2015 Week 8: Weekly Update

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IMG_3415A very, very busy week for me as we were all busy working on a annual conference which starts on Tuesday. I have loads of vents on how stuff has been changed at the very last minute, but I am not going to do that – nothing will come in the way of my new zen attitude!

What I am planning to do is meet my ex-boss later today (he is here this week for the conference, albeit as a delegate this time) and probably speak a bit freely about my future in the organization – he did tell me before he left to consider him as a mentor! This will allow me to crystallize my thoughts on what I should do moving forward…

Found this great website on Facebook – Chisel. You can use the photos there or upload our own photos and create great quotes. This one is the result of something I just did. Have you used this before?

Positive Thought 1

Diet and exercise was as usual off and will be this week too…Food in conferences in Asia are so much tasitier, plus some dinners….Need to get on track very soon….

PSLE Week 8 Updates

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The CA 1 results came in this week and BB did fairly well, he could have done better, but we’ll work on that for the SA1 and the Prelims. GG didn’t do well in Maths, her nemesis subject, but other than that, she did ok in her other subjects. She still needs to up the ante though….

We also went to a Open Symposium at the School of the Arts (SOTA) as GG was interested in the school and try through DSA. It was quite a full house, but I felt that the process could have been handled better. Firstly it was not an open house – we were armed with questions and we didn’t get a chance to ask any. The open house is on the 11th of April, where you could see the school. This was billed as an hour’s programme and basically had the school principal and vice principal selling the school. While I understand the need to sell the school, but the fact is that unless you were a parent or child interested in the school, you would not be there at 7 pm on a Friday evening. Parents and children came there to see if the school is a right fit for them. Then once the hour’s worth of talk was over, we were moved to another place, by specialty (we were there for music) and taken to an auditorium, where someone from the faculty of music started talking. He was American (I think) and even though we were sitting halfway down the auditorium, what he spoke was very indistinct. He basically reiterated that was said above and not much in terms of new information. Then there was supposed to be a concert – by alumni and students! We didn’t wait for the concert and left at this point. GG is now having second and third thoughts about the school – one being the fact that school starts at 7:45 am, which means she needs to leave home by 6:30 am to get to school on time, notwithstanding any accidents or delays on the road….

In My Hands Today…

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Swallows of Kabul – Yasmin Khadra

Since the ascendancy of the Taliban the lives of Mosheen and his beautiful wife, Zunaira, have been gradually destroyed. Mosheen’s dream of becoming a diplomat has been shattered and Zunaira can no longer even appear on the streets of Kabul unveiled. Atiq is a jailer who guards those who have been condemned to death; the darkness of prison and the wretchedness of his job have seeped into his soul. Atiq’s wife, Musarrat, is suffering from an illness no doctor can cure. Yet, the lives of these four people are about to become inexplicably intertwined, through death and imprisonment to passion and extraordinary self-sacrifice.

The Swallows of Kabul is an astounding and elegiac novel of four people struggling to hold on to their humanity in a place where pleasure is a deadly sin and death has become routine.

Random Musings

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For a while now, I have been drawn to this shloka from the Mahabharat. What it means is that “You have the right to perform your actions, but you are not entitled to the fruits of the actions. Do not let the fruit be the purpose of your actions, and therefore you won’t be attached to not doing your duty”. So basically what it says is that a person should do what is it that they are supposed to be doing, but with no expectations from their deeds.

I am so drawn to this that I actually printed it out, along with the meaning in English and pasted it in my workspace – so that I am reminded of this every single minute and just do the work I am supposed to be doing, with no expectations. So no expecatations = no disappointments right?

In My Hands Today…

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The Feast of Roses (Taj Mahal Trilogy #2) – Indu Sundaresan

The love story of Emperor Jahangir and Mehrunnisa, begun in the critically praised debut novel The Twentieth Wife, continues in Indu Sundaresan’s The Feast of Roses. This lush new novel tells the story behind one of the great tributes to romantic love and one of the seven wonders of the world — the Taj Mahal.

Mehrunnisa, better known as Empress Nur Jahan, comes into Jahangir’s harem as his twentieth and last wife. Almost from the beginning of her royal life she fits none of the established norms of womanhood in seventeenth-century India.

Mehrunnisa is the first woman Jahangir marries for love, at the “old” age of thirty-four. He loves her so deeply that he eventually transfers his powers of sovereignty to her.

Power and wealth do not come easily to Mehrunnisa — she has to fight for them. She has a formidable rival in the imperial harem, Empress Jagat Gosini, who has schemed and plotted against Mehrunnisa from early on. Mehrunnisa’s problems do not just lie within the harem walls, but at court, too, as she battles powerful ministers for supremacy. These ministers, who have long had Emperor Jahangir’s confidence and trust, consider Mehrunnisa a mere woman who cannot have a voice in the outside world.

Mehrunnisa combats all of this by forming a junta of sorts with three men she can rely on — her father, her brother, and Jahangir’s son Prince Khurram. She demonstrates great strength of character and cunning to get what she wants, sometimes at a cost of personal sorrow when she almost loses her daughter’s love. But she never loses the love of the man who bestows this power upon her — Emperor Jahangir. The Feast of Roses is a tale of this power and love, the story of power behind a veil.

Taj Mahal Trilogy