We’re in week 3 of 2018 and depending on how you look at it, the year is either as slow as molasses or zipping faster than you can catch it! Which side are you in?

The cool weather I wrote about last week has ended and we are back to our hot and humid climate again where turning on the air conditioner is more of a necessity if you want a decent night’s sleep. Well, it was good while it lasted! Climate change is real people and those who are still sceptical should just read the news daily to be convinced!

As for my week, it went off quite fast. As I wrote yesterday, I went to parent support group meetings in both schools. I also walked a fair bit this week and exceeded my target of an average of 10k steps per day. I have not been reading as much as I like and am woefully behind my reading schedule for the year. This is something I would like to address this week.

As for the job front, I did meet one person, the third in this organisation and it may work out. But this organisation is not looking to hire someone under their own steam and want the successful candidate to be their own contractor. It’s something completely different than what I was led to believe and I need to do more research to see if this is something I am comfortable doing as well as if it is financially viable. I also would need to negotiate to revise upwards my rates because I didn’t take into account some of the standard perks available to employees here when I first gave them my asking rate. Let me see how this pans out as they will get back to me only at the beginning of February.

Well, here’s to hoping that the week is a joyfully productive one!

Another week for us at home. The weather in Singapore has been very good for the past week. It’s been raining continuously for the past week, almost 24/7, and the result has been a windy and chilled country! This weather won’t last long according to the meteorological department, so we have to make the most of it while it lasts. As I write this, I can hear the wind singing outside my window. For those who live in countries which actually have seasons, this may be routine, but for those of us living in tropical countries, which only have one season – hot, this is novel indeed!

In other news, I’ve had a passive-aggressive thing going with someone in GG’s school parent support group. This person, whose child has already graduated, got in touch with me and started asking me what I am going to contribute to the group this year. I replied that it would depend on the activity, the time commitment needed as well as my schedule. Then this person came back and said members can’t choose the activity they want to get involved in. I lost it then because this is completely voluntary and so when pressed, I responded by saying in such a case, I am willing to become an inactive member. I expected this person, who is the admin of the WhatsApp chat group where all this was taking place, to remove me from the group, but this hasn’t happened yet. There’s a meeting this week, for which I am still in two minds about attending or not. Let me give it some more thought before I make a final decision.

The first week of the new year and it was the usual sort of week for me.

The children have started school and I am back to my usual routine of writing and looking for new positions. Because most people are still on holiday or probably clearing the work that accumulated over the holidays, I am still in waiting mode.

It was a hectic weekend for us. On Saturday, S and I drove down to a couple of polytechnics here which had open houses to check out the courses that the children are interested in. I was quite impressed by what the polys had to offer and so I think the choices the children are making are correct. We are actually two years early, but wanted to check them out earlier in case the choices were wrong and we had to recalibrate!

On Sunday, GG received again the Edusave Scholarship Award which is awarded to the top 10% of students of her cohort. I hope she wins this award next year also, but it looks quite unlikely since she has now moved to the better stream and it may be difficult to achive this.

Here’s looking forward to a productive week!