It’s the end of another month and May is now upon us. But the promise of summer is not a good one in many parts of the world, especially India. Yesterday, India posted a world record of new cases posted in a 24 hour period, 400,000 new cases, the first country to do so in the pandemic. India’s total cases is now 19.1 million with 211,853 deaths. But experts feel that the cases are underreported and the actual cases and deaths are five to ten times more. The situation is very grim and I read reports of people suffering because of lack of hospital beds, medicines and oxygen. This is very distressing to people with loved ones there.

I have seen and heard of people in Singapore who have lost close loved ones, mothers, fathers, siblings and other relatives and the worst part is that they can’t go down and see them one last time. And to be honest, this fear keeps me awake at night. My parents live alone and with me here in Singapore and my sister in the States, we are worlds apart. I always took solace in the fact that I am just a five hour flight away, but now because flights from and to India from many countries being banned, if a situation arises where my parents need us, but we are unable to travel is my worst nightmare. Vaccinations are not available, even though vaccinations have been opened up for those between 18 and 45 now. Vaccination centres in many states have closed temporarily. I am so thankful my parents finished their second dose of the vaccine last week. Please pray for India. And if you can afford to, please donate what you can to any organisation which is funding efforts to help the country.

In my walking journey to Mumbai, I have now reached Thailand and have walked about 70 km inside the country and am about 22 km north of Hat Yai in Thailand’s Songkhla province. Since the beginning of the year, I have walked about 900 km. This month, reading went for a toss and though I am still ahead of my goal, I need to start reading more. So that’s my goal for the month, to read more.

This week’s quote is about an attitude of gratitude. Once we start listing what we are grateful for, we start to realise how fortunate we are. So start listing things you are grateful for and then slowly life will become that much calmer and our sense of discontent will dissipate.

That’s all for this week folks! Stay safe and stay masked.

GG & BB finished their first week of school and GG is already stressed! BB on the other hand is more chill, but I am happy that this semester, he is taking more responsibility and has been coming home and revising his work and doing some pre-reading for the next lecture. I am hoping this is not a flash in the pan and he will be consistent throughout the semester.

Today’s quote is about persistence and resilience. It’s not really attributed to anyone but what it means is that everytime we fall down, we need to get up, dust ourselves off and go on. At some point, we will stop falling down. A rejection is not the end of the world, but in many cases, it is a redirection from the universe to something else.

India is facing a health crisis today with the new wave of COVID-19 cases. The past few days, I have been reading and watching news about what is happening in the ground and it is distressing to say the least. Hospitals are out of space and sick people are being moved around from hospital to hospital and being turned away from each because they can’t admit them. People are dying on the streets, in front of hospitals and on the way to someplace which can admit them in ambulences and their family and loved ones just watch helplessly and do nothing! Life giving oxygen is also not available in many cities and the little that is available is snapped up in a jiffy and there are deaths reported due to a lack of oxygen. Many of these deaths were preventable only if treatment and oxygen had been given on time. There is a sharp rise in daily cases and for multiple days this week, India’s daily cases have breached new highs each day.

Even Singapore is seeing an increase in new cases, though now all short-term visitors from India have been banned and those with a travel history to India in the last fourteen days have an increased quarantine period from 14 to 21 days.

In all this, personally for me, I am happy that none of my extended family and friends have been affected and I pray it stays this way till things are back to normal. My parents got their second dose of the vaccine last week. They are still being cautious though and don’t venture outside unless its absolutely necessary and that’s a good thing as given their age, medical history and the current situation in the country, I fear the worst should they contract the virus.

Anyway, looks like 2021 will be a repeat of 2020 and so please stay safe, stay masked and get your vaccine doses as soon as possible.

I got my first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine this week and it went better than I thought. We got the Pfizer vaccine and after the registration, I was sent to the nurse for the vaccine. The nurse asked me about my dominant hand and then started the process of inserting it in my left hand, which is my non dominant hand. By the time I realised the needle was going in, it was out and the process barely took a few seconds. Then after waiting in the observation area for 30 minutes, I was let go with a paper about the next dose.

Now, everyone reacts differently and my experience will be completely different to others. S who took the vaccine one day before me fared worse than me. For me, when I was sitting in the observation area, I had some pain time and again, almost like in waves, but by the time I reached home, the pain was barely there. I normally sleep on my left side, and tried to avoid it that day. But I know I did move at night, but there was barely, if any pain. The next day there was some slight pain, but nothing else and I was back to my usual self by the middle of the day. I didn’t get any fever or headaches and feel I was let off very easily. I am now hopeful for the second dose now and hopefully will not feel so bad as I have heard from others.

BB & GG starts their second year of school tomorrow and for BB, this is basically a make or break semester. If he does not pull up his grades and by a lot this semester, he has to rethink his career choices and may not be able to get into the university course of his choice. Here’s hoping both do well this semester and live up to their potential.

And this segues well into today’s positivity quote which is about reaching your potential. And it’s very close to a quote I love attributed to Walt Disney which is if you can dream it, you can do it. It means that you are only limited by your thinking. If you have dreams, then the only place they are impossible is in your own thinking. Think about this, and it makes absolute sense, we are limited by our thinking and if we can dream about something, then nothing stops us from achieving them, except ourselves!

India’s COVID-19 cases have been soaring the past few weeks and I am amazed and shocked at how the governments, both at the centre and at the state levels, are allowing massive religious festivities to happen without any social distancing and not a mask in sight! I am also hearing news of a possible new variant which is affecting children in different states which is worrying.

So please, please take care, stay masked and if you are eligible, go and get vaccinated! See you next week.

I am pretty excited as this week, S and I will take the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. But in my home state of Maharashtra in India, the situation is quite grim as they have run out of vaccines and many vaccine centres have been closed for the past few days. My parents have gotten their first dose and were supposed to get their next dose some time later this week, but now as things stand, it is not certain when they will actually get the dose and the effectiveness of the dose.

Cases are really surging in many countries and the world has seen an excess of 135 million cases with the bulk of the cases in the USA and Brazil and India with India reporting more than 100,000 cases daily multiple times this week. I am very concerned for my parents and other elderly relatives in India. They have been planning to go visit my grandmother in Bengaluru for months now, but because of all the new cases coming up, their plans keep getting postponed time and again. We thought getting the vaccine will be the key, but now that also looks unlikely in the near future. We can only pray.

This week was quite bad for me in terms of productivity because for some reason, I kept getting distracted and could not do everything I wanted to do. I am hoping this coming week will be different and I am able to focus more and get all that I want to do done.

And this is the perfect entry to our thought of the week. That if you think positive, good things will happen to you and believing in negative thoughts and things is definitely the one major obstruction to success. So if you have negative thoughts coming your way, take a deep breath and push that thought away and think something positive instead.

That’s it from us this week. The children will start their second year next week, so things will get heated up for them now, with more face to face lessons. Stay safe everyone.

Tomorrow I complete one year of meditation and mindfulness. I am quite proud of myself and when I started, I didn’t really think I could really follow this through. I went through the apps I use for this and realised, over the past year, I have done slightly more than 183 hours in the last year. I have really benefitted by practising mindfulness and meditating daily and I have blogged about this previously. Find something that resonates with you, be it the app, the type of meditation and even the time and it will become a habit very soon. If I don’t meditate as soon as I wake up and have my coffee, I feel something is amiss and I think that’s my cue that this has become a part of me now, so much so, I prefer waking up an hour earlier than everyone else just so I have a quiet home in which I can meditate.

My walking took a bit of a hit this month because of the leg and ankle pain I had, but I am happy to report that GG while massaging my ankle one evening, popped something (we both have no idea of what she did, but we heard a distinct pop) and the pain has been minimal or non-existant till today (touch wood!). This month, I have walked across almost the whole of peninsular Malaysia, reaching the northern border of the state of Perak, just short of reaching the state of Penang and Kedah. I will most probably bypass the state of Perlis, because it does not fall in the North-South Expressway and by the end of April, I should enter Thailand.

My reading has really taken off this year and I am currently reading both e-books as well as physical books borrowed from the National Library of Singapore. I am currently 10 books ahead of my scheduled number of books to be read by the end of the year and will have to move my goal post if this goes on.

This week’s quote is about looking at an obstacle and not seeing it as a deterrent, but instead as an opportunity to show what you are made of and of converting that obstacle into an opportuntity and this boils down to your attitude. If you see a glass as half empty, you have a negative attitude and probably see it as something that will hinder progress, but if you see the glass as half empty, that you see things positively, then it’s a learning, even if it is an obstacle and you look at everything thing that happens in your life as a learning experience, be it positive or negative.

From tomorrow, Singapore opens up more and offices can start having 75% of their staff work inside the office as opposed to less than 50% previously. They will work three days a week in office and the remaining two days will be from home. This means that S will go back to work after a year of working from home. He is having mixed feelings about this and will have to start waking up earlier now as he used to sleep the time he had to commute to work.

My parents have taken the first dose of the vaccine, but are still waiting for another week or so before they take the second dose. I am worried about them as India, my home state of Maharashtra and specifically Mumbai has seen a huge spike of cases in the last week or so. I keep telling them not to delay their second dose, but apparently they need to wait six weeks for the second dose for the particular vaccine they have gotten. If you are eligible for vaccination, please go ahead and take them as soon as possible. S and I signed up for our turn last week when the government announced vaccines for our age group. This week we got our personalised link and have signed up for our first doses later this month and the second dose scheduled for early May.

That’s all people, stay safe, stay masked and get vaccinated if you are eligible.