It’s the end of October and just two more months before 2022 comes around.

This month, I have not really been walking much, especially in the last week since I have been busy with preparations for Diwali which will take place next week. So far, I have made some sweets and savouries, but need to make a couple more before I can call it a day.

This month, I managed to hit my reading goals for the year and any more books I am reading now are just the icing on the cake. Let me see exactly how many I manage to finish by December.

GG & BB are busy with school and some days I barely get to see them, except in the morning and then in the evening after lessons are over for the day. It’s good that they keep busy, hopefully, this semester is good for them.

This week’s quote is a continuation of last week’s quote. Being grateful for things and people around you makes sense of one’s past, brings peace today and creates a vision for what one wants for tomorrow. Gratitude is the one thing that is special and unique to you and being grateful for the little things in life makes life worth living.

Cases in Singapore are surging and showing no signs of reducing. This is quite worrying and is putting the country in a risky category across the world. But we must persevere and hope for the surge to stop just as suddenly as it started. I have also gotten an appointment to get my booster shot, so that’s a bit safer.

That’s all from me this week. To all my readers, Hindu or otherwise, here’s wishing you a very Happy Diwali. May the festival of lights banish all darkness from your lives and make it joyful, happy and prosperous.

Today’s quote is gold in my opinion. I have written about having an attitude of gratitude and this is something I have been doing for some months now. When one starts to acknowledge and be grateful to what we already have in our lives, we already find ourselves enriched and abundant. If you haven’t already started doing so, please take a few minutes each day to pen down what you are grateful for in your life that day.

GG & BB have started school with BB already having physical lessons on a compressed schedule and GG still on virtual classes, but she will start going to school a few times a week from Monday.

With more and more Vaccinated Travel Lanes starting from Singapore, I am waiting for when there will be a VTL with India so not only can I go down and meet my parents, but my helper R can go home and get her son married off. She is insisting that at least I go with her for the wedding, but unless there is quarantine-free travel available, this will not be possible.

We’ve started prepping for the biggest Indian festival – Diwali and from next week, I will start making the sweets and savouries I usually make. I am quite excited about the festival as its one that’s close to every Indian’s heart.

That’s all from us this week, take care and stay safe everyone.

I absolutely love this week’s quote which comes to us courtesy of Joyce Meyer. She says a truly content and thankful person is the happiest person around and that is so true. If you are thankful for and are content with what you have, you are happier than the richest person around you. Simple, effective and so very true.

This week is the last week of holidays before school starts for BB & GG. BB has all in-person lessons but compressed into three days while GG has a combination of home based and in-person learning.

Over the weekend, one by one, we were felled by a bad cold, starting with BB, so the weekend is going by by drinking lots of fluids, lemon and ginger teas. It’s almost 18 months since I last got a cold and I for one, don’t really miss it. I think our increased general hygiene has a lot to contribute to this.

Singapore has opened VTLs or Vaccinated Travel Lanes with 11 countries now, including Brunei Darussalam, Germany, Canada, Denmark, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, the United Kingdom, the United States and South Korea. This means that those coming back from these countries need not quarantine themselves after coming back. I am waiting for a VTL to start between Singapore and India, but it does not look to happen anytime soon. I hope though there’s a VTL with India at least by early next year so I can go to India to visit my parents.

S and I will also be eligible for the booster shot and we should get it as soon as hit hit the six month mark from our second dose, so that should happen sometime next month.

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

Today’s positive quote is from the famous activist, Martin Luther King Jr and tells us about not to lose hope. Hope is the one thing that keeps us doing doing what we do each and every time, all the time. A life without hope is a life that is completely barren. So even if we do accept disappointments, we cannot, never lose hope.

So why talk about hope today? Cases in Singapore are rising at a steady rate and we are looking at about 3,500 plus cases on a daily basis now with cases poised to hit the 5,000 mark very soon. But the good news is that most of the affected are either asymptotic or with very mild symptoms.  I’ve stopped thinking about and even obsessively checking the daily numbers because now I know we have to live with this. Singapore is also starting and is in talks with multiple countries for quarantine free travel and this means that people can start to travel again. I am now waiting when India will come on this list and hope that day is not too far away. I also read that India is opening up to tourists and visitors and people can start travelling to India from as early as mid-October.

As I mentioned last week, GG was hospitalised for about 12 hours and has now been diagnosed with hypothyroidism. She has to take a tablet for the rest of her life and she is coping with it well. She wakes up at 4 am, takes the medicine and goes back to sleep. This is because she can’t eat or drink anything for an hour and has to avoid diary products and anything that has calcium in it for four hours. So having the medicine at 4 am allows her to eat breakfast around 8 am.

My parents have finally made a decision to move to a retirement community outside Mumbai. They are currently there now looking at possible homes to rent or buy and this is making me sad on many levels. On one hand, I am happy that my parents will be in a place where they will access to healthcare and not really be alone as we have extended family in that place. This is especially true since my father has been diagnosed with a degerative disease about five years back and over this period, he has slowly, but definitely gotten worse. So this move is for their better. I am quite sad that I will be unable to visit Mumbai again. I do hope I can make one last trip, but in the current situation, it looks unlikely. I may make a trip when my sister visits India and stay with her for a bit just to get my Bombay fix, but that will be all I can do now.

That’s all from my side this week. Stay safe and take care everyone!

I am better than I used to be is how this affirmation is attributed to Marianne Williamson. And it is something I need this week. I keep repeating this over and over this week.

On Friday, we went for a scheduled appointment of a gynaecological nature for GG. To continue the investigation, they did a couple of blood tests and we were immediately called back after just a couple of hours because of some abnormalities in her blood work. And so we went from the first hospital to another, bigger one, because the first hospital didn’t have the resources we needed. She was admitted because the doctors felt they needed to run some more tests and long story short, she has been diagnosed with a thyroid condition which will be most likely a lifelong one. Luckily, she was discharged within 12 hours and we all were so relieved.

I have been walking slightly more this month because I want to reach India’s borders by the end of this year. This month, I have walked 489 steps and 320 km which brings me to have walked about 2330 km, well into Myanmar, crossing the Kayin State and into the Mon State. I am now about 1100 km from India’s borders.

I have also been reading slightly more this month compared to August. I am almost in spitting distance of my goal for the year, but will continue to read more and beat the goal! I have read 72 books till the end of September, so now I am thinking, I should move the goalposts a bit.

Cases continue to increase in Singapore and I am waiting for that peak, after which things will start calming down. We’re taking so many precautions that yesterday when we went to get GG discharged from the hospital, it took more than 2 hours just to get to her! This including multiple registrations and contact tracing and an Antigen Rapid Test or ART. Hopefully, this will slow down the virus, especially for the elderly and the vulnerable.

That’s all from us this week! Take care and stay safe everyone.