Tag Archives: 2018

2018 Week 1 Update

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The first week of the new year and it was the usual sort of week for me.

The children have started school and I am back to my usual routine of writing and looking for new positions. Because most people are still on holiday or probably clearing the work that accumulated over the holidays, I am still in waiting mode.

It was a hectic weekend for us. On Saturday, S and I drove down to a couple of polytechnics here which had open houses to check out the courses that the children are interested in. I was quite impressed by what the polys had to offer and so I think the choices the children are making are correct. We are actually two years early, but wanted to check them out earlier in case the choices were wrong and we had to recalibrate!

On Sunday, GG received again the Edusave Scholarship Award which is awarded to the top 10% of students of her cohort. I hope she wins this award next year also, but it looks quite unlikely since she has now moved to the better stream and it may be difficult to achive this.

Here’s looking forward to a productive week!

 

2018 Secondary 3 Week 1

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School has started and life is beginning to get hectic for BB & GG!

GG started school on a very positive note. As I have mentioned previously, she moved up to the better stream and is doing more humanities subjects. These are subjects she is very interested in and wants to make a career in one of those. She is also exploring about becoming a  teacher, so we’ll have to see how this all pans out.

She also started the school year falling sick but has soldiered on because of practice for the choir. They had a performance yesterday for the incoming sec 1s and were promoting their CCA to get interested students to join and despite having a temperature, she went to school and gave it her all! Last year, her form teacher, who also manages the choir mentioned that she will be up for a CCA leadership position. Oh, and she also managed to become the class secretary, so that’s one more leadership position for her.

BB’s Sec 3 life is not as dramatic as that of his sister, but he is also doing the subjects he enjoys. The pace has also picked up for him with homework being given out right from the first lesson. Some subjects are new, yet old, like pure physics, pure chemistry, advanced math and pure history. He also has said that he likes all his teachers, so hopefully this year he does better than sec 2.

Later today, GG will receive her second consecutive scholarship award. I’m trying to get BB to also achieve this award next year, let’s see! Both children will have their common tests next month, so I need to start being on their case.

Hope 2018 has been good for you so far. Again, Happy New Year!!

 

 

 

 

Looking back…..and Facing forward….

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As we start the first week of 2018, let me do a short recap of my year that was in 2017 as well as some ideas on how I want this year to work out for me.

 

2017 started as usual for me, with looking for a job which didn’t materialise until the middle of the year. But what a position it turned out to be! I was bullied in my second week there by a subordinate and that’s when I knew I had to get out. I started looking for positions immediately, but before I could leave, I was asked to leave. I hated it there and so when the shock of having this thrust on me abated, I was really relieved. I attribute this 100% to my manager, who approved decisions I took, but turned around and lied about those decisions, even though it was approved by email! This person is a very strong-willed person with a personality to match and when confronted, I didn’t push back, which was, in retrospect, something I am not very proud of. Anyway, karma worked and what this person did to me was done to them in less than two months time!

The children had good school years. GG did especially well and she managed to move to the better stream (after we managed to convince her school principal that she can do it). She now gets to do the subjects she enjoys and excels in and hopefully will continue to thrive in school. BB, on the other hand, managed to squeeze into his stream of choice by a whisker. I was mentally prepared that he will not get into the pure science stream as his science marks just about made the cut-off marks for the stream and was already psyching him for other science-related subjects, but when the streaming results were declared, both of us did a little jig on seeing his name in the pure science class.

 

That was 2017, what do I want to do in 2018?

 

For one, I want to lose 10% of my total body weight as on 01 January. I have checked my weight on Monday (and I am conscious enough of it that I don’t want to reveal it to the whole internet), and will be tracking it with an eagle’s eye!

Continuing on the health theme, my last HbA1C reading put me in the upper end of the acceptable range and I want to bring this down to the lower end and in the healthy range by the end of the year. I have my next test in February, just after the Chinese New Year and so want to have some positive news there.

Other health and beauty related resolutions are to meditate daily for at least 10 minutes, put on a face mask every day for 365 days and clock an average of 10,000 steps daily. These should be fairly doable I think, I just need to be consistent and not give in to laziness and complacency.

I also want to write more this year, both in this blog and elsewhere. I dream of being a published author and want to take steps to achieve this by perhaps submitting a short story. I am going to work on this dream too this year.

On the job front, I am going to be super discerning about where I apply jobs to and even after I interview, I will not accept any position just because I get offered one. I don’t want a repetition of what happened in 2017, so I rather am safe than sorry.

I also want to travel and we’ve already started planning our year-end holiday where I want to explore parts of India I’ve never been to. I also want to do a solo trip, but I am not sure if this will pan out this year, but it’s something I am putting here, in the hope that the universe will let it happen.

So that’s what my plans for 2018 are. What about you? Have you made any plans? Or are you someone who wings it? Do comment below and I’d love to hear from you.