loong formal name of the school. The name which used to be printed on all our school note books for the 12 years that I spent there reads like this – J.B. Vachha High School for Parsi Girls & The Cawasji Jehangir Primary and Infant School. I can’t find the school website so there’s no link to the school, although I did remember checking it out a few years back!

The school badge

I studied in the same school right from Junior KG (or Kindergarten 1) till I completed my Secondary School Certificate or SSC exams. Most of the teachers who taught me, saw me grow from a naughty 4 year old to a mature 15 year old young lady. The school was a purely girls school and except for our Games master and Indian music teachers, all the teachers were also female. While I was growing up, this was the most popular school for girls around the area I lived in (this would mean the Dadar, Wadala, Matunga, Sion areas, but we did get students from other places like Chembur, Parel also). I also remember seeing huge queues of people waiting to get the admission forms for their daughters and this was at a time when school admission was not as difficult as it is today. My mother used to see the queues and say that they didn’t really have to queue up so much – they just went to the school in the morning, got the form and I was called for an interview, which I did well and just like that I was in! In fact my grand parents were against my joining JBV as they wanted me to go to the same school as my dad – this school was literally a hop, skip and jump away from home and more inportantly for them, was a south Indian school and hence to their eyes, had all the right values and attributes. But I am so glad that my parents, and especially my mom stood her ground and put me and later my sis in this school.

What we called the 'New Building'.

Those days, when it was just education all the time, this was one of the very few schools which had a big emphasis on extra curricular activities. From the time we were in third standard till we graduated these were the extra activities we did – embroidery, needlework, library, Indian music/Western music/Dancing (you had to choose one), cookery, gardening, laundry, girl guides/social service. We also did typing and economics as special subjects in the IX and X grades. We also had one period of drill or PE every week and from the VII grade till the X grade, we had to stay back after school once a week for around 90 minutes of games.

Since this is proving to be a loong post, I’ll stop here for Part 1 and do Part 2 another time.

Twins

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Do they look alike? ….. Do they have same/similar natures/characters?

These two are the first questions that most new acquaintances ask when they hear I have fraternal twins. So here’s a crash course on twins followed by some of the idiosyncrasies of BB & GG

There are basically two types of twins – monozygotic and dizygotic.

Monozygotic twins are otherwise known as identical twins and are always the same sex. This occurs naturally and anyone can become an identical twin mom. The incidence of occurance is about three twin births for every 1000 births worldwide, although some countries and cultures may have a preponderance for identical twins compared to others.

Dizygotic or fraternal twins come about when there are two seperate pregnancies which happen at the same time. This means that most fraternal twins are nothing more than siblings who happen to be born at the same time. They would be just like any siblings, except that they share a birthday. The most common fraternal twins statistically speaking are the boy/girl twins with girl/girl and boy/boy being the other types. Incidentaly, most people react this way when they hear about BB & GG – “Wow, so lucky and rare!” Earlier I used to explain to them about how statistically a boy/girl is more common at 50% but now I just smile and take it as a compliment. The chances of someone having fraternal twins is however higher if you do happen to have twins in your maternal side of the family. This gene for twins is passed on through the mother and may pass generations before it appears again. Also even if you are a fraternal female twin, there is no guarantee that your pregnancy will result in twins.

This is what happened in my family – my maternal grandmother had twins in her family and my mom’s sister had fraternal boy/girl twins. However, my cousin (the girl twin) had a singleton baby and the gene skipped her to land in me for our generation.

Here is a link to an interesting page about twin myths from across the world. Now on to

GG: My first born, older by 2 minutes because she did not show a lot of growth in the uterus. In fact it was because of her that I had to have a caesarean to get the babies out as my ob-gyn felt she may not be able to ‘survive the trauma of birth’ . She is bossy, opinionated and very strong mentally. She’s a very girly girl and loves her dolls, animals, plush toys and the colour pink. She loves dancing and is currently learning ballet. She also goes to Indian classical music lessons. She wanted to be a doctor when she grew up, but now on learning the kind of hand work you need to put in to get to medical school, she is evaluating her options. Her hobbies include playing with her dolls, reading and playing on my iPhone and the computer. Her current favourites are the Winx Club girls and she just started on her first crush on Justin Beiber! I’m looking forward to her growing up so that we can be friends….

BB: He was born after GG and she rarely misses an opportunity to let him know. Of the two he’s more easy going and will agree to our wishes, but these days I see signs of a temper emerging. He is stronger academically, but lazy and his handwriting is a cause of concern for his parents and teachers! He is also a bit less mature than GG, but hopefully will catch up soon. He is very mechanically minded and finds maths very easy. Like most boys he loves vehicles, mostly cars and planes. He wanted to be a pilot earlier, but now has revised it to being either a plane or a car designer. BB also learns Indian classical music like his sister, but he goes under duress! His hobbies include playing with his cars. watching TV and playing with our iPhones & computers. His favourite shows are those which have cars/planes as the central theme and he’s all set to watch the Singapore leg of the Grand Prix with his dad this weekend. Testosterone alert in my house!

It’s Raining, It’s Pouring…

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When it rains in the mornings, just when the students go to school and office drones go to work, the resulting jams are exactly like what happened today. This morning it started to rain around 6 am and by 7 am the jams outside the primary schools near my house needed to be seen to believed! There is a school just next to our building and it took us almost 10 minutes to just get out of the carpark and into the road. Next jam area was the one near GG & BB’s school and by the time I was dropped at my busstop, I was ready to call it a day (not that I need many excuses, if you have read my previous posts)

The initial bus ride was not bad considering the traffic earlier, but there was this hug traffic jam at the Whitley Road exit and then another major snarl near the Clark Quay MRT station and this meant I reached work around 15 minutes later than usual. Luckily I have a Skype meeting with someone around the time I normally leave so can make up the late entry.

During my commute I got thinking about the rains in Mumbai, especially during the time when I was in school. Nowadays it does not rain as much as it used to rain some 20 – 25 years back (Aagh! now I’ve given away my age!). Back then every school year we were guaranteed atleast 2 unscheduled holidays or at the very minimum half days due to heavy rains. These were pre cell phone, pre internet, heck, even pre-computer days and in fact, getting a phone connection used to be something that you had to wait a minimum of a couple of years. So we would be all dressed up and wait for the school bus which would not come. Then some parent would decide to walk/drive down to the school (the school was around a 15 minute walk from our home) and then they would come back and say the magic words – ‘no school’. We kids would love our unscheduled holiday and since it would be raining, we’d get to eat hot pakodas and as a bonus play in the rains….

Unfortunately this stopped when I reached college, since lectures used to take place even if there was one student. But during college and the time I worked, I’ve had many adventures in walking through waist-high water just to get home, being stranded in buses and trains, and seeing the good side of people in such situations.

Many people, especially those who come in from out of the city complain about the coldness of the people in Mumbai. About how neighbours don’t open the doors to neighbours and how they don’t even know who their neighbours are. But times like this, seem to bring out the best in the same people accused of being cold!

Here are some pictures of the rains in Mumbai – please note that these are more recent pictures, magnify these pictures by 10 or more and that was what I experienced, magnify it by 50 and that’s what my parents experienced, magnify it by 100 and that is what my grandparents said they experienced!

Trains stalled as the tracks are completely waterlogged. People have to just jump down is your train is not at/near a station and hope you don’t have a long walk home…

This is something that I have experienced myself…walking in waist-deep water and hoping and praying that some drain is not open near me!

The iconic BEST bus moving through a flooded street somewhere near the Hindmata, Parel area, if my geography of Mumbai still holds up.

We used to play like this at this one place near our home which always gets flooded!

From here to…..???

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I really don’t know what to type today. My mind is in a blank – actually that’s not true – I have thoughts running all over the place, incoherently that anything I put down will only be seen as ramblings.

Getting up in the mornings everyday is becoming more and more of a chore. Getting ready to go to work another headache. I wish I had the financial ability to just quit my job and be a Stay At Home Mom (SAHM) atleast for a while till I am able to get my head in order. At my age, now I really don’t know what I want to do. I do know that I want to do something that interests me, something that gets me going the whole day. At the point I am in now, in fact for the past 4-5 months, I have no interest in anything, things that I used to enjoy doing like reading, cooking etc have taken a back seat now and I feel tired all the time and all I want to do is to SLEEP! What is happening to me?

Me post lunch

This morning, while being squeezed and crushed in the bus during my morning commute, I had this revelation. Now I am not sure if this even means anything, but here goes nothing. Since I love books so much, why not qualify to become a librarian? I just Googled for the information and realised that there is a Library Association of Singapore. So now let me read up  all that they have to offer and write to them about what I need to become a librarian….