School holidays have ended and the children have gone to school for term 3 & 4 this morning. The house feels a bit empty this morning after being filled with their voices for a month.

This week we also managed to get their passports renewed. I could not get an e-appointment to pick up the passports, so we decided to just walk in. We had to wait for around 45 minutes, but this being Singapore, it was done very efficiently and quickly. The passports now have retina scans and fingerprints for the children also.

I also received notification from the ministry of manpower that my helper R’s contract is expiring in two months time. I am now in a real bind and don’t know if I should renew the contract or not. Without full-time work, it makes no sense for me to have a helper at home, especially since she does not have much to do now that the children are older.

One option is to wait for a couple of weeks to see if something clicks in the job front. If that happens, then it’s back to status quo and I don’t have to have any difficult conversations with R. Otherwise, I need to have to the difficult ‘it’s not you, it’s me‘ talk and ask her to look for other options. I will then become a SAHM for the next 16-18 months till the children complete their ‘O’ Levels and then look for full-time positions. We will not have any helper at that point since the children will be out pretty much the whole day. I will probably get some part-time helper to come help once or twice a week for the more intensive chores, but yes, that will be it. In the meantime, I am going to see if I can get some part-time work which I can do when the children are in school or some freelance work from home.

Anyway, let’s see what the future holds for us and me specifically.

Have a good week everyone!

This was a very quiet week for us. We returned back from our driving holiday to Melaka on Monday and though the drive from Melaka to Johor was done in around 3 hours, it took us more than two hours to make the drive from the bridge connecting Singapore and Malaysia to our home! This was because of a horrible jam on the bridge with heightened security. On a normal day, this should not take more than 30 minutes. I guess this increased security and checking was because of the Kim-Trump summit which was to happen in Singapore the next day. We also encountered this long jam going into Malaysia and a trip which should not take more than 25 minutes to clear Singapore immigration, then cross the causeway and clear Malaysian immigrations took more than two hours. This completely put us off going in the next day, so we just chilled at home.

The week ended with a long week due to the Hari Raya or Eid Al  Fitri holiday and again, we pretty much stayed at home. The week rounded off with a home-cooked Father’s Day dinner for S.

Have a great week folks!

Welcome, June! We’re reaching the halfway mark in 2018 and I’m super conflicted about this year. On one hand, time seems to be moving slowly with each day similar to the other, but on the other hand, it also seems to be moving at warp speed with the months just flying past.

This week was pretty much similar to the others and so there’s nothing really to add.

I’ve been noticing something about my hair recently, so thought to share. Maybe someone who reads this has gone through this before and shed light on why this is happening. All my life, I’ve had poker straight hair. I used to have a boring hairstyle all the time because anything I do, within a couple of hours, it would go back to being poker straight. I never really resented this (except when there was a trend of having bangs in my school and I could never cut my hair like that) and actually loved my straight hair. A couple of months back, I realised that the middle of my hair started to become wavy. I initially thought it was because I usually bun my hair when I am at home and started bunning it less. But this waviness did not go away. I don’t know what to do, really miss my straight hair now. I read online that this could be due to hormonal changes, stress and also food, so I need to research more on what could be done.

Anyway, we’re off on our holiday later this month, so I am excited about this, especially since we will be doing a driving/road trip which we haven’t done in years!

Have a wonderful week folks!