Tag Archives: 2017

Secondary 2 Week 35 Update

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Today is the last day of the September school holidays. GG doesn’t want to go back to school tomorrow because she knows when school starts, she will be under pressure since exams start in two weeks!

Both had a chilled week at home during the holidays, though BB went back to school one day for a supplementary lesson and GG went to her friends place twice to complete some holiday project work.

Stress will begin to build up when school starts as teachers will start pushing the children to put more efforts in their work. This is an important exam for them as it is a streaming year. Especially for those who want to take the popular courses (aka most science options) need to do well as the choices they make and the selections the schools make, depend on the marks they get in total.

This was our school update for the week, next week may bring more updates. Have a wonderful Sunday!

2017 Week 34 Update

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This week was a relatively short week with the long weekend as Singapore celebrated the feast of sacrifice or Hari Raya Haji as it is called here. We are now in September and counting down to the last few months of the year!

This weekend, we went out together as a family after a long time. I needed to buy a jacket for work and so decided to make an evening out of it. We went and shopped and then had dinner. It was an enjoyable evening.

I am looking to buy a fitness tracker and am quite confused about what to buy. I looked at the Fitbit Alta and the Flex but also like the Charge. Also, I want something which is discrete, by which I mean I don’t want to advertise the fact that I am using a fitness tracker. I used to have a Fitbit Pebble (is that the right name?) and used to clip it to my clothes or even into my pockets and nobody knew I had one. Is there one like that in the market now? Anyone with more information, please comment below so I can decide soon. My current fitness tracker is my phone and I am using the Argus app to track steps, water, movement etc. The only downside to this is that I have to make sure I am carrying my phone in my hand or in a pocket all the time and sometimes that becomes cumbersome, which is why I am looking for a new tracker.

Work-wise, I am reaching my three-month mark here and this should end the probation period. I still haven’t had any one-on-one with my manager, in spite to asking multiple times, so this is something I probably will have to give up on. Maybe when the time comes to do your annual goals, my manager will finally find time for me.

Something happened this week and I realised that this organisation was willing to spend hundreds of thousands on an event, even provide tickets which are worth thousands free of cost just to fill up seats, but would not spend a few few hundreds to allow staff to take taxis home after a 15-hour work day, because the time would not yet be 9 pm at that point (which is the official policy to  allow taxi claims)! So all the posturing about staff welfare, including having staff fun clubs is just that – posturing. They don’t put their money where their mouth is.

The other thing I am excited about is my parents coming to Singapore. I  just applied for their visa over the weekend and think it should be approved sometime this week. I have also sent my list of items to buy from Mumbai and am waiting for the goodies next month!

Have a wonderful September and an awesome week!

 

Secondary 2 Week 32 Update

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This week felt very fractured, especially for the children!

Monday was the festival of Avani Avittam and since I had already secured permission for BB to miss part of the school that day, he was dropped off in school only around noon. So he was in school for just part of the day. Tuesday was the eve of National Day and so there was no lessons that day. Because BB & S went to the temple to pray and do the Gayatri Mantra, he missed school that day (again we had already taken permission and his school told us if it ends late he need not come into school because there would be no lessons). Wednesday and Thursday was holidays because of National Day and the day after for school students and it was only Friday that BB had a full day of school!

GG also had only two full days at school – Monday and Friday because of the same reasons. Yesterday her school had another streaming talk for parents and students. GG had a test in Hindi school, so only I went in to see what this was all about. A couple of days prior to this, I had an interesting discussion with one of the teachers from her school. Since I am part of the parent support group, I was able to speak to this teacher who was the school liaison person. I wanted to see if GG could do some humanities subjects at a higher level if she was not able to get a lateral transfer this year to the higher level. Since the school’s focus in in STEM subjects, unfortunately this is not possible since they don’t even have interesting humanities subjects available. So she has no choice but do the subjects available and then make sure she does well enough at her O levels so that she can enter her subject of choice for her tertiary education.

The term is coming to an end by the end of this month and then term 4 is usually a very short one since they will focus on exams during this term and then it’s the end of Secondary 2 for them. We have to exercise our stream choices sometime in October and results will be out sometime in early to mid-November. I only pray that both GG & BB get their subject choices.

This was a National Day week! Have a blessed Sunday everyone!!

2017 Week 31 Update

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This was quite a boring week at work, I still have not figured out what my exact role is. The work I currently have gets finished in a matter of hours and I have to figure out what to do the rest of the day. Roles are very tightly delineated in this organisation and one does not do beyond what you have been hired to do. This is something that rankles me a lot since I love a variety and am the sort who gets bored easily doing the same work all the time. Even if it’s the same work, unless there is some variety to it, I tend to do it very mechanically and switch off from it, which is what I  see happening here if things don’t change soon. I was told there will be a

I was told there will be a reorganisation happening soon which is the result of the merger which happened, so I am hopeful (or not) of something there. If that doesn’t happen, then I guess it’s just about marking time till I am here for a decent amount of time, doing what I have to do, and then leave when a better opportunity opens up.

Later today (or rather in a couple of hours), we will leave to do the pooja for BB’s first Avani Avittam. I have blogged about this unique tambram ‘boys and men only’ festival before and since it’s the first time BB will celebrate it after his sacred thread ceremony last year, it’s a special pooja. It’s a first for me too since I don’t have any brothers and my dad’s ceremony would have happened long before I was born, I am looking forward to it. I’ll post more about it later in the week.

Have a wonderful week and to any Singaporean readers, Happy 52nd National Day to you. This National Day is also a special one to me, one that I will reveal in due course.

Secondary 2 Week 31 Update

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Another week and we are one more week closer to the end of the year!

This was a sort of boring week for both children, so nothing really to update.

GG got back some of the results of her common test and she was the highest in her class for Geography but didn’t do as well as I expected in Science (which is her weakest subject).

Next week is Singapore’s National Day so a school holiday and then a half day before the holiday to celebrate the day in school. So out o f five school days, only three will be about studies!

Have a wonderful Sunday!