Category Archives: Musing

Feeling sorry for myself…

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I am in a very funky kind of mood today. This post is a semi rant cum self indulgence one!

The job I am with is not working out. I am not fond of the industry and want to go back to academia, which is where I feel I belong. Also I work on a flexible arrangement here, this was an experiment I wanted to do since I wanted to be there for BB & GG. But here, atleast, this experiment is not working.

Since I leave about 3 hours before the others, there are always things that I am unaware of, which people forget to update me when I get in the next day. I keep having this feeling of being in an island all alone. This is not very good for my morale.

The project I was hired for, has, for some reason not taken off. It has now been postponed to mid 2012, so I also have the feeling that my confirmation which would come in early January would be affected as I do not have anything concrete to show for the last six months, just preparations which went nowhere.

Last, this organisation is going to shift – no idea when though, but each time I ask, it is sometime by the end of the year – to the absolute other end of the country/island. Currently it takes me between 45 to 60 minutes to get to work and getting home takes around the same time, but I only need to take one straight bus and so most afternoons, I get on the bus and sleep till it’s time to get off. At the new place, I will need to change three different buses which will take me approximately 90 minutes to get to work and home (this is assuming there are no traffic snarls at any point in the journey). I will be spending 3 hours in the road and 6 hours at work – making it a 9 hour day altogether.

Is this worth it? When I joined here, I had great ideas and thougths, but the reality is way different. There’s been so much staff turnover, both before I joined and during the last 4 months, two people have left. When asked, the management talks about a ‘lack of fit’ for the reason why people leave. But I wanted to ask them, if there is an issue about the fit, then why hire the wrong kind of people? It’s either you don’t know what you are doing when you hire people, or that you give potential employees a completely distorted view of the organisation which makes the ‘fit’ questionable.

Well, I need to start searching for a new job pronto! What I would like in an ideal world would be to search, interview and accept a new position this month (aka November) and then serve my two weeks notice in the first half of December and finish my last day before I go on holiday and start a new place in the new year. What do you think? Will that happen? I want to do something that interests me and makes me excited to wake up on Monday morning, raring to get to work, instead of waking up on Monday and wishing it was Friday already 😦

If someone above listening to me, please, please help!! Also if God, you are listening or reading this, I wouldn’t mind winning some serious money in Toto or 4D, so that for the next few years, I can give up work and concentrate on BB & GG and do what interests me…

A picture to cheer me up! But does it? Let's wait and watch...

The world tomorrow

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Somewhere in the world today, we will welcome the seventh billionth person into this world. We’ve added one billion people in the world in just about a decade! According to a United Nations estimate, there are about 2 babies being born every second and we will be adding another 3 billion babies, reaching the world population figure of 10 billion by 2100, that’s just 89 years away!

The world is seeing a huge variance in terms of population growth, first world countries do not have enough and third world countries have too much! This means that in the very near future (if it is not already happening), you will see a lot of movement of population from the less developed countries to the more developed ones. This will lead to other problems like integration, resentment from the established to the newly arriving etc.

So this is a new thing for parents to worry about – as if we have less things to worry about already. With the world’s population reaching stratospheric heights, it is inevitable that the levels of competition for literally everything will increase proportionally.  Everyone will be chasing after the same pie and it’s going to be a free for all, unless you have the resources to beat the competition. One of the best ways to succeed in life is through education and guess what, that’s going to be the one place with the fiercest competition.

Children in Singapore, which is a first world country in a third world region, are already pretty complacent, even though we’ve always had competition, not just from the region, but also from India and China, but the competition facing our children, 10-15 years down the line will mean facing people who are hungry for success not just from the above mentioned countries, but also from Africa and the rest of the world.

What does this mean to us as parents? In my opinion, this means giving our children the best we can – in terms of education, experiences, knowledge and learning and making them the best we can with the strongest values and foundations so that they can make their own way in the world that they are being dealt with as the kind of adults who will make us proud to be called their parents.

My only hope is that 10-15 years down the line, GG & BB grow up to be adults I can be proud of – articulate, helpful, intelligent, loving people who are a success in whatever they choose to do and be in life!

What a Week…..TGIF…Really?

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This week’s kinda been a bit weird! We had a break right in the middle of the week and when I went in to work yesterday, it was with the feeling that it was Monday instead of Thursday. But today’s Friday and the weekend beckons! Not that this weekend’s gonna be anything but relaxing – think exams times two….


Wednesday was Diwali when the whole world has the excuse to hog like pigs! One of my friends said you start chewing in the morning and don’t end till night and he was right. But were all feeling the effects of the excesses and yesterday was a day of eating less and giving tummies a break!

This is me till Tuesday

BB and GG’s written final exams start today. They’ve done with the orals earlier this month and will have the written papers starting today with English, then Maths on Monday and rounding off the year’s examinations with Chinese on Tuesday. Then after another 10 odd days of school, they end the Primary 2 and get ready for Primary 3. Primary 3 is supposed to be a big jump from the ‘easy’ years of Primary 1 & 2. Science gets added to the mix now. I wonder how they they will cope, especially with Hindi! Got to keep the momentum going on even during the holidays.

Once the exams are done, I plan on cleaning the whole house, throwing out accumulated stuff that somehow seem to develop tendencies to give birth to more stuff! I want to do this before my helper leaves for her leave in December. Then it’s planning and shopping time for our trip to visit family in India in mid December. We’re all so looking forward to this. Another thing I hope happens in the next two months is me getting a new job and starting in a new place in the new year!
Got a lot to accomplish in the next two months. Wish me luck folks!

Shall I??

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On Tuesday evening after dinner, we went to visit my in-laws who live a 10-15 minute walk/5 minute drive. My Father In Law (FIL) has just been diagnosed with Lung Cancer and so we wanted to go meet him.

While coming back home, somehow, the topic of discussion went to the question of citizenship. S and the kids are all Singaporeans while I still retain my Indian passport. I really don’t know why I still have not taken the final step to get my red passport (A Singapore passport is red in colour, hence the line). BB & GG had a lot of questions as to why I did not change allegiances. Actually there is no great reason except for the fact when I could first do it, I was not ready mentally, maybe for sentimental reasons and so put it off. Now my re-entry permit expires in 2017 and so have time till then to swing either way. Actually, these days, I identify myself more Singaporean than Indian as the India I grew up in is not really in existence now. I just need to get a few things clarified the next time I go to Mumbai (legal stuff) and then I can take the final step towards renouncing my citizenship.

Like I told BB & GG, I am Singaporean in my heart – I stand up when Majulah Singapura is played (the Singapore national anthem) and recite the pledge with my right hand over my heart like the millions of Singaporeans and so it’s just formalities now.

In fact, here’s a short anecdote to illustrate this. Earlier this week, I was at an international school for an event. The chief guest was an Member of Parliament and while we were waiting, the school’s PA system asked the school to stand for the national anthem. I looked around and found everyone still sitting, so I got up and asked “Shouldn’t we stand” and then everyone stood up!

GG very categorically told me that I should become a Singaporean very soon just like her, BB and Daddy as we’re one family and everyone should be the same! So yeah, in the next two years, that’s a goal to reach!

One benefit of having a Singapore passport is leaving behind all the visa hassles I’ve had to undergo since coming here. Singapore citizens can travel visa free to many countries in the world, while Indians need a visa for practically every country. So this means impromptu trips will be more of a norm, rather than what we are doing now – which is planning and getting my visas everywhere we need to go!

Reminiscences

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Yesterday, I accidently clicked on my old blog which I used to host on Blogger. So I started reading my old entries. I started blogging way back in 2007 and was a very sporadic blogger, blogging a total of 62 blog posts over a two year period. Compare this with this blog now and I’ve sure come a long way.

In March 2007 when BB & GG were about 3.5 years old, I wrote the following post, and when I re-read it yesterday, I realised that 4.5 years later, it still held true..

Girls and Boys

Being the mom to a girl/boy pair of twins has certainly given me loads of food for thought. It’s quite fascinating to see how girls and boys behave under certain situations – given that the external environment is the same for them both. This brings to my mind the “Nature versus Nurture” theory that I learned in Psychology class way back in college. The gist of that theory is that “What determines a human being’s behaviour patterns? Is it his internal genetic make-up or is it the external factors which make a person what he/she is and how they behave?”

With the Pilot and Princess, I have always tried to be fair – I never made any distinctions between the two, especially in terms of gender specific toys and games. But surprisingly the age-old gender distinctions are very clear in our home. The Princess loves playing with her dolls and Barbie collections and the Pilot is vehicle mad. But there are some blurred spaces – the Princess likes to play with blocks and the Pilot with their little laptop (guess that is because it is a Ferrari model and all the games are car based).

But it is in temperaments that I am most surprised about. Contrary to perception that girls are made of ‘sugar and spice and all that is nice’, the Princess is the more assertive and dominating twin. The Pilot on the other hand easily gives in to his sister, but he is learning to be more assertive now. The Princess can shriek, rant and throw tantrums with the best of them and she is not afraid of anyone and anything. If we try to punish her, she probably will come back to me and I am really dreading her teens! The Pilot is more sensitive and a look from me is enough to make him back down.

It was fun to read old posts. I will trawl my old Blogger blog and put in posts that I feel are good to put here. There are some interesting posts about when BB & GG were little as well as other snippets!