We’re in the last week of 2016 and I for one am glad that this year has come to an end. 

Merry Christmas everyone! May this day of joy bring the true meaning of the season to everyone’s hearts…

Last week GG got a letter from MOE (Ministry of Education) that she has obtained a scholarship for doing well in school. She was ecstatic, to say the least and was jumping up and down in sheer joy. The money is not much, but a recognition of her hard work during the year. For the first time in more than three years, BB didn’t get anything – neither the scholarship nor the merit bursary. He shrugged it off, but I could see he was very disappointed. Hopefully he buckles down in 2017 and studies hard. This is an important year for both – its streaming year where they get to choose their subjects for their O levels. For GG it’s her last chance to get into the better stream. 

I also helped out in BB’s school this week for the new Secondary 1 registrations. This is something I plan to do on a regular basis this year, irrespective of whether I am working or not. 

Yesterday we also went to buy shoes for the children as well as stuff BB needed for his CCA. 

Hope the rest of 2016 is good and happy and you end the year with a smile. May 2017 be an awesome year too!

Keep smiling….

Another week in Mumbai and we are now counting down to the days before we return back to Singapore and our usual, humdrum life. We leave at the end of next week. 

I will do a detailed post on the poonal, but this will have to wait till I am back in Singapore to gather my thoughts together and put it down coherently. Though I am on holiday, here I realised that I don’t even get 30 minutes to myself. The past week has been a whirl of activities – shopping for things, catching up with my aunts and grandmother and visiting Temples. I also started meeting up old friends and so time has been literally slipping from my hands!

I’ve realised one thing though this trip which never bothered me before – Mumbai is incredibly noisy! My parents’ home is right next to two schools which run on two shifts – the first from 7:30 am to 12:30 pm and the next from 1 to 6 pm. So we have to contend with not only children talking and shouting (as children are vaunt to do) but also listen to them rote learning their lessons. And during both the starts and dismissals, you have children eager to get out of school. Now this is not as bad as the noise generated by horns. I realise now that Mumbaikars love their vehicle horns. Even when there’s no one in the street they are driving on, it’s a compulsion to use the horn a couple of times. And if you are caught in a traffic jam, unless you have incredibly strong eardrums, your ears will be subjected to the incessant noises that horns generate. I’m typing a draft version of this post while waiting for some friends at a mall and there’s a free open air concert by a Bollywood singer going on. The singer is not here yet, but my eardrums are going to pay for this for sure later. I knew there was a good reason I don’t like discotheques and loud pubs….

The meeting with old school classmates was good. We spent a couple of hours talking and catching up on each other’s lives.

As an early anniversary meal, the four of us plus my parents went for lunch at a mall. The place we ate, Barbeque Nation overlooks the descent of planes into Mumbai airport and BB and S had a good time planespotting. Both specifically requested to go to this particular outlet to have the lunch as we had gone here last year too and they had a ball looking at all the planes landing and trying to figure out the airline from their tail regalia and the type of planes. 

This marked week 2.5 of ours in Mumbai. I’m meeting another friend later today and also some more friends during the week. So am looking forward to those gossip and catching up sessions too!