Tag Archives: Musings

What if I Won the Lottery?

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Earlier this week one of my colleagues sent around an email asking if we were interested in pitching money to play the lottery. This is one of the biggest draws of the year and most people in Singapore, even if they don’t gamble at all, try to put some money for the Chinese New Year draw. After all, who would not like to win big with a small investment! This year’s Hong Bao draw () prize has now snowballed to S$13.9 million and the draw is later today…

I’ve been imagining on and off what I would do if I ever won the lottery. I am not so greedy, so I never dream of winning really big (think billions or even a few millions), but I’d really love to win a million (or even a few hundred thousand!)

So with the assumption that I’ve won a few million, here are my top things to do if I won a lottery….

  1. We don’t have a lot of debts with housing and car loans the biggest ones. So one of the first things I’d do would be to pay off my housing loan and if there’s anything left over, use that to make the down payment for a new flat which I will use as passive income stream. If the win is serious money (talking about 10 million and more), I’ll probably use it to purchase multiple properties (housing and commercial) as investments.
  2. I would also love to buy a bigger house, my dream home, one with a minimum of 6 bedrooms, one each for us, BB, GG, my parents, my in-laws and guests, each with its own ensuite bathroom, a large kitchen and living room and rooms for our domestic helpers. Since it’s a dream home, I’d want the house to have two granny flats – one for my parents and one for S’ mum and aunt, both featuring a small mini kitchenette and a living room so both sets of parents live with us, but are independent at the same time.
  3. Spend some money in doing up the houses in what would be my version of a dream home – including having a dedicated space for the loads of books I will own!
    Set up education funds for BB & GG so that they are able to study what they want and where they want without feeling that we cannot afford it. I’d also invest in getting good coaching for them now while they are still in school so that they are able to make the points in achieving their dream careers.
  4. Invest a good chunk of the lottery money. I don’t have great knowledge on this, so I’d probably hire someone to go this for this. This would secure not only our present, but also our future and retirement.
  5. Leave my job and become a SAHM as we can now afford it! Take time to really spend quality time with my family.
  6. Splurge on nice holidays for my family (including parents and in-laws) and see the world. I have extended family literally across the globe and have made so many plans to visit them, but the fact that for a family of 4 adults, any holiday (even to a nearby destination) becomes expensive and travelling across the globe is something we need to budget for, so a fairly large travel budget will be really god sent! I’d also love to splurge some money on first class travel for my family, parents and in-laws.
  7. Invest in a private trainer for my family so that we become the healthiest we can become. This will also include investing money in hiring a great cook, who can whip up tasty and healthy food for us.
  8. Spend some money on splurges for my family (including the extended ones) so that they can all buy some things which they’ve always wanted, but probably can’t.
    Buy S a new car, hopefully his dream car, but if not that, maybe one that he loves more than our current one.
  9. Lastly, I’d want to give back something to society. At this point, I don’t know what and how, but I do know I’d love to give back to the lesser fortunate, especially children. Since I’d not need to work for a living, I want to volunteer my time as well as money.

Well, it’s all wishful thinking at this point, but it was nice writing this post dreaming of all that I’d get and do should I win a few millions in the lottery!

What are your top wishes if you won big?

Dreams Revisited

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I was going to post this in my weekly update, but when I started typing it, it became a whole new post, hence posting it today! I also wrote about another really vivid dream I had about 8-9 months back

This week I’ve had some real vivid dreams. I dreamt about planes, travel, holidays three days in a row and then one about a quarrel with my mum! I am going to document what the dreams were, so if there are any changes in life, I know it’s here and I don’t forget.

Dream 1
In the first dream, I am transiting in Bangalore on the way to Singapore and decide to leave the airport and go out. It is night time and I end up in a very happening party. I talk to people and suddenly see a male friend whom I have not seen for a while. While talking and catching up, I suddenly realise I need to get back to the airport. My friend volunteers to drop me back. We reach the airport which is deserted and stroll in, going upto the runway when we suddenly see the SQ flight take off. I am not at the least bit upset, but just comment, “Oh dear, I’ve missed my flight, I don’t know when I will get to Singapore.” I don’t remember anything beyond this and probably woke up at this point.

Dream 2
The second dream is a lot more fuzzy, but it has something to do with a flying club and BB. I do remember thinking that I had another plane dream when I woke up but nothing else…

Dream 3
This one is the most vivid one, especially when I just woke it. It took me a couple of seconds to come back to the earth! In this dream, S, BB, GG and I are in London. We are in an AirBnB rental place and the kids are not happy with their bedroom. I take soiled clothes and put them into a washing machine, commenting to S about why we didn’t try this route before.

There’s a knock and someone comes in – I couldn’t recognize him, but I am guessing he was local and he passes me a paper. I can’t remember now what it was, but in the dream it made perfect sense. Something about him passing it from someone or I passing him something. Then he passes me a map of London and we start planning our itinerary, I remember seeing the Parliament House and the Buckingham House in the map.

Next I remember being outside and also thinking I should write a novel set in London and see if I could get away with it without actually being there. At the outside place, I saw some people who seemed familiar. At this point the alarm rang and I woke up.

Dream 4
I had another weird dream. This time, I was around 20 odd years old, living at home with my parents and sister. It was just my mum, sister and me in the dream. I need to go to school and my mum was asking me to make something. I don’t know why, but I was against doing that and was mouthing her off. I reluctantly did what I was supposed to do, banging things around.

My sister also needed to go to school and the word Aston/Ashton was very emphatic in the dream. I think this was the school I was to go to? When I finally finish, I decide to take a taxi and drop my sister to school on the way. We get down and I suddenly realise I do not have the address of Aston/Ashton and start googling it using my phone (there were no mobiles then, or if there were, only the very rich could afford them, leave aside smartphones)!

We get a taxi and I also find out the address but suddenly realise that by the time I get to school, it will be over. I don’t remember much after this, or perhaps I woke up. I’ve never spoken to my mum like I did in the dream, at least not since I grew up and went to college. She was more a friend than a mum. My dad perhaps sometimes as I am more like him than my mum in temperament and when we tend to disagree, both stand their ground and won’t budge. It’s up to my mum to play the peacemaker!

I googled what the dreams meant and it’s absolutely fascinating!

Dreaming about missing a flight means there’s something missing in your life, possibly direction, confidence or intimacy. It’s a fear of missing something important and is possibly related to the stress in your waking hours. This is possibly due to my current work situation, but in the dream there was no fear when I missed the flight, just an Oh Oh moment!

Dreaming about London or any other big city usually has references to socializing and making friends. If you are on a holiday or socializing in the big city, then positive changes are afoot.

If you are in an empty Airport in your dream, it means that changes are afoot and shortly you will have a situation that must come to ahead

When you travel to a new place that you’ve never been before in a dream, it means that you desire for changes to occur in your life or changes are going to occur, which you may know or not. This is to enable you to move forward in life. Again if you enjoyed the trip, then the changes may be more positive than negative

When you quarrel with someone in your dream, it means some sort of a struggle which you are facing in your life. Quarreling with friends or business associates indicate positive changes. It also means that everything will be going very well and quarrelling with family means the whole family will live in harmony.

If your mother comes in your dream, it represents the nurturing aspect of your own character and having a conversation with her indicates a matter which has preoccupied you which you are not sure how to deal with it during your waking hours, representing unresolved problems.

Ah well, I am going to take all these interpretations with a huge pinch of salt! I will definitely update here if there are positive changes to my life soon!

If I had a Superpower…..

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superpower

The other day I was dilly-dallying around bedtime, trying to sleep, but not succeeding. I was trying to watch a Youtube video on SAB TV which is an Indian television channel. The show was about a family of aliens who come to earth to look for their missing son who had been lost to them. Since the family is of an alien race, they do have powers which seem like super-powers to us humans and in that half drowsy frame of mind, I started thinking about super-powers. If I could get any super power what would that be and why?

I actually want multiple powers like this. The first would be the power to freeze time and turn it backwards. This is something I’ve thought about multiple times in my life. Imagine you take a decision and this then bites you back. If you had the power to turn time back, you could do that and in the process take the right decision. But then the question that begs you is what the right decision is? Will this new decision be actually the right one? Will turning time do you good than harm?

Another superpower I’ve been hoping to get, especially the days when the traffic is horrendous and the crowds in the train seem to push me inside without any effort from my side is the ability to teleport. I wish I could just imagine it and get to wherever I could go to. Just imagine the speed at which we could travel – we could travel to distant countries as weekend jaunts and traffic or jet lag would be a thing of the past!

Another one (gosh I am on a roll!!) is the ability to instantly learn anything. With this, I will know anything and everything I am interested in (and I want to know lots of things!) and good grades will be a cinch….

maxresdefaultSo what’s your superpower wish and why? I’d love to hear from you all….

Happy New Year…

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Good Morning! A new day, a new month and a new year! Wishing everyone a very Happy New Year and may 2016 bring to life all that you wished and dreamed for….

I am hoping that 2016 will be a much better year for us than 2015 was.
My usual health related resolutions stay on as usual, but this year I want to do something that I have never done before – something for myself. I want to learn something new – maybe photography or knitting or croquette, I really don’t know, but I will figure it out within the next month or so and make plans to take it up.

I also want to start my new job search in ernest in early 2016 and by mid to quarter 3 have a good job in hand.

For the children, I wish that 2016 becomes their landmark year where they excel in school. They have a huge jump now from 4 subjects to 8/9 subjects this year in secondary school. I will continue to mark Secondary 1 each week so that I can look back on how the year went by for them.

We are also planning on BB’s formal baptism into our religion towards the end of the year and we’ve started the planning process. This is something that Brahmin boys do before they go off to the forest to study with their guru – the formal thread ceremony. We’ve delayed BB’s thread ceremony for a few years now, what with S’ father’s passing and then PSLE. So better late than never and we do it when he completes this school year.
I also want to continue blogging, and perhaps getting my mojo back for writing. I do want to revive my Chica and Chiki series (I dream of being a children’s author some day!)

That’s all that I hope, wish and pray for 2016. Hopefully I achieve atleast 70 – 80% of what I set out to do…

Once again Happy New Year and may this year be the one where all your dreams come true…

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An Unforgettable Trip

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While in India, one of our smaller trips was to Bangalore to meet my maternal grandmother who is nearing close to 90 and also to meet an uncle who is suffering from a double whammy of Alzheimer’s as well as Parkinson’s!

The four of us plus my mum were supposed to be taking IndiGo both ways, with us taking the 12:30 flight from Mumbai, reaching Bangalore around 2:15. The new airport in Bangalore is very, very far away from the city and to get to anywhere in the city is at least a 90 minute drive, this is assuming the horrendous traffic that Bangalore is famous for is clear and non-existent at that point! We’d planned for a two hour drive to my aunt’s place which is in one of the outer suburbs, the other side of the airport and which should take around 70 – 80 minutes at that time of the day and had expected to reach latest by 4 pm. We’d also arranged for a taxi to pick us up at the airport.

In the morning, while getting ready to leave, I got a message from the airline that the flight had been retimed to an hour later than it was supposed to leave. Though it was irritating, we shrug it off and changed our plans accordingly. We left around 10:30 which should get us to the airport around 11:15, which would be well in time for the 1:30 pm flight. On the way to the airport I received two messages from the airlines – one after the other, which now changed the flight’s departure time to 4 pm!

I was thus, quite upset when I reached the check-in counter. The person who checked us in told me that it was a technical problem and he could check us into the next flight to Bangalore which left at 3:45 pm. When asked, he said there was no guarantee that our scheduled 12:30 flight would make it at 4 pm, but the 3:45 flight was assured to leave on time. So we did the change and spoke to my dad. My dad was by that time not interested in us going to the city, he wanted us to cancel the tickets, get a refund and return home. My mum, on the other hand wanted to meet her mum, sisters and brothers-in-law. Around 3 pm, when we were waiting to start the boarding process, I got another message from the airline saying the 3:45 flight had now been postponed to 5:30 pm.

At this point, I completely lost it! The boarding gate area at this point was resembling a small town bus stand with passengers all over the place. The domestic airport didn’t even have decent places to eat and we were hungry, bored and super angry. I then went to the airline counter and spoke to one of the supervisors. What she told me was a completely different story from what the check-in guy told me. Her story was that since all their flights originate in the northern part of India and that part was fogged up, all flights were running 3-4 hours late, there was no technical problem at all!

Then me and another lady who had to get to Bangalore also urgently spoke to her and when I told her what I was told while checking in, she decided to get it reconfirmed. That was a lie I was told initially. Then that sweet lady (I did write down her name, but now I can’t find the paper) told us she will put us back in my original flight (the 12:30 one) which was now going to land shortly and depart for Bangalore at 5:30 pm.
We (the five of us plus the two of them) then were led out of the security area and had to re-checkin for the 5:30 flight. Clear security once again and then start the wait all over again. We finally got in the bus to get to the aircraft around 5:15 pm and when we reached the aircraft, we saw that all the passengers had not disembarked. What we saw made everyone on that bus comment again! We saw groups of people who used the gangway to take photos and selfies! This sheer selfishness of people really threw me away! These people have also been delayed by 3-4 hours and they know this flight has to go to another destination, yet they spend, nay waste precious moments taking pictures that they can do outside the plane.

We finally boarded and the flight left around 6 pm. We reached Bangalore around 7:15 and got to my aunt’s place at 9 pm! What was roughly a 6 hour journey door-to-door became an almost 12 hour one!

The return journey was nothing like what I wrote above! It was a breeze and what IndiGo is renowned for and we made it home by 3 pm (We had taken the same 12:30 flight from Bangalore to Mumbai)!

This is one trip that none of us are going to forget in a hurry I am sure!