Travel: The only thing you buy which makes you richer!

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“The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only one page.” – Saint Augustine

We’re leaving Penang in a few hours now and I am already having ‘Holiday Blues’. I love taking holidays and love the whole process – right from researching locations and hotels to tracking airfares, planning the itineraries and looking for great places to eat…. I am a planner by nature and so this job automatically falls to me. I can even spend time reading on the best way to pack!

I want to see the whole world and experience not onluy different cultures, but also unique experiences in each of the places we visit. We’ve not done a lot of travel till now, preferring to visit places in the region, rather than travelling afar, but now that BB & GG are all grown up, it’ll be fun to visit newer and more adventurous places without having anxious thoughts on nap and meal times!

One place I really want to visit is Europe. I love reading historical fiction and loads of these are set in Europe. I want to experience the Pantheon, the Tower of London, the castles of England, Scotland and Ireland, the Louvre and the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Oh and the art in all the galleries!! All those places I have only read about, I want to see and breathe in the air.

I have always believed that travel gives you that edge of sophistication that nothing else does and it is for this reason that I want GG & BB to see as much of the world as we can afford before they are thrust upon the world. Travel is an education that no school can provide you, it teaches you to go out of your comfort zone and learn to get along with people from diverse cultures. Children grow up to be well rounded individuals with a global perspective which will stand them in good stead through their lives and in anything they choose to do in life. How better to learn about the beauty of this planet we call home than by travelling….

Gosh! All this talk of travel is making me itchy to go somewhere else. We do have our trip to India to look forward to in December, but now I really need to save up and go somewhere else….

I need to get going now or we’ll miss our flight back home, but once I am back home and have sorted the hundreds of photos we took, I’ll do a couple of posts on Penang.

In My Hands Today…

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The World We Found – Thrity Umrigar

As university students in late 1970s Bombay, Armaiti, Laleh, Kavita, and Nishta were inseparable. Spirited and unconventional, they challenged authority and fought for a better world. But much has changed over the past thirty years. Following different paths, the quartet drifted apart, the day-to-day demands of work and family tempering the revolutionary fervor they once shared.

Then comes devastating news: Armaiti, who moved to America, is gravely ill and wants to see the old friends she left behind. For Laleh, reunion is a bittersweet reminder of unfulfilled dreams and unspoken guilt. For Kavita, it is an admission of forbidden passion. For Nishta, it is the promise of freedom from a bitter fundamentalist husband. And for Armaiti, it is an act of acceptance, of letting go on her own terms even if her ex-husband and daughter do not understand her choices.

In the course of their journey to reconnect, Armaiti, Laleh, Kavita, and Nishta must confront the truths of their lives—acknowledge long-held regrets, face painful secrets and hidden desires, and reconcile their idealistic past and their compromised present. And they will have to decide what matters most, a choice that may just help them reclaim the extraordinary world they once found.

2015 Week 41 Update

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The last week was one of the sorts I like – a fairly busy week! When I am busy, I don’t over think and the day at work zips by. I love such weeks! When I am free and don’t have much to do, I tend to snack often and then have to find things to look busy. I hate such days! I am actually underworked here, so these days are more often there than busy days….

Since it is Navratri, people have been inviting us, but what with work and the holidays, I could only go to my inlaws place on Friday. She does this every year and so after work, I dolled up in a saree and went there. Spent a pleasant evening chatting with people I see only once a year!

Then Saturday was the day when BB & GG, along with others performed at a nearby temple. They are learning South Indian classical music or Carnatic music for a few years now and every year during Navratri, the teacher puts up a performance at a local temple where her students can sing. This year, their class, which mostly has PSLE students didn’t have enough practice as most of them didn’t go to class in the month before the exams. But in spite of that, the children did a great job. I am really happy that both GG & BB, especially GG, enjoy singing!

We’re in Penang for a few days, taking a well-deserved break part 1 after the grueling year that was the PSLE. I’m taking loads of pictures and will post more about these later on!

Have a great week folks!

PSLE Week 41 Update

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Even though the PSLE is over, both BB & GG have been busy quite busy in school. They have to work on their class yearbook as well as prepare for the year-end concert. Each graduating class is expected to put together a song and dance performance (either together or separately) and every child is expected to contribute. GG is taking part in her class dance while BB who hates dancing is joining the song routine.

We also got a note from the school on the learning journeys they will take from now till the end of the school year. The school plans to bring them to the National Museum, The Arts Science Museum as well as the Discovery Centre. They are also going to bring the children to a secondary school which has an Aviation programme. As expected BB is most excited about that trip as this is the school we are targeting if his grades are not very stellar. If, by some luck, he does brilliantly, we’ll try other schools, the main one being his dream school where he did not make the cut for the DSA. We can always dream right!

We also received the huge book from MOE which tells us all about how we can select schools (merit before choice) and that we need to choose 6 schools for both of them each. Once the results are declared, we need to go to the website and indicate our school choices. If our scores are below the school cut off point (COP), we get in, otherwise, they will go down the list. If none of the schools meet our COP, we get a nearby school which still has vacancies and which is within the COP. So it makes sense to choose real carefully so that we can get into our first choice school….

Singapore from the air

From tomorrow, for the next four days, teachers across Singapore will come together to mark the PSLE papers. I am tense about this, but also realise nothing is my hands now! So schools are shut for the next four days which means we’re off today for a holiday! Normally this period is a time for children to hunker down and study as usually after this holiday is when exams start, but this year with the end of the PSLE, we decided to use this short holiday to go around the region. I’ll post more about the holiday later!

In My Hands Today…

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Of Marriageable Age – Sharon Maas

A spellbinding story of forbidden love, spanning three continents and three decades. Set against the Independence struggles of two British colonies, Of Marriageable Age is ultimately a story of personal triumph against a brutal fate, brought to life by a multicultural cast of characters:

Savitri, intuitive and charismatic, grows up among the servants of a pre-war English household in the Raj. But the traditional customs of her Brahmin family clash against English upper-class prejudice, threatening her love for the privileged son of the house.

Nataraj, raised as the son of an idealistic doctor in rural South India, finds life in London heady, with girls and grass easily available… until he is summoned back home to face raw reality.

Saroj, her fire hidden by outward reserve, comes of age in Guyana, South America, the daughter of a strictly orthodox and very racist Hindu father. Her life changes forever on the day she finally rebels against him. … and even against her gentle, apparently docile Ma.

But Ma harbours a deep secret… one that binds these three so disparate lives and hurtles them towards a truth that could destroy their world.