PSLE Week 18 Update

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BB and GG have been busy these days studying for their SA 1 written exams which start from next week. They have English on Wednesday, Maths on Thursday and Science the Monday after that.

I also started the process of BB’s DSA application in his dream school. The application process needs his marks from P4 till the P6 SA1. Marks except for Hindi are not too bad, and I’ve told him to do his best for this exam which then goes into the application for his dream school!

Oh and before I forget BB and GG gave me the sweetest Mother’s Day Card, all hand drawn by GG. Actually it was GG’s work and BB just tagged along for the ride! But it’s the thought that counts right? Happy Mother’s Day everyone…

Back to the grindstone now for BB & GG…

In My Hands Today…

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The Mistress of Spices – Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Magical, tantalizing, and sensual, The Mistress of Spices is the story of Tilo, a young woman born in another time, in a faraway place, who is trained in the ancient art of spices and ordained as a mistress charged with special powers.  Once fully initiated in a rite of fire, the now immortal Tilo–in the gnarled and arthritic body of an old woman–travels through time to Oakland, California, where she opens a shop from which she administers spices as curatives to her customers.  An unexpected romance with a handsome stranger eventually forces her to choose between the supernatural life of an immortal and the vicissitudes of modern life.  Spellbinding and hypnotizing, The Mistress of Spices is a tale of joy and sorrow and one special woman’s magical powers.

Why I blog the way I do

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I keep thinking of this every once in a while. I blog anonymously and so none of my readers know who I am in real life. I share snippets from my life, my work and about my children regularly and I rant here quite often about work.

Sometimes when I browse blogs and see the blog author identified in the blog with pictures of their children, I do have a slight twinge of doubt of whether the course I have taken while blogging is correct or wrong? Whether putting up pictures of myself  and my family will pull more traffic to my blog. That’s when I stop, pause and wait till this feeling goes away. I choose to blog anonymously for a reason and everyday what I see online reaffirms that this choice has been a correct one.

I poke around on Dayre, a microblogging site, quite often and recently a blogger there, an ex-Singapore Airlines stewardess wrote her thoughts on the airline, complete with photos of herself in uniform. The post was a good one, well-intended and with the aim of actually showing what the actual work of an airline stewardess is all about – warts and all. It gave all those a greater appreciation of what they did and personally I have decided to be nicer to them when travelling. Anyway, coming back to the point of this post, someone decided her post was very good and shared it on Facebook and so her post went viral in Singapore! She got flak from everyone who felt she had a good, cushy and glamourous life where she could travel the world and get paid for it while they toilet at jobs not so fun…

This incident is exactly why I don’t want to reveal too many details about myself and my family. When I started blogging years ago, the technology available these days was non-existent. Today, it’s quite easy to find out about a person based on simple details. By putting my children’s lives in the internet where nothing really gets deleted, may pressure them in the future. This way, they start their digital lives on a clean slate.

One thing though about all this anon blogging thing is that no one, and I really mean no one who is a part of my life knows about this blog – I can’t publicise this on any of my social media platforms or even tell friends that I blog. Also since both my blogs are linked, I can’t talk about my book blog, which is a bummer

This post is probably more of a ramble than making pure sense, but I’d love to hear what you think about this….

In My Hands Today…

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The Forbidden Daughter – Shobhan Bantwal

Set in the sensual richness of India, Shobhan Bantwal’s gripping new novel asks: Where can a woman turn when her life’s greatest blessing is seen as a curse? It’s a girl! For most young couples, news of their unborn child’s gender brings joyful anticipation. Not so for Isha Tilak and her husband, Nikhil. They already have a beloved daughter, but Nikhil’s parents, hard-wired to favor male children above all, coldly reject little Priya at every turn. Vain and selfish, they see female grandchildren as burdens, and would just as soon never meet the one growing in Isha’s belly. Even the obstetrician agrees, going so far as to suggest the unthinkable, throwing Nikhil into a rage–and changing Isha’s life forever. . .

When Nikhil is discovered brutally murdered, Isha is convinced it had something to do with his reaction to the doctor’s hideous “solution” to their problem. Alone, grief-stricken, and relentlessly oppressed by in-laws who believe her baby is a bad omen, Isha sets out on her own. Born into a privileged class, Isha doesn’t know the first thing about fending for herself, but to protect her precious daughters, she will learn. And she will cling to the hope given to her by a strange old mystic: that her baby will arrive on the auspicious night of Kojagari Purnima, the full harvest moon, and be a gift from Lakshmi, the goddess of well-being. Isha and her girls will need all the blessings they can get, for the greatest dang

Dreams – A foretelling of Reality?

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This post has been lying in my drafts for a while now. I actually had this dream a few weeks backs and it was so vivid that I actually woke up disoriented. I normally don’t have dreams – or I am one of those who don’t remember their dreams at all or if I remember, it will be extremely fuzzy!

I started using lavender aroma oil around a month back to see if it helps us sleep well – now I am not 100% sure if this dream was a result of the oil being diffused in the room or was it something deep from my subconscious or is it really a foretelling of the future! The dream was so compelling and vivid, that it made me pen it down as soon as I woke up. Below is exactly what I remembered around 5 am the morning after the dream.

In the first part, I dreamt that I was going to the mall to colour my hair around 11 pm. I remember calling my husband to check if he had come back home so he can open the door for me and I don’t have to disturb my helper.

The next thing I remember I am at a Feng Shui practitioner’s office. It’s funny that I even remember the people in the office – the head was a Caucasian with a red face and a white beard.

And then there was this pretty Chinese lady with heavy makeup, especially around the eyes who came to talk to me. I was with a bunch of people and we came to discuss some fengshui for a business of ours. But this lady started talking about me. The discussion was about how much potential I have to become very successful in life and then she asked me my age. When I told her, she said something I could not catch.

Something about the next few years being very good for my career and how I was going to be very successful. She then spoke of some package I should take to ensure this. And even in a dream, I am ever so practical…I said I need to consult my husband and that was the end of that discussion.

Next me plus that bunch of people are in a car somewhere in Sentosa (don’t ask how I know I was in Sentosa which is an island off the coast of Singapore and is used as a large theme park). We are driving to meet another Fengshui consultant – a person related to the one we just saw. Something to do about picking up something.

I still haven’t gone home and have this feeling I should call my husband. Then I see this really gorgeous sunrise – streaks of pinks, golds and lavenders with black birds against it in stark contrast.

I tell the others in the car to see it and start to take a picture saying “My crappy phone will never do justice to this sunrise”. The driver stops the car for a picture and at this point my alarm rang and I woke up. Actually I shut off the alarm to try and sleep more so I could end the dream, but could not do that.

Wonder what this dream meant? Indians believe that morning dreams are a forecast of what will happen and that they come true. I wonder what is my subconscious trying to tell me? I tried analysing this dream using the online dream interpretation sites, but nothing really tells me what the entire dream means. I could only find out what sunrise (new beginnings, fulfillment of goals, new adventure in personal life) and fengshui (search for spiritual balance, positivity) means, but together what do they mean? Any ideas?