School year (or “The Madness” as I’d like to call it) begins

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School started yesterday and BB & GG enter a new phase – they will give their Primary School Leaving Exam (PSLE) at the end of this year and leave the safe, secure and, perhaps a little too comfy world of Primary School and enter the independent world of Secondary school. This, along with grappling with the trials and tribulations of being a teen!

My posts this year may be a bit too much about the PSLE, but since it’s such a major exam in Singapore, and with two of them taking it together, it’s quite understandable, me thinks!

Also, this is probably the last year, the two of them will be together in the same school. Who knows what the next year will bring, although I am praying with all that I have that they get admissions into the schools of their choice (should I actually reveal it here or is that tempting fate?)

While dropping off GG & BB at their school yesterday morning, I saw all the fresh faced Primary 1 children and their parents, all crowded around the children in the school foyer and this took me back six back when me and S were one of those parents. We huddled around our children and followed them to their classes. Parents are not allowed inside the classroom and we were all outside, our eyes searching for offspring and clicking away to glory! After a few minutes, they ask you to go down and wait in the canteen so that teachers can bring the class to order and also get to know the children. We waited till recess and then again a mad rush to see our children. Most of the children buy food, but we’ve always sent BB & GG with home-cooked food to school, be it recess or lunch! Then another wait till school dismissal. I think I went home and came back at dismissal.

Their school also has a tradition of giving every incoming Primary 1 child a medal on the third day of school (the last day of the orientation and before the teachers start  the real teaching) and parents and their seniors (aka Primary 2) are invited for the ceremony. The Principal usually gives a nice speech about the school, it’s values and how they hope the children imbibe these values and make the school proud of them….

Now it’s my children’s turn to do well in their PSLE and make their school proud of them….

Speaking of which, BB is getting an Edusave Merit Award this Sunday for doing well in school – he came in the top three in his class for Maths, Science and English and if not for his pathetic marks in Hindi, will be in the top class! GG is jealous as she got this award last year, along with BB, but P5 proved too much for her. I’ve consoled her that if she gets the marks and the T-score she is aiming for in the PSLE, she will definitely get the award next year.

In My Hands Today…

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Mrs. McGinty’s Dead – Agatha Christie

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Mrs. McGinty died from a brutal blow to the back of her head. Suspicion falls immediately on her shifty lodger, James Bentley, whose clothes reveal traces of the victim’s blood and hair. Yet something is amiss: Bentley just doesn’t seem like a murderer.

Could the answer lie in an article clipped from a newspaper two days before the death? With a desperate killer still free, Hercule Poirot will have to stay alive long enough to find out…

2015 Life Goals

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Displaying image.pngAnother tradition I have is to put down my goals for the new year on Jan 1st year. Now whether or not I follow through it is debatable….

This year I want to be my breakthrough year with no Resolutions, instead what I want to do is have Life Goals for 2015. These are more like goal posts of my life and I want to steer my life towards them. Resolutions seems something everyone says they will do on Jan 1 and promptly breaks it on Jan 02nd!

So without any much ado, here are my Life Goals for 2015

  • Use the treadmill for a minimum of 30 minutes for a minimum of 6 days a week
  • Eat healthily with minimum junk food – no foraging biscuits in the office either!
  • Lose a minimum of 10% of my body weight as on 1st Jan (which shall remain a secret here, but let’s just say that I do need to lose 10 20 kgs to reach my ideal BMI range). With this 10%, I still will be overweight, but slightly better than where I am today
  • Get my 3 monthly HBA1c count to between 5 and 6
  • Work with BB & GG to help them get good PSLE scores and get admissions into the schools of their choice.
  • Start working on revamping my resume. Talk to some resume experts and rework it. Start applying for jobs with the new resume in 2015 Q4, even if it’s where I am currently working in.
  • Take time for myself. Complete atleast 5 courses in Coursera – I have already signed up for 3 courses, which start sometime in March/April 2015, so this is one goal I should be able to reach easily.
  • Try to meditate once a week, increasing it to a 2-3 times by the time the year end rolls by.
  • Try one new hobby – something I always to try, but never had the courage/time/pick your excuse to do…
  • And the most important one – atleast here – write more often – minimum three times a week on both blogs!

There! A fairly big list of things to complete in 2015. Hopefully, now that I have put it down on paper, I will be forced to do it.

What do you think? Do it think they are doable? Am I trying too many things at the same time? Too ambitious?

2014 Reflections

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Sunrise at the Angkor Wat, Cambodia

Irrespective of how much I blog in a year, I usually do one on the 31st of December as a way to reflect on the year that went by and also try (the operative word here) to put in goals and resolutions for the new year.

Family

2014 was a mixed year with some good and bad happenings. The year actually started well with both BB and GG getting Edusave Awards. All of us were super thrilled and had hoped that this will spur them to do well in school in the current year too! Alas, as usual Hindi was the party pooper and for GG Maths also proved to be the subject she just does not get the grips of. BB did better in school than GG with being in the top in his class for his other three subjects – English, Maths and Science and will be getting his award for 2014 this Sunday.

Their school choir also won a Distinction at the Singapore Youth Festival in April and I was one of the parent volunteers there. We were in school at 5:30 am to get the children ready L and they were scheduled to perform around 10 at the School of The Arts (SOTA). All in all it was a wonderful experience for all of us – both children and parents! We came home tired and exhausted that day, but seeing the school (SOTA), GG wants to now try to apply for the school for DSA next year.

Health-wise, mostly it’s been positive for everyone. I was the only one who had a health scare this year. In July, after a particularly bad case of an abscess, I was warded in hospital to have it surgically removed and in the process discovered that I am a Diabetic! It was my Type 2 Diabetes which was responsible for the abscess in the first place and in a way I am glad it came when it did as it helped me get diagnosed.  It was a shock to anyone who knows me as I am someone who does not have a sweet tooth and prefer spicy foods to sweet any time! Anyways, I’m on medication and will probably have to have it for the rest of my life. My last HBA1c test had a fasting sugar rate of 7 which is in the upper end of what normal people have. My primary care doctor is happy, but I want this number to be on the median level – somewhere around 5.5 to 6.

Other than this health scare, which made me stay at home for three weeks (but I was working all the days at home, so no real rest), and other than usual colds, coughs and flu, we are all healthy. S has been having some real bad back pain over the last few days, so hopefully today’s medical check-up will only reveal it’s bad posture and maybe approaching old age and nothing serious.

GG decided to drop her ballet, something she has been doing since she was 3.5 years old, around 8 years back! Gosh, now that I put it down, it’s been more than three quarters of her life so far. She’s been losing interest in it for a while and every few months would speak of dropping it. It was only me who kept pressuring her to continue. But then when she was unsuccessful in her last exam, I decided to let her drop it and concentrate on her studies. No point in spending money on something if she no longer has the passion for it anymore. She says she wants to try modern or contemporary dance now, we’ll see after the end of this year.

Our helper R has will complete her contract in February next year and she has indicated she wants to continue with us, which is good. She’s been wonderful so far, and if you close one eye to things about her which irk you, this arrangement is a good one for both of us. I definitely need a helper for the next year and after that it really depends on how our life takes flight. We may be able to do away with a full time helper and have a part-timer coming in when we are not at home. Or I may just decide to continue with this arrangement, if things go according to the plan I have in my mind – more on that when I write about goals.

Work:

Again a good year for me professionally. I did well at work and my bonuses proved that, but this position, although good, is not something I would like to see myself doing on a long-term basis. This position, at a large MNC is on a contract basis and the position involves some administrative work, which I would prefer not to do. Readers who may think why I took up this position when I was not very comfortable doing it may read this post I wrote same time last year which has the why’s in more detail. I don’t have anything against admin work, but it’s not something I trained in and not something I see myself in doing on a long-time basis. My boss, the guy who initially recruited me has also moved on – he has moved to another country with a promotion, so although I am real happy for him – could not have happened to a better person, I also no longer have any guilt for leaving him (I am like this – have very strong loyalty, especially to the person I report to and if he/she has recruited me, it’s multiplied many times and feel guilty when I try to leave a company). I will, in any case, spend 2015 in this same company, honing skills learnt here – and I have learnt so much in the two years I have been here! Then by the end of the year, if no other opportunity in this organization comes up, I will start to look for any opportunity to move in. Win-Win right?

In the meantime, I need to work on some social (read office politics) skills here which I hope to do this year….

In My Hands Today…

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The Lost and Forgotten Languages of Shanghai – Ruiyan Xu

When an explosion reverberates through the Swan Hotel in Shanghai, it is not just shards of glass and rubble that come crashing down. Li Jing, a successful and happily married businessman, awakens from brain surgery to find he is able to utter only the faltering phases of English he learnt as a child – a language that his wife Meiling and their young son cannot speak.

When an American neurologist arrives, tasked with teaching Li Jing to speak fluently again, she is as disoriented as her patient in this bewitching, bewildering city. As doctor and patient grow closer, feelings neither of them anticipated begin to take hold – feelings that Meiling, who must fight to keep both her husband’s business and her family afloat, does not need a translator to understand.