I get this feeling more and more recently that with COVID, we take two steps forward and then three steps backwards! After weeks of low case counts and some days of zero cases, there suddenly erupted a new cluster involving some KTV lounges. A KTV lounge for the uninitiated is a kind of nightclub with karaoke machines and hostesses. The cluster now has grown to more than 88 cases. And here we were thinking that the end is not that far away.

On the other side, Indonesia has emerged as Asia’s hotspot with more than 50,000 cases in a single day displacing India from the position. The super contagious Delta variant is what is wreaking havoc in the archipelago. The Delta variant has now been declared the most dominant strain worldwide having been detected around 100 countries across the world. There are now more than 190 million cases worldwide.

On the other hand, vaccine hesitancy is a real thing with many, even in Singapore, hesitating for various reasons to get vaccinated. Only about a quarter of the world’s population has been vaccinated with at least one dose, while it is less than 7% in India. In Singapore about 70% of the resident population has had at least one dose of the vaccine and about 43% are fully vaccinated. The sooner we all get vaccinated, the better equipped we are to face the uncertainties and life can move on to some sense of normality.

This week was the pretty much the same as last week and the one before that and will probably be similar to the next week. The children are busy with school work and project submissions. Their third semester will end in a couple of months and that’s the halfway point of their poly life, which was spent in home-based learning. This is a sore point with GG as she feels that her experience of poly life has been spoilt because of the pandemic. BB goes to school more than her because of lab and she is very sore about that.

This week’s quote asks us to surround ourselves with those who see the goodness in yourself, so even if you don’t believe in yourself, you have a posse who do and will do their best to boost you up.

That’s all from me for this week, have a great week people and as always, stay safe and stay vaccinated.

This week BB & GG finally went for their second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine and with their our entire household is fully vaccinated. They took the vaccine on Friday afternoon so that any aftermath could be dealt with over the weekend and they would not have to miss school. BB had a bit of fever, but other than pain and soreness in the arm which was vaccinated, they escaped relatively unscathed.

This week’s quote continues to tell us that we need to be the attitude we want around us. If we want positivity, we should be positive ourselves. We need to be that what we want around us, we need to see what we are in others.

GG & BB have been busy with school and so this week has been pretty quiet. I have also been writing and walking and of course, working as usual. So in essence, life goes on as normal. Hopefully with more residents fully vaccinated, life can start moving back to a new semblance of normal. I have also heard that we would need booster shots sometime next year, so perhaps a year or so from when we would have taken the second shot, I suppose.

But the one thing I miss is the ability to travel, which I am sure many share the same sentiment! We will get there sooner or later, we just need to make sure we get vaccinated and persuade anyone we know who has still not been vaccinated and maintain proper social distancing protocols. So take care folks and stay safe!

We’re now at the halfway mark in the year and like how 2020 was, 2021 seems to be flying past as well.

I have been reading, but not as much. These days, I seem to watch Netflix and YouTube more than I read, so from this month I have decided to take a book, set the timer for an hour and just read. Hopefully this will spur me to read more and not less as I am currently doing. I seriously feel social media, games on my phone and Netflix are a serious detriment to my reading. Is that the same with you too?

This week’s positivity quote is a simple one and exhorts us to always remain positive and keep thinking positive thoughts, because positive thinking is a key part of effective stress management. When you remain positive, it has many health benefits like an increased life span, lower rates of depression and distress, a greater resistance to the common cold, better psychological and physical well-being, including cardiovascular health and reduced risk of death from cardiovascular disease as well as better coping skills during hardships and times of stress

I’ve covered a distance of more than 1,400 km as of end June now which takes me about 150 km inside the province of Chumphon in Thailand. I am still about 500 km south of Thailand’s capital of Bangkok, but my route will bypass one of my favourite cities and will instead take a left towards Myanmar at Ratchburi. I am still more than 5,000 km away from my home in Mumbai and I think this trek will take me at least a good part of 2022 to reach. I hope by the end of 2021, I at least reach the state of Manipur in northeast India, which borders Myanmar and then 2022 will be all about traversing the huge subcontinent that is India. My personal goal for 2021 was 2021 km, of which I have covered almost 70%.

Sometime this week, India recorded it’s 400,000^th COVID related death, though the US still leads in total deaths, with Brazil following close by and India in the third place. In terms of daily new cases being reported, Brazil seems to lead the pack with India in second place and Colombia next, followed by the UK and Indonesia. In terms of total doses of vaccinations given, China leads with nearly 16% of the population fully vaccinated, followed by India with about 4.5% of the population fully vaccinated and the US in third place with nearly half its population fully vaccinated. In terms of populations fully vaccinated, 11.1% of the world’s population is fully vaccinated and Seychelles has almost 70% of its population fully vaccinated with the Cayman Islands in second place with 69% of the population fully vaccinated and Malta in third place with two thirds of its population fully vaccinated. Singapore is at number 32 for the percentage of population fully vaccinated with about 37% fully vaccinated and expected to have about two thirds of the population fully vaccinated by its National Day on 09 August.

In Singapore, when BB & GG got their first dose, the duration between the first and second doses was moved up from three weeks (which was what we had) to six weeks. But last week, we learnt that the second dose could be brought forward and now they will get their second dose later next week.

This was all from us this week. Stay safe and get vaccinated if you have not yet, please do as soon as you can. See you next week!

Another week ends and we are looking at the second half of 2021 very soon. This was a very quiet week for us and nothing really happened.

Singapore has vaccinated nearly 6 million residents now with about 3 million residents fully vaccinated and will increase to daily vaccination rate to 80 thousand doses daily, up from 47 thousand. This respresents about 36% of the population with a plan for two thirds of the population to be fully vaccinated by Singapore’s National Day. And there are also plans to ease our restrictions once that magical number is hit, hopefully sometime in mid-July.

India has given out 300 million doses with 52 million people fully vaccinated, accounting for 3.9% of its population. Worldover, nearly 3 billion people have been given at least one dose of vaccine and about 805 million fully vaccinated accounting for 10.4% of the world’s population. We still have far to go to achieve a world herd immunity of what experts say 75-80% of the world’s population being fully vaccinated so life can go back to a semblance of some normal. But as all things are wont to so, we know that things will get better, we have hope on our side.

And this segues very nicely into our quote for the week which is about hope and belief. When we believe, we are already hallway to achieving what we believe in according to Theodore Roosevelt, the 26^th President of the United States.

Please get vaccinated if you are eligible and convince those around you, in your family, your friends and your community about the benefits of vaccination if they are still on the fence. The faster everyone in the world gets vaccinated, the sooner we can get back to a normal life, the sooner we can start travelling. This is especially true for people like me who have parents and family living in another country and can’t see them unless travel gets normalised. Stay safe everyone!

There is a tremendous amount of determination and resilience in the human spirit and when we fail, we discover new meanings to our lives, forcing us to reach deep to find solutions to the problems that have plagued us. This is exactly what this quote attributed to Winston Churchill tells us. Whenever we feel rejected and are bogged down by failure, we must remember that this is not the end, what matters is that we must brush it off, get up and fight more.

This brings us to the worldwide fight against COVID-19 with the help of vaccinations. Singapore has about 47% of the eligible people vaccinated with at least one dose of the vaccine and the aim is to have at least 80% of the population vaccinated with at least the first dose by mid-August. Worldwide, about 21% of the population has been vaccinated with at least one dose and Asia is also pretty much at the same number. India’s 15.5% of the population has been vaccinated with at least one dose and has vaccinated about 15.5% of its population. I understand that the target to fully vaccinate the population is 31 December 2021, but at current levels of vaccinations, it would mean that the vaccine rates will need to four times more than the current rates to reach the target of 31 December.

This week, I was completely unproductive and I think it was a counterpoint to last week’s super productive week, so here’s hoping this coming week will be a good one for me. GG & BB also had a quiet week, though BB had to go back to school one day to make up for those lab lessons which had to be cancelled because of the restrictions last month.

That’s all from us this week, stay safe, stay masked and get vaccinated people!