After months of having daily triple digit figures and some months of having low four digit figures, this week, we finally got days of two digit daily figures and one day was a mid double digit figure. We also had a day of no community transmission, the first since June!
The total number of cases in Singapore is around 55,500 and I read in the newspapers that complete testing of all foreign workers, including those in quarantine and isolation will end by the end of the month and hopefully, from then on, we can look forward to low, perhaps even single digit daily cases.
The United States continues to lead the world in positive cases with about 5.4 million cases reported in total, followed by Brazil with about 3.3 million cases and India coming in at number three with slightly more than 2.5 million cases.
The children are almost done with their first semester in school and exams are around the corner. They should finish up exams by the end of August, the beginning of September and then will have around six weeks of holiday before they start semester 2, hopefully with in-school lessons.
Life, for me, is going on as usual with work and writing. I have been in some sort of a funk the past few weeks, nothing serious, but I am working on getting over it and going back to my usual optimistic take on life, and I hope this happens soon.
That’s all from us this week, stay safe and healthy folks!
Yesterday was Singapore’s 55th National Day and as I reminisced about my twenty odd years here, I thought back on my journey in Singapore.
I have written about my journey to become a Singaporean last year, but this post will be slightly different. 2020 is my twentieth year in Singapore and as I have mentioned previously, I could have become a Singaporean about two to three years after I got my Permanent Residency given that S is native Singaporean and BB & GG were already born who are also citizens by birth. But I wanted to make sure I was taking the right decision. When I first came to Singapore, I was quite happy with my permanent residency status and had no intention at that point to renounce my Indian citizenship. I was very proud to have been born in India, especially Mumbai (and till today, I proudly call Bombay my hometown) and since I was actually getting some of the benefits which I would have not gotten if BB & GG were not Singaporeans, there was no real hurry for me to take the next step.
As I grew used to staying in Singapore, it slowly started becoming home to me. In fact I remember a conversation with the officer at the Immigration & Checkpoints Authority when I went to get my passport stamped with my re-entry permit who was doing the stamping. She asked me why I didn’t apply for citizenship since I am married to a Singaporean and my children are also locals. I should have no problems with my application according to her. I responded saying I didn’t feel Singaporean yet and so will wait before I take such a decision. That feeling came about fifteen years into living in Singapore. I can still remember when I finally acknowledged to myself it was time to become a Singaporean not just in spirit, but officially too. I was returning back from a business trip and when the plane landed in Changi airport, the pilot (or co-pilot) said the usual welcome dialogue which SIA usually has which has something to the effect of “Welcome to Singapore and for Singaporeans and Permanent Residents, welcome home”, I realised that Singapore was indeed home for me. I also completed a new rite of passage as a Singaporean recently when I voted in the recent general elections which happened last month.
When the sight of Changi airport’s control towers says you are now home, when Singlish seems as normal as Hindi and Marathi, when Majulah Singapura means as much to you as Jana Gana Mana, it means that Singapore has become home to me now. Even though it took me about fifteen years to come to this realisation, I decided that was the time to take things to the next level and make Singapore officially my home. BB & GG were, I think, the most excited when I took this decision. I have not travelled much, especially regionally after getting my red passport, but I look forward to exploring more countries in the region. I can remember trips to Thailand and Cambodia where I had to rush to get my visa on arrival stamped in my passport while S and the children either waited for me or went ahead to collect the baggage because they had Singapore passports which ensured that they just walk out. Or even work trips where I had to get visas every single time and my colleagues usually had to wait for me before we went to collect our baggage. Pre COVID, we used to drive down to Malaysia, specifically Johor Bahru quite often to buy groceries and shop and crossing the causeway without needing a visa was so convienient.
Happy birthday Singapore! Prosper and flourish for years to come…
What’s a National Day, without a National Day song? I’ve shared my favourite NDP song, Home by Kit Chan last year, so here’s this year’s song sung by Nathan Hartano.
Today Singapore celebrates its 55th year of independence. Celebrations, which are usually very grand, are muted this year because of Covid and celebrations are actually split between the morning and evening so that there are fewer number of people involved at any point in time. And some of the celebrations will make their way to suburban Singapore or the heartlands as it is called here including the armed forces mobile columns and fireworks. There will be the mobile column passing close to my home later today and I may just go down to see it. Ufortunately, the fireworks will not be visible from my home and I don’t want to go down to see it because I am sure it will be super crowded and I am not going to risk my health for that.
After some days of low cases, the last ten odd days had many cases. I understand that this is because the government is pushing for completing testing of all the 300,000 foreign workers by the end of the month and then we should go back to single or low double digit numbers. We are at around 55,000 cases in total now and the country is now starting to look at moving cautiously to a new normal with more events and activities resuming and some borders reopening up.
My eyes are still not 100% cured though there have been significant improvements. I have been seeing the specialist about every two weeks now and there is still some infection in the cornea though the pressure in the infected eye has normalised to almost the normal range. Hopefully, this will also get better soon and I am back to my old schedule of just using the eye drops to counter my dry eyes.
BB & GG have almost completed their first semester in school without really going to school. They have been going more regularly these days since things are improving and they have project presentations to give and also take exmaninations to end the semester.
I also got a notification from WordPress earlier in the week saying it was my 10th anniversary in WordPress! I am stoked that I have been blooging on this site for 10 years now!
This is our news for the week! Happy birthday Singapore and may you grow from strength to strength. Stay safe and masked and most importantly, be healthy!
August has snuck up and things are pretty much the same. BB & GG are mostly doing home based learning and going to school only when needed. In fact last week, BB had one class at home and then had an hour to make it to school for his next class. He made it with minutes to spare. S could not drop him to school because he had a call at that exact same time.
Over the Hari Raya weekend, we went suit shopping for GG as she has a presentation this week. We ended up buying everything – a skirt, shirt, jacket and shoes so she can look the part when she goes for her presentation. The module actually some points for dressing and appearance so hopefully that is taken care of.
Singapore has about close to 53,000 cases as of now with about 47,000 of those having recovered. Worldwide, 17.5 million people have been infected with nearly 700,000 deaths and more than 10 million people having recovered from the virus. India is still at number three position with 1.6 million infected people with 1 million people who have recovered.
Of course being home for months together has impacted pretty much everyone. Work-Life balance has taken a complete hit and I can see this pretty much everywhere. Many people I know, including S, start working quite early, almost as soon as they wake up, and this goes on till the end of the day when they go to bed. Stuck at home, hunched over a laptop, it is easy to forget health. At times like this, we sit for far too long, eat at irregular intervals and eat a lot of junk food. Let’s not forget that interaction with anyone other than family members is via a screen, so that sense of interaction with friends and colleagues is also missing which is not really good for our mental health. So take care of your helath, there are some stories of individuals who have used this time to turn around their lives.
That’s all from us this week. Take care people and stay safe!
This week was like the last 16-20 weeks, in which we were all at home!
This week was quite busy in terms of work and when Friday rolled over, I was so relieved for the week to be done. BB will start school on a daily basis from tomorrow, but except for a few days in the week, it will be only for short periods of time. GG has still not heard back from her school if she has to go back. BB is quite glad to go back to school, but having to wear a mask for long periods of time is quite irritating according to him.
As for the coronavirus, I suspect Singapore has amped up testing because these days the daily numbers are higher than normal. Worldwide there has been a dramatic increase in the number of positive cases with more than 15.7 million cases reported as of yesterday. The United States leads the case list with about 4.2 million cases while Brazil follows with about 2.3 cases and India comes in at number three with 1.4 million cases. Singapore comes in at around number 42 with the number of cases touching 50 thousand.
Next week is end the end of July and we are looking to more months of staying at home. An article I read says that the earliest we can even think of travelling and life resuming to a sense of previous normalcy is sometime mid 2021. Though there have been some promising news about potential vaccines being formulated, but we should see the vaccines being available only sometime end of next year. However, the question will arise to who gets priority in getting these vaccines, but there’s still time to discuss all this later.
Memories and Such 