After Chinatown, we decided to go to Little India aka Serangoon Road for dinner and a surprise awaited us. We didn’t know that the street was also lighted up for the Pongal festival. So we got another light-up as a bonus!
One of the side streets all lighted up
Serangoon Road as seen from its entrance
The facade of the Indian Heritage Centre, all beautifully lighted up
Another view of the lights in Serangoon Road
The Foreigner – Francie Lin
Emerson Chang is a mild mannered bachelor on the cusp of forty, a financial analyst in a neatly pressed suit, a child of Taiwanese immigrants who doesn’t speak a word of Chinese, and, well, a virgin. His only real family is his mother, whose subtle manipulations have kept him close–all in the name of preserving an obscure idea of family and culture.
But when his mother suddenly dies, Emerson sets out for Taipei to scatter her ashes, and to convey a surprising inheritance to his younger brother, Little P. Now enmeshed in the Taiwanese criminal underworld, Little P seems to be running some very shady business out of his uncle’s karaoke bar, and he conceals a secret–a crime that has not only severed him from his family, but may have annihilated his conscience. Hoping to appease both the living and the dead, Emerson isn’t about to give up the inheritance until he uncovers Little P’s past, and saves what is left of his family
I decided to go way back to my first posts and see how long I have been blogging. I realised I would have been blogging on WordPress for 7 years this year (my blog anniversary is sometime in August) and a couple of years before that on Blogspot. Wow! That’s a long time to be blogging, that too anonymously.
I revisited this topic again when sometime last week, I came across an opinion piece in an Indian newspaper by a famous author who was arguing about the privacy issues that a famous Bollywood couple are facing over their new baby’s photo. The baby’s photo was published across media when the doting father put it up as his Whatsapp profile picture (as most parents are wont to do so) and she argued that in this day and age of digital invasion, especially for a high-profile couple like these two, it was par on course, and not something they should take seriously. I am not going to link to the article, nor mention any names, though any Indian who reads this, may know who I am talking about. This article again raised the issue of being anonymous on social media.
Today, with oversharing being the norm, being someone who hides behind an identity on social media, I am probably an anomaly rather than the norm. With the exception of Facebook and LinkedIn where I am present as myself, I blog under a pseudonym on all other media. I guess I am not 100% anonymous here – you guys do know that I live in Singapore and have two children who are twins and are around 13/14 years old and in secondary school. But I have still not shared more details about myself or a photograph of me and my family, which seems to be what most family and lifestyle bloggers (as I see myself) have on their About me page. Maybe someone who is diligent can find out who I am, but I’d like to think that I am not someone who is famous or infamous that people are really curious to know whom I am in real life.
I know it’s quite hard for me not to build traffic to this site because I can’t just link posts from here onto any of my other social media accounts, so conversely I am actually proud of each and every new subscriber as I know you’ve come here organically and because you like what I write. This is pure validation to someone who considers herself as a closet writer.
I also want to protect BB & GG from any adverse effects of my blogging. Technology is jumping by leaps and bounds and what is probably in the realm of science fiction today may be a something very normal 10 years down the line. I want them to start and live their lives on a clean slate and don’t want any embarrassing photos or blog posts to pop up when a future employer searches their name a few years down the line when they start work or even when they apply for admissions at their dream schools. After all, even today a sweep of your social media profile is done when you are looking at hiring new employees or even students and you don’t want something awkward coming up when your name is searched.
So there you have why I chose to blog anonymously. I am still not sure if this was the right decision or not, but it’s something I chose to do and will continue to do so moving forward.
The Bones of Grace – Tahmima Anam
On the eve of her departure to find the bones of the walking whale—the fossil that provides a missing link in our evolution—Zubaida Haque falls in love with Elijah Strong, a man she meets in a darkened concert hall in Boston. Their connection is immediate and intense, despite their differences: Elijah belongs to a prototypical American family; Zubaida is the adopted daughter of a wealthy Bangladeshi family in Dhaka. When a twist of fate sends her back to her hometown, the inevitable force of society compels her to take a very different path: she marries her childhood best friend and settles into a traditional Bangladeshi life.
While her family is pleased by her obedience, Zubaida seethes with discontent. Desperate to finally free herself from her familial constraints, she moves to Chittagong to work on a documentary film about the infamous beaches where ships are destroyed, and their remains salvaged by locals who depend on the goods for their survival. Among them is Anwar, a ship breaker whose story holds a key that will unlock the mysteries of Zubaida’s past—and the possibilities of a new life. As she witnesses a ship being torn down to its bones, this woman torn between the social mores of her two homes—Bangladesh and America—will be forced to strip away the vestiges of her own life . . . and make a choice from which she can never turn back.
Another week and time for another update. Nothing really happened this week except that I walked out of an interview. It’s the first time I did this.
What happened was that I had applied to two positions in this organisation – one a fairly junior one and one a senior one (more suited to my experience). In the beginning of the week, someone called me asking me if I was still interested in the position and during the call, twice or thrice repeated the question. I found it a bit strange thinking that unless you were interested, you wouldn’t apply, right? Then I realised I had applied for two positions and when I read the job descriptions, I was sure I was being considered for the senior one as the junior one was really very junior. So I prepared for the senior position and went down for the interview.
There, I found around 4-5 people already waiting and found it weird that they called so many people for an interview at the same time. That was red flag number 1. We were asked to go into a meeting room and there I found that with the exception of one other person, all the others were very young, maybe just out of school or perhaps trying for holiday jobs. That was red flag number 2. Then the HR person came and introduced himself and said it will be a group interview (red flag 3) and I was thrown back to my group discussion interviews after I had graduated, eons ago! Then he asked if anyone knew what the job entailed and mentioned a few things. At this point I knew I was wasting my time and decided to leave. I told the person that since I had applied for more than one position and since their email did did not specify the position, I came here thinking it was for the senior position. I then left there chalking this all up to another experience in the job search process.
Actually I am this close to just giving up and becoming a SAHM. Interviewers and recruiters who speak to me say I have a very strong resume and experience, but I really don’t know why this is not translating into a decent job. Am I doing something wrong? Perhaps, I need to re-evaluate my search strategy. Lots to think this week.
Hope you all had a much better week than I had. May the coming week be better for all of us! Happy week….
