August has snuck up and things are pretty much the same. BB & GG are mostly doing home based learning and going to school only when needed. In fact last week, BB had one class at home and then had an hour to make it to school for his next class. He made it with minutes to spare. S could not drop him to school because he had a call at that exact same time.

Over the Hari Raya weekend, we went suit shopping for GG as she has a presentation this week. We ended up buying everything – a skirt, shirt, jacket and shoes so she can look the part when she goes for her presentation. The module actually some points for dressing and appearance so hopefully that is taken care of.

Singapore has about close to 53,000 cases as of now with about 47,000 of those having recovered. Worldwide, 17.5 million people have been infected with nearly 700,000 deaths and more than 10 million people having recovered from the virus. India is still at number three position with 1.6 million infected people with 1 million people who have recovered.

Of course being home for months together has impacted pretty much everyone. Work-Life balance has taken a complete hit and I can see this pretty much everywhere. Many people I know, including S, start working quite early, almost as soon as they wake up, and this goes on till the end of the day when they go to bed. Stuck at home, hunched over a laptop, it is easy to forget health. At times like this, we sit for far too long, eat at irregular intervals and eat a lot of junk food. Let’s not forget that interaction with anyone other than family members is via a screen, so that sense of interaction with friends and colleagues is also missing which is not really good for our mental health. So take care of your helath, there are some stories of individuals who have used this time to turn around their lives.

That’s all from us this week. Take care people and stay safe!

This week was like the last 16-20 weeks, in which we were all at home!

This week was quite busy in terms of work and when Friday rolled over, I was so relieved for the week to be done. BB will start school on a daily basis from tomorrow, but except for a few days in the week, it will be only for short periods of time. GG has still not heard back from her school if she has to go back. BB is quite glad to go back to school, but having to wear a mask for long periods of time is quite irritating according to him.

As for the coronavirus, I suspect Singapore has amped up testing because these days the daily numbers are higher than normal. Worldwide there has been a dramatic increase in the number of positive cases with more than 15.7 million cases reported as of yesterday. The United States leads the case list with about 4.2 million cases while Brazil follows with about 2.3 cases and India comes in at number three with 1.4 million cases. Singapore comes in at around number 42 with the number of cases touching 50 thousand.

Next week is end the end of July and we are looking to more months of staying at home. An article I read says that the earliest we can even think of travelling and life resuming to a sense of previous normalcy is sometime mid 2021. Though there have been some promising news about potential vaccines being formulated, but we should see the vaccines being available only sometime end of next year. However, the question will arise to who gets priority in getting these vaccines, but there’s still time to discuss all this later.

Anyway, stay safe people!

We’re done with another week of staying home. Sometimes when everyone are trying to work in a single room, it really gets to you as it happened to us this week.

Our air conditioning spoilt sometime in June and when we called the repair guy, we were told to change it, so off we went to the closest retailer and were told we could only get it installed earlier this week. Now, I really want to tell you all that in hot and extremely humid Singapore, air conditioning leans more towards a need rather than a luxury. Till our new airconditioners were installed, I had very bad and broken sleep as I would wake multiple times a night soaked in sweat! But back to our aircon installation. Since they were installing aircons in all our bedrooms, and it was a whole day affair, this ment that all four of us, were plonked in the living room doing our work, which included calls at various points of the day for each of us. This was seriously distracting as we had to be very mindful of making sure we did not walk into each other’s videos or make noise and disturb the others audio feeds. Anyway, all ends well that ends well.

India’s Covid cases continues to soar and each time I see the news, I am worried once again for my parents. With more than 1 million confirmed cases now, the country has the dubious distinction of being the third highest country, after the United States and Brazil. In India, my home state of Maharashtra has the largest number of cases with a mortality rate higher than the national average with less than average daily testing. This is very sad to me, especially when I know that living outside India, at this point, even if there is an emergency, I really don’t know how I can even be there for my parents. My parents and especially my father is also very conscious of this fact and makes sure he is not going outside. His take is that unless there is a vaccine for Covid, he will stay indoors. Both he and my mother have underlying issues, so coming down with the coronavirus can prove fatal to them.

That’s all from us this week folks! Stay safe and mask up as there are reports coming out of those countries which have started to have some sort of normalcy of new cases and spikes. So unless needed, stay indoors where you are much more safer.

Yesterday, after more than two decades, I exercised my political right and responsibility and voted in Singapore’s general elections. The results were not too surprising, but this is not a political blog, so I will not go in there. The whole process was quite fast and in my opinion, seamless. We were in and out of the polling centre in less than thirty minutes, including queueing up to enter which took some time as they only allowed a certain number of people inside at a time.

Singapore’s community cases have been increasing with the lifting of the circuit breaker, but I guess this was inevitable. Now we need to see what will happen. With a total of more than 45,000 cases, we don’t seem to see the light of the tunnel anytime soon. India’s cases seems to have surged and the country is now the third most affected country after the United States and Brazil.

Some countries which had successes have reported fresh cases which is cause for concern since they had opened up their economies and does not bode too well for the rest of the world which are considering doing the same.

I have been seriously meditating now for about a hundred days or about as long as since the beginning of the circuit breaker and it is now I really realise the benefits I derive from it. I used to meditate at night, but I started to see the the real benefits when I switched to meditating in the mornings. I like to wake up early, before everyone else and meditate in that silence, mostly in the darkness as well. So if there is anyone who is still on the fence about meditation, please go ahead and give it a try, you will not regret it. S also has started to meditate now, though not as consistent as me. But then it took me a few years of inconsistent meditation to start doing it consistently, so I have hopes for him too.

That’s all from my side this week. Stay home, stay safe and stay masked everyone!

R is back in my home after some drama with her ex employer’s agent. It is such a huge relief to have someone help me in my morning and cooking chores. Mornings are much pleasanter and now that GG & BB will start going to school more regularly, it means I would have lost my helpers at home. Actually doing all this work is not really a big deal, what is a big deal is that I usually start work by 8:30 am and have to rush to finish my household chores by then which used to really tire me out. Maybe I am so used to having help that doing things on my own is now slightly hard. It also does not help that I am getting older and am not as agile and have the kind of energy I had in my twenties or even in my early thirties.

Anyway, with COVID positive community cases coming down, things are easing up in Singapore. Even though we have more than 44,000 cases, most of these seem to be from workers with usually single digit community cases on a daily basis. So places like restaurants, cinemas and libraries have started to open up, with strict measures in place.

I had been having some pain and redness in my right eye for a while now and last week, I finally went to see a doctor. Apparently it was some kind of a parasitic infection, but they are still not sure. I have no idea how this came into my system since I have been more or less housebound for the past few months. The doctor who initially checked me thought it may have come from my trip to India in December when we went down south, but I am flabbergasted that it only hit me and that too flared up after almost six months! Anyway, with some treatment, it has been contained to a very large extent, but there is still some trace left and I was told that there will be a permanent scar in my cornea.

Singapore will be having it’s general elections next week and I am super excited that I will be voting for the first time here after becoming a citizen. When I was in India, I used to make sure I voted in each and every election, be it local, state or national because I knew it was my duty as a citizen. So yes, to exercise my constitutional right after a very long time is going to be something special.

That’a all our news for this week folks! Stay home and stay safe and make sure you mask up each time you leave the house.