2016 Week 7 Update

A short work week which was made even shorter by hardly anyone around in the office! They were taking advantage of the fact that Big B was not around to ‘work from home’

Anyway, the fact that I may not have a job in 75 days is not making me panic as I am wont to usually do. I am the sort of person who has plans B to Z in place, but this time, why am I not bothered? I’ve started to make plans for when I won’t have a job to go to in the morning, including how long I will keep my helper on and what I plan to do the whole day when the kids will be in school and I at home. I wonder if this is the result of my ‘no expectations’ attitude, but I Guess time will tell….

On Saturday, me and another ex-colleague turned friend met someone we knew for years from my old company. This person is a mentor of sorts for me and it was wonderful chatting and catching up on news from people we all know…

Sunday, S surprised me with a gold and diamond chain for Valentine’s Day plus lunch at a wonderful Lation American inspired restaurant.  We took the kids to the main library which they loved (my kids what!) and now want to go there more often!! All in all, a delightful weekend and now back to work…..

2016 Week 6 Update

I got so fed-up of sitting with nothing to do at work that I finally went to Big B to ask him if there’s something I can help him with on Monday. He had loads of stuff to do, which meant I was pretty busy doing some interesting stuff for most of the week.

I’ve had some more vivid dreams this week – the first one had me with GG at some temple, maybe somewhere near the Himalayas and the temple looked to be a Shiva temple. I dream that I am praying and asking Lord Shiva to quickly call me to Mount Kailash (which is in present day Tibet/China and is in my bucket-list). I then start reciting the Hanuman Chalisa and wake up reciting it. I saw the time and it was 3 am then, which some people call the Brahma muhurat which is supposed to be a very auspicious time.

In the second dream I was in a car travelling some place quite far from home (not sure if it was Singapore or Mumbai). I come to a large temple which is set on the side of a busy road and is reached by a long staircase. I don’t remember much of this dream as it is quite fuzzy. Just before I slept that night, I did have one of my random conversations with my ishtadev and this could be the reason I dreamt of the temple.

Other than that, the week was ok with work politics happening as usual…

I am going to enjoy my CNY break so that I can get back to work with a refreshed and clear mind!

Today is the first day of the Chinese Year of the Fire Monkey so Gong Xi Fa Cai and Xin Nian Quai Le!

2016 Sec 1 Week 6 Update

Since we were reaching GG’s school on a touch-and-go basis last week with her screaming she’s late, we decided to leave a bit earlier this week and see if we were reaching schools in time. So we started leaving home around 6:30 – 6:35 am daily against the 6:45 am of last week. The 10 minutes did seem to make a difference and most week we reached BB’s school before 7 am and dropped off GG latest by 7:10 am. This meant I was at work latest by 7:20, making me perhaps the first person in, after the cleaners! The new timings work and this will now be our default timings daily.

BB had a school ‘Big Breakfast’ on Friday. He and a bunch of classmates, who make up the class committee went to the shopping centre last week to buy food items for this communal breakfast that their school does each year. They got NTUC Fair Price coupons and I think they went $1 above that which someone paid.

Class tests for both are on and BB also has his first common test in two weeks’ time, so need to push them a bit for this.

We also went through the cut-off points for some of the junior colleges as well as some of the polytechnic courses that the kids are interested in. It was a bit of a shocker for them as some of the courses have such low cut off points! Hopefully this will spur them to do well in secondary school. Stress levels start to rise again!

Monday and Tuesday are off for everyone in Singapore for the Chinese New Year holidays. So it’s time to chill and have some fun before we start working on the first exams of secondary 1!

2016 Week 5 Update

One down and eleven more to go….I meant the months!

This week was the usual week in terms of work, essentially meaning that I don’t have much to do at the moment. On Monday, I was supposed to meet Big B in the morning which was moved to the afternoon. So we spoke and he had rearranged the jobscope I had given him earlier to tweak it a bit which was good as it now had admin right at the bottom which was what I really wanted. He reworked some of the other stuff I had written to make it a bit sexier, so that was also good. I also suspect that he spoke to my ex-boss as some of the things Big B spoke to me sounded suspiciously like what ex-boss said!

Now he needs to make a case for me and for the higher ups to decide if they want to keep me. Let’s see what happens. At this point, I am pretty ambivalent about things, on one hand, it will be good to have a permanent position in this organization and I do not need to start all over again in a new place. But then, a chance to start new is also quite tempting. I have sent out my resume to a number of positions that were interesting on a couple of jobsites, but there’s no news yet.

In this organization, those like me who are on contract are treated as second class citizens and this is something that irritates me no end. I’ve done a bit of protesting in my own way, but I seriously doubt anyone will even bother!

The recruitment company also sent through my appraisal that Big B did for me and I suspect he has lowered scores after we discussed. I don’t like it one bit! Big B gave me a much lesser score compared to what I’ve been getting and so this affects my bonus! The places I missed out on was on relationships and liking my job. Not liking it one bit!! Guess I need to up my social skills aspect if I am to stay on here, especially with Big B around.

Anyway, all this is in the past and hopefully things settle down well and good and things work out for the best.

I’ve also read 14 books this month, which is roughly 11% of my total books for the year. If things go on as they are, I will probably up my reading challenge later so more books to read. I’ve also decided to read one non-fun or serious, non-fiction book per month. This means I will read 12 such books in a year. Quite achievable I think. This could include anything and everything I am interested in with the exception of what I usually read so this excludes fiction and travel books. I’ve bookmarked some interesting books, now I need to find them in the library and borrow one of these. I may also read them through the overdrive app.

2016 Sec 1 Week 5 Update

Wow! January just flew up in the wink of an eye!

The children have settled down in their schools and the honeymoon period that incoming Secondary 1 students have has now ended.

GG did get Choir as her allocated CCA, so no surprises there! But unfortunately she will not be able to perform for the Chinese New Year festivities in school as her choir teacher told her since it will be unfair for the other new choir members if only she was allowed to participate as she was the only one who went for practice even before the official allocation. She does say that for one of the competitions later this year, she will be singing solo. I am not too sure about this and I will take it with a pinch of salt as I am not too sure if the other choir members will want a new secondary 1 student to take the limelight!

BB is attending an environment event and representing his class and school today. This is the first event he is representing his current school. This came out because he is the class Environment rep.

Other than that, this was been a more-or-less usual week!