Tag Archives: Weekly Update

2015 Week 42 Update

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The week was mostly spent in Penang on holiday! We left last Sunday and returned back on Wednesday afternoon. Since Thursday was Dusshera, I decided not to go to work and only went back on Friday!

Penang was fun and deserves multiple blog posts which I will do in the coming weeks!

Since I was at work only one day, it was manageable, but there is still a lot of angst and anger in me here. I need to keep reminding myself to be positive, and sometimes that is very hard! I’ve also started writing my positivity journal, so that should help I guess!

We spent the weekend cleaning the house and getting it ready for Diwali. Most Indian homes will do a major clean-up at this time, and we are also the same. I threw away a lot of unwanted things and it felt good doing that. After that, promptly went shopping to buy more!!

I have also started planning what sweets and savouries to make for Diwali, will probably post recipes too of those…

Off to work now, need to channel loads of positivity and get through the week without getting angry and pissing myself off!

PSLE Week 42 Update

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PSLE Marking Week plus Holiday Week!

This week was a holiday for Primary schools which send teachers for PSLE marking (not all schools send teachers, only those who have students giving the exams and new schools with atleast students in Primary 4). Taking advantage of this break, we decided to make a short holiday to Penang (Penang posts coming up soon).

This was mostly to get our attention off the marking (more me than the kids I think!). Well, the marking is all done and their fates sealed…..Now we play the waiting game to see what scores they get.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the schools to choose when we fill up the secondary forms and have decided that we will go with schools where the cut off points fall in the median of their eventual scores. I am going to finalise 10 schools each, with a variety of scores so that when the scores are released, we can choose from these schools and if the COP is lower than their score, then they will definitely get the first choice. It’s better to be in the top classes in a lesser known school than be scrapping the barrel and trying to keep up in a more well-known school. This way, they can be at the top of the class, with access to leadership roles in the school, instead of always trying to keep up with their peers.

Friday was a Learning Journey Day where the whole Primary 6 cohort in their school visited the Science Centre. Initially BB & GG were very reluctant to go there again, as they’ve been there multiple times. But this time, they saw a couple of documentaries which they said were fantastic!

We ended the week with a baby shower for one of S’ colleague and friend. I realise these days there’s a trend of having baby showers after the baby is born – the baby shower we went to is around a month plus old….

2015 Week 41 Update

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The last week was one of the sorts I like – a fairly busy week! When I am busy, I don’t over think and the day at work zips by. I love such weeks! When I am free and don’t have much to do, I tend to snack often and then have to find things to look busy. I hate such days! I am actually underworked here, so these days are more often there than busy days….

Since it is Navratri, people have been inviting us, but what with work and the holidays, I could only go to my inlaws place on Friday. She does this every year and so after work, I dolled up in a saree and went there. Spent a pleasant evening chatting with people I see only once a year!

Then Saturday was the day when BB & GG, along with others performed at a nearby temple. They are learning South Indian classical music or Carnatic music for a few years now and every year during Navratri, the teacher puts up a performance at a local temple where her students can sing. This year, their class, which mostly has PSLE students didn’t have enough practice as most of them didn’t go to class in the month before the exams. But in spite of that, the children did a great job. I am really happy that both GG & BB, especially GG, enjoy singing!

We’re in Penang for a few days, taking a well-deserved break part 1 after the grueling year that was the PSLE. I’m taking loads of pictures and will post more about these later on!

Have a great week folks!

PSLE Week 41 Update

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Even though the PSLE is over, both BB & GG have been busy quite busy in school. They have to work on their class yearbook as well as prepare for the year-end concert. Each graduating class is expected to put together a song and dance performance (either together or separately) and every child is expected to contribute. GG is taking part in her class dance while BB who hates dancing is joining the song routine.

We also got a note from the school on the learning journeys they will take from now till the end of the school year. The school plans to bring them to the National Museum, The Arts Science Museum as well as the Discovery Centre. They are also going to bring the children to a secondary school which has an Aviation programme. As expected BB is most excited about that trip as this is the school we are targeting if his grades are not very stellar. If, by some luck, he does brilliantly, we’ll try other schools, the main one being his dream school where he did not make the cut for the DSA. We can always dream right!

We also received the huge book from MOE which tells us all about how we can select schools (merit before choice) and that we need to choose 6 schools for both of them each. Once the results are declared, we need to go to the website and indicate our school choices. If our scores are below the school cut off point (COP), we get in, otherwise, they will go down the list. If none of the schools meet our COP, we get a nearby school which still has vacancies and which is within the COP. So it makes sense to choose real carefully so that we can get into our first choice school….

Singapore from the air

From tomorrow, for the next four days, teachers across Singapore will come together to mark the PSLE papers. I am tense about this, but also realise nothing is my hands now! So schools are shut for the next four days which means we’re off today for a holiday! Normally this period is a time for children to hunker down and study as usually after this holiday is when exams start, but this year with the end of the PSLE, we decided to use this short holiday to go around the region. I’ll post more about the holiday later!

2015 Week 40 Update

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I stayed at home for the first two days of the week and went back to work after nearly 10 days. Felt like I was going back after a holiday!

I’ve decided to seriously start looking for a new position and in the meantime give my all here. I want them to seriously miss me when I leave….

On Monday, after lunch, I started having so much problems with my company issued laptop, so much that I was unable to send or receive emails. Apparently, my laptop no longer has space in the hard disk and this is a new laptop, which was issued to me less than six months back! The zinger is that because I had a similar problem in my previous laptop, I transferred all files into an external drive and so other than some random files in the desktop, there is nothing I have saved here…..

Since I was working from home, I could only take it to our IT on Wednesday. Turned out that it was actually not that big a problem. When the technician who took my call on Monday did something to my laptop’s email application, he didn’t delete the old stuff which resulted in all the problems I was having!

On Tuesday after the final PSLE paper ended, we decided to go to the library as BB & GG had not borrowed books in a while. What made this trip to the library special was that the National Library Board was celebrating 20 years this year and decided to let everyone borrow 20 books per card! We’re in book heaven now after borrowing loads of books! Happy 20th Birthday NLB! Also did some other non-clothes shopping. The kids had friends over our home on Friday. They’ve known these friends forever! They are also a pair of boy/girl twins like BB & GG, just a couple of months older. They used to stay in the same estate as us, in the opposite building. We met when BB & GG were around a year old and they’ve been playing together since then. It’s so much fun to see them grow together…

Then I made it a shopping day on Sunday! The three of us (S had to go to a temple with his mom, so joined us later) left home around 10ish and went to a few malls to have lunch and shop! It was great fun now that the kids are older. We should do this more often. We had dinner at our regular restaurant near our place and came home tired but happy 🙂