PSLE Week 26 Update

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Less than three months to the big week!

GG & BB brought home the school schedule for this term and this is the big term for them – they will have their prelims, PSLE orals during the next 11 weeks and once they are done with the term 3 holidays, then’s the listening comprehension and the actual PSLE written exams.

Also in this term will be the DSA results, or rather those who are chosen to go to the next round, will know by the end of this month. I’ve been praying hard that BB makes it to the next round for the school his heart is set in and GG gets her audition letter….

Wish them all the best and please pray to the higher divine you believe in that they do well in their first national exams get what they wish for!

In My Hands Today…

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The Garden of Burning Sand – Corban Addison

Lusaka, Zambia: Zoe Fleming is a young, idealistic American lawyer working with an NGO devoted to combatting the epidemic of child sexual assault in southern Africa. Zoe’s organization is called in to help when an adolescent girl is brutally assaulted. The girl’s identity is a mystery. Where did she come from? Was the attack a random street crime or a premeditated act?

A betrayal in her past gives the girl’s plight a special resonance for Zoe, and she is determined to find the perpetrator. She slowly forms a working relationship, and then a surprising friendship, with Joseph Kabuta, a Zambian police officer. Their search takes them from Lusaka’s roughest neighbourhoods to the wild waters of Victoria Falls, from the AIDS-stricken streets of Johannesburg to the matchless splendour of Cape Town.

As the investigation builds to a climax, threatening to send shockwaves through Zambian society, Zoe is forced to radically reshape her assumptions about love, loyalty, family and, especially, the meaning of justice.

In My Hands Today…

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Destination Saigon – Walter Mason

Get a taste of the real Vietnam and its people on a sometimes funny, always fascinating journey from the bustling cities to out of the way villages, into Buddhist monasteries and along the Mekong

From the crazy heat and color of Saigon to the quieter splendor of Hanoi, this is a rare, joyous, and at times hilarious insight into 21st century Vietnam. Seduced by the beauty and charm of its people and the sensuousness of its culture we can almost taste the little coconut cakes cooked over a fire in a smoky Can Tho kitchen, or smell the endless supplies of fresh baguettes and croissants just out of city ovens. As colorful city cafes and bars make way for visits to out-of-the-way shrines and temples, we take an impromptu visit to forbidden fortune tellers, and glimpse a little of the Cao Dai religion, made famous in Graham Greene’s The Quiet American. Traveling off the beaten track to far-flung villages and lesser-known towns, we cruise along the Mekong, board hopelessly overcrowded local buses, or perch perilously on the back of motorbikes. Behind-the-scenes visits to Buddhist monasteries reveal a quieter and more transcendent world beyond the busy day trips of tourists, and in the process, we begin to see the country through the eyes of its people.

Massages and reflexology: Painful, but oh, so worth it!

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Wearing heels almost the whole day means that at the end of the day, you have aching feet!

I started doing foot reflexology on a whim some time last year when I used to take GG to ballet. I used to have an hour to kill and in the mall next to her class, I chanced upon this chain which did foot reflexology and massages. I did foot reflexology a couple of times and was hooked – I paid up for a package and since then have been enjoying it on and off!

After GG stopped ballet, I also stopped going to the shop, till one day a couple of months back, my foot was paining so badly, I decided to see if there was a store nearby which does this – I lucked out and found the same chain close to my workplace and since then almost once a week (sometimes twice a week), either after work or during my lunch hour, I go and get either a foot massage or a shoulder massage.

So what is foot reflexology? I am not sure if this form of alternative medicine is popular out of Southeast Asia, but here, you see them everywhere! Foot Reflexology involves application of pressure to the feet with specific thumb, finger and hand techniques with the oil of a lotion. This technique claim that various areas of the feet correspond to the different organs in the body and by pressing and kneading these points in the feet, remove blockages in the different parts of the body.

The massages for the back and neck do not involve lotions, but only kneading, pressing and massaging on your neck/back using a towel as a shield. These also tend to be quite painful, but given that pretty much everyone is on a computer at work, muscles become rather stiff. I try to do a neck massage once a week to remove the kincks in my shoulder

The masseuse, even the old aunty-type masseuses have such strong hands, that at times it’s even painful, but oh, so good once it’s done…

While having my massages, I have the most random thoughts. Here are some of them….

Yesterday while having a shoulder massage, I was wondering if I should write a book set in Southeast Asia, where the murderer is this old auntyish lady who is a masseuse and who murders people who have wronged her by giving them massages so strong that it triggers some parts of their body to malfunctions and so some hours later they die and the police and detectives are baffled at these murders and no one comes close to finding it out until this old sinseh (a traditional Chinese medicine practitioner) figures it all out! Now that the plot is here, if anyone writes the book, you know where to find me to send me the share of the royalty 🙂

Another time, I felt I was having an out-of-body experience, something akin to floating around till I came crashing down when the massage ended 😦