And just like that, with the click of a finger, today is the last day of February.

I am still going strong with my resolutions and I am positively cautious that this will be sustained on an on-going basis for the rest of my life. My average steps per day were slightly less this month as compared to January, but I still managed to hit my target number each day. I have walked up to the norder between the states of Selangor and Perak. This means, from my house in the western part of Singapore, I have crossed the three states of Johor, Malacca and Negri Sembilan plus the Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur and almost traversed the state of Selangor with the state of Perak just a few kilometers away.

I am reading enough, but not enough for my standards yet. I do try to read for 15-20 minutes daily, but sometimes social media and other distractions get in the way. In the past two months, I have read 14 books and am ahead on my yearly target for books to read.

And on that note, today’s positivity quote is something I am going to abide by. Nobody is ever too old to set another goal or dream a new dream.

We are still seeing COVID-19 cases across the world, but there seems to be trend of the number of cases dropping in many countries. Singapore routinely sees single to low double digit cases almost everyday with most of them being cases coming into the country or imported cases as it’s called. Local cases are zero to low single digits on a daily basis but we will not be moving out of our current phase of mask wearing and having people in homes anytime soon. I assume and pray that sometime in end 2021 or maybe early 2022, there may be enough herd immunity or enough people vaccinated across most of the world to allow some sort of pre-COVID travel.

We also had some family over yesterday for a dinner after so long, that it was refreshing to sit down and have a good chat. We did abide by our social distancing rules and there were not more than eight people in the house.

Have a wonderful week and stay safe, stay masked and be careful, especially with the vulnerable in your family, community and the wider areas.

Today’s positivity quote is something we all need these days. Optimism has become a rare quality and we need to find something to be optimistic about. Because according to the author of this quote, Mary Lou Retton, optimism is a happiness magnet. If we think positive thoughts, then good things will happen to us.

This week was super hectic for me and I barely had time to catch my breath before the week ended. The children are a week before their exams and things are pretty quiet on that front too. They have gone through two semesters or one year of their first year and most of this year was online. BB has been going quite often to school this semester, but GG only had one face to face class per week. Hopefully, she will go back to school more often in year two.

Though the world has recorded more than 109 million active cases till date and more than 86 million of them having recovered from the disease which is about 99.6% of all infected. I also read that the daily reported cases of infections have been falling across the world for a month now and and on Tuesday, 16 February, hit their lowest since mid-October. This is good news for all of us, especially with vaccines being rolled out progressively across the world.

That’s all from me this week. Stay safe people!

This is the Chinese New Year weekend and to those celebrating the lunar new year, Gong Xi Fa Cai, Xin Nian Kuai Le!

Because of the long weekend, it’s been a very quiet week, both at home and at work. Actually things have changed a lot in the last decade or so in Singapore, especially during Chinese New Year or CNY. I remember when GG & BB were younger, the country used to pretty much be shut down during this period, especially the first two days. I remember only the ethnic enclaves of Little India and Kampong Glam used to be open at full strength and we used to stock up on groceries and other essentials so that we don’t need to make a trip down to the stores. On the third day, some supermarkets used to open with limited opening hours and limited, non-Chinese staff. But today, even on the first day, most supermarkets and stores are open, even if it is on a limited basis.

Here’s this week’s positive thought. It’s from Paulo Cohelo and is something we should all do. Positivity breeds positivity and so let’s be enthusiastic about what we do so we all can have a positive energy surrounding us at all times.

As of yesterday, world over, there were about 110 million cases in total with about twenty-five million active cases, of which slightly over 99 thousand or 0.4% of active cases are critical and of the more than 83 million closed cases, 97% or more than 80 million cases have recovered and two million cases or 3% of all cases died.

Many countries have ramped up vaccinations and are steadily vaccinating their population starting with essential and healthcare workers and then the elderly and the vulnerable. The most popular vaccine seems to be the Pfizer/ BioNTech with 57 countries currently administering the vaccine followed by Oxford/AstraZeneca in 34 countries and Moderna in 27 countries.

Most of the world looks to be fully vaccinated by late 2022 and hopefully everyone in the planet who needs a vaccine will be protected by early 2023 when life will finally go back to a semblance of normalcy. Till then, we owe it to ourselves, our families and loved ones and the elderly and vulnerable in our homes and communities to protect ourselves by masking up, practicing hygiene and safe distancing.

Stay safe people!

This week was a version of Hell week for GG because she has two projects due on the same day and one of them which was a coding project had some issues which her group just could not resolve. Just when it seemed that they had to redo the whole thing within one day, they managed to reach out to their teacher who helped them, albeit with some reduction in their final marks and they managed to submit it in time. The second project has issues because of some people in the group, one of whom was out the whole day on submission day which pissed off the rest of the group. GG is so mad at this person that she has decided that moving forward, she will not be in the same group as this person if she can help it.

BB on the other hand had a usual week, though I can see him studying more this semester compared to the previous one. He is confident of scoring much better this semester, but I don’t want to push my hopes too high, but I did have a dream one day of a certain semester GPA, so I am optimistic cautious of perhaps a chance this dream does come true. I did dream of their O level scores and BB’s score was bang on, but I was off by one point for GG though.

This week I saw a news report which brought a smile on my face. The world has hit a milestone this week in the sense that more people have been vaccinated than have been infected world over. A total of 119 million vaccine doses have been administered till date while the number of infections has reached about 106 million now. Of the active cases more than 99% have mild conditions and less than 0.5% of patiebts are in a critical condition. The USA has more than 27 million cases till date and India has 10 million cases till date. But if you look at total cases per 1 million of population, India drops to the 119th position at 7791 cases per 1 million of population while the US is at number is at number 7 with 82,511 cases per 1 million of population.

The Chinese diaspora will be celebrating the Chinese Lunar New Year next week and to all those who celebrate this festival, Xin Nian Quai Le and a Happy Lunar New Year to you and your family. I remember the last year when the cases hit Singapore just after CNY and we are here one year later with the end still looking quite far away!

Here’s today’s positive thought. It’s one I should also practice myself because at heart, I seem to attract negative thoughts so I am going to aim this week to only think positive thoughts.

I can’t believe that it’s the end of January! Even though I logically know that it’s the elasticity of time at work, it just feels like yesterday we started 2021 and tomorrow we will tear off the page of the calendar that is January.

To start, here’s today’s positivity quote:

I have been more or less consistent with my resolutions for the year. I figured that if I stayed on the course for one month, it would mean the resolutions have become some sort of a habit and will be easily kept for the rest of the year. As a back story, I used to slack on some of these items (which I already did in previous years), especially during weekends, but this time I have been quite diligent in following through each day, including weekends. I do have hopes for this year. I am also keeping a very strict eye on my blood sugar levels and have an ideal number to reach by the end of the year, but this is something that will take time, so wish me luck there.

I’m really proud of keeping up my target steps for the month every single day of the month (and I will walk today too to finish the month on a high) and so yesterday I thought I should track how much further I have walked this year. The driving distance between Singapore and Mumbai according to Google maps is 6,747 km and though I know I won’t to that distance in a year, I thought I should track where I will be if I do this virtually. So this month, I have walked enough to cross the border into Malaysia from my home and then walk across the state of Johor and reached the state of Malacca! I

Last year, and in January, I was not able to read as much as I wished, though I am still on track for my reading goals for the year. I am looking forward to reading more in February, especially non-fiction since that is something I want to read more this year. Let’s see how this pans out. Yesterday I attended some wonderful Zoom lectures organised by the Singapore National Library Board about reading and my key takeaway from one of the lectures was today because of so much digital distractions, we are not reading deeply and only skimming. This really struck hard because I am currently really struggling with reading. So I am going to really force myself to sit with a physical book each day and read with concentration for at least 20-30 minutes each day. This is such a far cry from a decade or two back when I could sit with a book and binge read for a couple of hours at the very minimum.

If you notice, I haven’t yet spoken about COVID. The world had its one hundred millionth case this week and we are at 102 million cases with the US at 26 million cases, India at 10.7 million cases and Brazil at 9.11 cases. Earlier in the week, we were told that its very possible that the panademic will continue for the next three to four years and masking, safe distancing and good hygiene habits will be a norm rather than something we are expected to do.

So stay safe, stay masked and be careful!