This week is the week of the Navratri festivities and we are all doing it online. When I last spoke to my mother, she was lamenting that for the first time that she can remember, she is not able to go to the temple for the festival. Usually, during the ten days of Navratri and Dusshera, she will quickly do her chores at home and go to the temple to witness the prayers and also partake the lunch usually served there. This was especially true when my sister and I grew up and were out of the home pretty much the whole day.

School has started for both and though GG only has one tutorial for which she needs to go to school, BB has to go to school for all his subjects. He did quite badly last semester and so he has a lot of catching up to do since the polytechnics here work on a cumulative grade point average system and so he has to do extremely well in the remaining semesters to even have a chance to attend university after national service. Speaking of which, he got his national service notification this week via mail and we need to log into the system to defer him for the next two and a half years since he is still studying fulltime. GG has done relatively well and needs to keep up with her grades in the next five semesters to go on to university since her course which is a business course is highly competitive and usually has a high entry cut of point.

Other than that, we’re all surviving living at home and being in each others faces almost all the time. I am becoming a bit stir crazy especially since the holiday season is coming up and we can travel anywhere, not even to Malaysia. So I have been planning road trips for when we can actually go which helps a bit.

That’s all from us this week. Stay home, stay safe and most importantly stay masked when you are out of your home!

The children start school tomorrow and while BB has in-person lessons this semester, GG has to contine with mostly home based learning. I think she goes back to school once a week for tutorials and otherwise school and CCA will be done remotely.

Singapore has been having single digit cases for a few weeks now and after a very long time, we heard that there are currently less than 100 active cases, with 30 in the hospital and none in the intensive care and about 59 in community isolation facilities. We had our 28^th fatality last week and the total number of cases here now stands at close to 58,000.

The United States and India are on a race to probably see who can hit 10 million cases and first. But jokes aside this is seriously very scary. I have a large extended family in both countries and many of them fall into the vulnerable category and seeing this kind of statistics make me worried for them and their health.

My parents are seriously planning to move to a retirement home, but because the situation in India and specifically Mumbai is not getting any better, this plan has been postponed till sometime next year when things get better. Hopefully things get better and soon and they can make their move and get on with their lives. It’s been six months or so since they have left the house and though my mother does go down to buy fruits and vegetables, the most my dad goes is to the building terrace for a breath of fresh air. This is not really healthy and another source of worry for me and my sister.

I am really hoping one of the pharmacutical companies who are now doing clinical trials for a vaccine for Covid-19 become successful soon and a vaccine is released soon. I understand the elderly and the vulnerable will be given preference and so hopefully we will allow the elderly to go out and about with precautions.

Stay safe and stay masked people!

Its another week and on Friday, the world saw a new surge in infections, mostly from a fresh surge in Europe with countries there reporting higher daily cases than the most infected countries. Globally, the total confirmed cases of Covid-19 have reached over 37 million with over 1 million deaths and about 28 million people who have recovered. The United States continues to lead the world with nearly 8 million cases and India is second with around 7 million cases and Brazil follows with about 5 million cases.

Singapore’s cases are not as high as it used to be and we are currently having single digit local or  community cases with the bulk of local cases being from either workers in dormitories or foreign imported cases where travellers test positive on arrival into Singapore. Overall, the number of new cases in the community has remained stable at an average of 1 case per day in the past 2 weeks as well as the number of unlinked cases in the community has remained stable at an average of fewer than 1 case per day in the past 2 weeks. The total number of active cases has been reduced to about 157 now and 57,675 patients have fully recovered from the infection and have been discharged from hospitals or community care facilities. Of the 157 still active cases, about 37 of the confirmed cases who are still in hospital are stable or improving with one in the intensive care unit. Of the balance cases, they have mild symptoms or are clinically well but still test positive for COVID-19 and are isolated and cared for at community facilities.

On the home front, we are all still at home, either working from home or home based learning though there are indications that S may be able to start going back to work on a staggered basis soon and he is quite happy to be going back to office soon, even if it not on a full-time basis. The children have about a week still to go before school starts and they too want to go back, but unfortunately still can’t.

Anyway, this was our week, have a wonderful week people and remember to stay safe and stay masked!

We’re in the last quarter of 2020 and like me, I am sure you too are looking forward to 2021 with the hope that the new year will bring some relief to the world.

The children are still on their holidays, though GG has gotten her timetable for the next semester. Even though Singapore is slowly, but steadily moving towards opening up more, she will continue to be more or less on home-based learning. Her only grouse with the timetable is that she has a class on Saturdays also. She thought she had gotten over Saturday lessons after more than 12 years of Hindi school, but though those were about half day lessons and this is much shorter, it still means she will need to get her act together and be ready by lesson time on the day of the week when she would rather be doing something else.

BB has not heard back anything from school yet, so we don’t know if he will be going back to school or not and if yes, how long. I suspect he will be doing a more hybrid model of studying with some home-based learning and some in-person learning.

The US still continues to lead in positive cases with more than 7.5 million cases as of yesterday, including its President and first lady who were diagnosed late last week, followed closely by India with about 6.5 million cases and then Brazil with abut 4.9 million cases and Russia with slightly over 1 million cases. The four countries together constitute about 58% of the total world cases!

Anyway, here’s to an October which is much better than the September that just went by! Stay safe everybody!

The headline in The Straits Times was a grim reminder of the pandemic with the news that the world death toll will cross a million deaths over this weekend. It was such a sobering reminder to what is happening across the world and according to the World Health Organisation, it is possible that the final tally may even be close to or exceed the 2 million mark. The total infections tally as of yesterday is more than 32 million with the top four countries comprising of the United States, India, Brazil and Russia accounting for nearly 60% of all infected cases.

Many European countries are reporting a second surge which is worrying. India has been reporting the highest daily cases, again another worrying trend. What this pandemic has done to the world economy, most people already know. Economists say the economic repurcussions is about three times as bad as the global financial crisis of 2008 in terms of GDP decline on an annual basis. Though its not as bad as the Great Depression of the 1930s, but it is the worst downturn in the world since then. However, all is not lost. Changes will be made and this will not only accelerate technology adoption and usage, but also a turn towards a more green economy.

In other news, both GG & BB got their first semester results this week. GG did very well and hopefully should continue her good streak. BB on the other hand, did really badly, barely passing all his subjects. Hopefully this is a wake-up call for him and he can work hard for the remaining semesters and pull up his cumulative GPA. Without this kick in the backside, he was getting to be overconfident, so it’s better perhaps that this happened now and not later. He does need to buck up and fast if he wants a place in a local university in the course of study of his choice.

That’s all from us this week. We are going to be in the last quarter for the year and I have to start my planning for 2021 which I hope is a much better year for all compared to 2020. Stay safe people!