My quirks!
YES!!! I did it!! Conquered the 4x4x4 cube!! Now to familiarise myself with the steps. 宝贝 beat me to it while I was busy with chores. Anyway, what matters is I DID IT!!! Sense of achievement!
#hbl #rubikscube #4x4x4 #bucketlist
First time wearing heels after months (maybe even 1-2 years??) of waddling around in auntie fitflops and sneakers. Feet pain arh. How did I ever torture myself with them everyday?
To think I used to be able to carry weights (laptop and killer weight handbag) AND run in heels 👠 for a few streets!!
I’m missing my auntie shoes now. I think I’m going to get blisters. 😓
I just came back from my holiday (yet to put the photos together – will publish on my ailing travel blog when I get my act together, if ever…). During the trip, my travel mates were shocked to know that I ditched my kids in Singapore and came on a holiday without them and worse, one of them was having her exams while I was gallivanting in China.
“Huh! She’s having her exams and you are here? Don’t you need to be there with her?”
“For what? She’s the one taking the exams, not me! I can’t take her exams on her behalf leh!”
“To do last minute revision lah! To give moral support!!”
“Aiya, last minute revision no use wan lah… Already revised with her! Her fate is in her own hands!! Plus she doesn’t even like the taste of chicken essence… ”
Even during the “supposedly” revision period, she was happily playing with her brother at the playground with a few equally “bo chap” friends while her peers were caged up at home. Well, that’s provided that she’s finished whatever she was assigned to do.
Some parents argued that the pressure put on the students was exerted by the school, the society and well, they themselves and that they had no choice. I attended a camp by T. Harv Eker and this was something that he said, “Everyone has a choice, even at gunpoint. It’s just that some choices are more difficult to make than others, if a man points a gun at you and wants you to hand over your money, you have a choice. Either you hand over your money or you can choose not to hand it over and face the consequences.”
I believe that children take the cue from their parents. I admit that I am a very result driven person. I do try very hard to curb that instinct, whenever she presents me with her exam papers. Instead of focusing on the results, I am trying very hard (yes, trying extremely hard, I’m getting better at it now) to focus more on the process of learning, which I believe that once she acquires the skill, it will follow her through her entire life. Who even uses modelling schemes to calculate stuff when they are working? I used zero calculations that I learnt in Uni in the course of work (think triple integration… strength of materials.. duh!!), you just punch in a string of numbers and some software will automatically churn out the answers for you.
And, in the future, who knows what kind of new industries the world will have? Who’d ever thought that being a blogger, or influencer (not influenza) now would make a decent buck? My parents probably would have said, “Simi lai eh! Go and be a doctor/lawyer/engineer!!”
Yeah yeah, i know. Some of you are saying,” Hah! You are not at the PSLE stage yet! Now you yaya papaya!” Well, who knows. In 2 years’ time, I may sing a different tune when I come face to face with the terrifying PSLE! (According to 小小宝贝, it’s Please Stop Learning English… sigh. 😑). As of now, as long as she finishes whatever she’s supposed to do, she is free to explore activities that she loves doing. Right now, she’s crazy over table tennis, and her “aspiration” is to play table tennis with her equally table tennis frenzied friends everyday.
And if, she isn’t able to do the 3 difficult Maths questions during the PSLE, I just have to accept that she doesn’t belong to the top 1% of the brilliant kids who are meant to be mathematicians in future! I doubt it will traumatise her for life. I hope that my daughter is a lot more resilient than that! (Sorry, just can’t resist taking a swipe at the kiasu Mom who wrote an open letter to the MOE for traumatising her son because the Maths paper was too difficult. Being catty here! 😜)
Our favourite pastime is to play around with snapchat. So bimbotic! 😘😜
小小宝贝 brought home a book from school for his weekend reading. Children’s book, how exciting could it get? He picked this book – “Nana Upstairs & Nana Downstairs” from the little library in his classroom.
It’s a very simple children’s book about the author’s childhood which he spent with his Nana Upstairs – his great-grandmother and Nana Downstairs – his grandmother. It was beautifully drawn with short, easily comprehensible sentences that described the activities he had indulged in with his grandmothers, down to poignant little details, that seemed a great deal to a child like the sharing of mint candies, sitting tied to chairs so that they didn’t fall off. All these would have been very mundane activities to adults.
Then one day, his Nana Upstairs died and she was no longer sitting in her usual position in her bed. The drawing of the bed took up a whole page, the void was amplified.
Tommy began to cry.
“Won’t she ever come back?” he asked.
“No, dear,” Mother said softly. “Except in your memory. She will come back in your memory whenever you think about her.”
From then on, he called Nana Downstairs just plain Nana.
And then Tommy grew up, Nana Downstairs also grew old and moved upstairs and then she, too, joined Nana Upstairs with the stars.
With its simple sentences and beautiful drawings, it tugs at the heartstrings of both adults (me) and children, while reminding us that passage of time spares no one, even our parents who have grown old without us realising it. Cherish the time with them if you are lucky enough to still have them with you.
I consider myself a very, very lucky person. I had wonderful, nurturing parents, who loved me a lot and had been very supportive of everything I have done (for better or for worse). Friends have been very helpful and have stuck with me through thick and seldom thin (like what I said, my life has been very smooth sailing). Of course, there are a handful (not many, thank goodness), whom I wish that I have never met. Then again, they had taught me valuable lessons in life.
But nothing had prepared me for what I went through recently. This is the worst year of my life and the last few months the most agonising, for nothing can ever prepare one for death, especially deaths of loved ones, closest to heart. It’s unbelievable that there were numerous other small things that happened almost on a daily basis in between the 2 life altering events. These include car accidents (yes, 2 in fact!), a huge theft (this is an incredible tale that warrants a blog post by itself). There must have been a bad luck magnet stuck to my forehead at that time.
Losing 2 parents within 1.5 months was excruciating painful, for every little sound I hear, everything I see, carries the images and memories of them. There are a lot of “what ifs”, “could haves”,”if onlys” and regrets. But, no one knows if the outcomes would have been different if we had done things differently.
This chain of events sets me thinking, is this what I really want? What do I want? I have lost sight of what I really want in the midst of busyness. There was not enough time for myself, to take stock of what I want, no time to spend with my family, Heck! I don’t even have time to visit the dentist, or even get a haircut! I hardly have time to be with everyone I care for.
It’s time to slow down, take stock of my life, set my priorities right and yes, smell the roses, watch the clouds go by…. and play silly games with my kids and do things that I have always wanted to do, but haven’t have the chance to.
Every time I look at his chubby “you want to fight” face, I would burst out laughing!
Oh well, starting my day off with something that’s dear to me. Have a wonderful day everyone!
I had drafted out a nasty piece to vent my unhappiness over a recent incident. But I deleted it. It’s a pity because I was quite impressed with my English. Somehow my language level shoots up when I get mad. I’ve never realised that I’ve such a huge vocabulary of swear words and flowery descriptive phrases stored in my brain. ?
Then I figured, why should I let it affect me? Leave a blemish in my blog that serves as a memory of an abhorrent person who’s just a passerby in my journey of life, just like the cockroach which scuttled across my kitchen floor.
Every day, there are bits and pieces of events that don’t necessarily go according to my preferences. And if I keep holding the grudge that everyone else is luckier than I am, other people’s cups are always fuller, everyone out there is waiting for the opportunity to backstab me and everything that has gone wrong is always other people’s fault and not mine, then I’ll be a very sorry existence of a human being.
I look at my life. I have a wonderful family and a bunch of supportive friends. That’s enough. As long as you have a rainbow ? in your heart, you will see rainbows everywhere. Even on the balcony floor. ? And you’ll find the pot of gold that’s at the end of it. (Yes. I’m a huge fan of fairy tales!)
But if one’s eyes are smeared with excretion, then everything one sees will be coated with a layer of *hold nose*. This group of people don’t need help to bring agony into their lives, they just need to look into the mirror.
So, my philosophy is to live well and love much! ?
This morning, I decided that TODAY would be a NO WORK day. No office email, no thinking of work (ok ok, I made some work calls and messages, but really short ones!).
Morning – did my chores at home. Accompanied my grandmother to her rehabiliative care, had lunch with her, chit chatted with her and sat with her until she fell asleep.
Afternoon – listened to Mr. Talkative (aka 小小宝贝) tell me about his day at school, how he made his Vacuum cleaner gun (ya, another one of his numerous inventions. This one sucked up bad people.) with his best friend, ran him through his Shichida exercises and other brain training puzzles (which were languishing in neglect because I was too busy), practised his Yamaha music stuff with him. When 宝贝 came back from school, supervised her homework.
Evening – Rode through the park connectors with 小小宝贝 (shortened my life by a few years because of how he rode along the busy roads), while Miss 宝贝 preferred to play with her friends (Sigh! 女大不中留).
Night – Patted both of them while listening to them whisper sweet nothings to me, telling me how much they love me. Finally, I got to read my book. My new year’s resolution (every year!) was to reduce my pile of “Want to read, but no time to read” books.
It’s been a long time. And I kind of like it. Say… I really can get used to a life like that! Maybe it’s time to give it some serious consideration….?
I have always been toying with the idea of getting my own domain name. Because, technically speaking, if one day, WordPress decides to terminate my account with them, all my writings, pictures, videos which I have posted since 2002 (Yes… I have been blogging for 14 years! Albeit on and off though… I was one of the pioneer bloggers who have gone nowhere. LOL!) will be gone!
Excuses, procrastination, everything that you can think of. Finally, I have done it! I have got myself a domain, a webhost and migrated the whole website over. Believe me, the migration was as bad as moving a house where you have lived in for last 12 years. It was PAINFUL. Maybe because I was very cheapo, I did everything myself and refused to pay a fee to migrate the information. It took me one whole day! It’s also because I am terribly noob at the technology. So instead of paying movers, I figuratively moved my “furniture”, “boxes”, “belongings” all by myself (and I’m only 5 feet tall… ).
So my new “house” is ready (well, kind of…) with the bare walls. I’ll maneuver myself through the tech part to beautify it later. So, yes, the new site works but just not too awesome looking (with my noob skills it’ll at most be so-so lah!) unless I pay a pro to jazz it up. Then again, that wouldn’t be me anymore. Let’s look beyond the physical beauty and go for the content. 
Come visit me at my new place www.myonecentthoughts.com!
I unearthed a forgotten trove of journals when I was trying to locate one of my old travel journals to plan for my next holiday!
I marveled at how legible my handwriting was! ? Back in 1998! Now, it has been reduced to a scrawl, though not quite up to the standard of the “Doctor font” yet. (Sigh! It goes to show that no matter how badly I write, I don’t have the potential to be a doctor. Oh well!)
I posted the picture in FB and some very wonderful friends praised my ex-handwriting. Ok! For that, I’ll endeavour to improve my current standard!!
Some others were surprised that I actually kept journals. Yes! I did and I still do (very sporadically now). I’m still quite old school. I need to scribble on something for my ideas to take shape.
I used to write in my diaries every day. When I go through them now, memories come back to me and yet they felt like a few lifetimes away. Those were part of me and yet, there’s no way I can write like that now. Not at this point of my life, with the current state of mind. I kind of miss the old me, with a naive set of idealism and can-do attitude (to the point of being “ti ki”). Ah! How nice it was, to be young, to have the “anything can be done” ??????, the silly squabbles, the shallow crushes.
Looking back now, it seems that I had a whole lot more fun than what I have right now. It’s a chore to be a grown up! But at least I’ve had my good old wild days! Been there, done that!
Maybe, just maybe, one day, I can make the choice to unshackle myself from the mundane responsibilities and liabilities and be wild again?! But by then, already become old auntie already leh. Sigh…!
Everyone should start journaling! You will be surprised to read what you are writing now, 20 years later! It’s like recovering parts of your life. ?
*ti ki – hokkien for metal teeth. Aka persistent.