Weighing the Costs

What is the dividing line that determines whether one is being selfish or whether one is taking care of one's needs?

I remember the first flight I took with J as a toddler, to India. I think it honestly was the first time I properly listened to the pre-flight safety announcements. And I remember being surprised and a little indignant at the instruction given, that should the oxygen masks descend, I should attend to myself first before attending to my child. Surely noble sentiments called for me to attend to my child first then myself?

But I have since come to realise the truth of that instruction and its application in many different situations. If I attended to my child first, I might not get round to attending to myself. And I have come to see the wisdom of this approach in other 'helping' situations. When I was burnt-out as a teacher, I became less effective; in spending more and more time marking, counselling and coaching my students I actually helped them less and less, as my quality of marking deteriorated, I became impatient during counselling and just wished the student would move on and reach the resolution that was already so obvious to me :)

In church too I have seen how I need to attend to my own spiritual life first if I were to be an effective witness for Christ. For it is only out of a Spirit-filled life that can I give others. I cannot run on dry. And that meant not filling up my week with Christian courses, cell and other activities and making sure I resist the temptation to fill my precious Saturday mornings - my ME time.

I thank God for showing me the importance of ME time so long ago when the girls were little. Having been at home the whole day, they used to wait for me to come back from work. And this included my helper, Mary, who was desperate for me to come and take over the kids. Cooking dinner was therapy for her :) But me, I used to come home so tired that I needed time to just chill and much as I loved my children, I just needed time to relax a little. I am so glad I heard about Disney's De-Stress Chamber. I am not even sure whether it is true or not, but apparently all employees have to go sit in a special De-Stress Chamber before they go home for the day because being polite and happy all the time is just not normal and it is hard on them. So this 'time-out' gives the employees some time to get the work day out of their system and lets them go home to their families happier.

Well, I tried that and that it the ONE MOST IMPORTANT activity I attribute my sanity to. I told my helper that I would call her when I was coming home and she would need to take the kids into a room and play with them or watch tv for half hour while I showered. After that she did not need to attend to the children for therest of the evening. But I would not go home straight from work! I would go to a nice little park we used to have in front of our old flat and sit there for anything from half hour to an hour. Mostly I would read or pray. Then I would call my helper to say I was coming in 5 minutes and go up, have a shower and then I was ready to be a mummy. Hahaha... it really was a neat arrangement.

Well, I started going down memory lane because I am again thinking about whether what I want to do now is right. I want to take 6 months off work. It wouldn't mean a loss of pay exactly, but it will mean there is less money to go around, because 3 of those months will be on full pay and 3 will be on half-pay. This is a new scheme introduced by the MOE to encourage us to learn. It is called Professional Development Leave and it is a great opportunity. Only thing is I must engage in a professional development activity of some sort - study or work attachment or do research. I want to study and given the finances, Australia seems like my best bet as the exchange rates are better.

But there are other things to consider - the day-to-day running of the household, the finances, the needs of my children, and the question - is it worth it? I would be able to get a Post-graduate Certificate at the end of it, given that is only a 6 month course. On its own, it will add nothing to my career - no recognition or monetary reward. But it is an experience that I think I will enjoy. And it is a good point in my career at which to do this.

So I am asking myself, am I being self-indulgent or am I doing something for myself just because I want to? I would definitely have to take a loan to pay the fees (but MOE will give me an interest-free loan).... Should I save the money I would be spending? Maybe do a part-time course locally instead? But that would be draining as I would not be able to take time off and will have to stay in my job. For what I will be paying in 6 months I will be able to pay for a PhD locally for 2 years...... This has been going round and round in my head this past week.

An Evening with Friends

I met up with my friends from JI again last night. Mini had us over at her new condominum.It was the usual raucous affair and we missed Sham. Mini's husband came out of the room where he was trying to work to studiedly inform us that we would be heard from the patio at the bottom of the condominum. But that made absolutely no impression on us.

What did we talk about? Getting rid of baggage as we grow older (is it "release", "closure" or "moving on"? hahahaha) children (having them, growing them and letting go), what our lives should have been like, what our lives are, bosses and their vagaries, husbands and their vagaries, marrying young, marrying late, holidays, that my gynae is my friend :) diet, acupuncture and hynotherapy as means to losing weight, movies, Meryl Streep & Pierce Brosnan, Ben & Jerry vs Haagen Dazs..........

We had a good time. Women make the best friends.

It's Time for Change

I want to get back to teaching. I feel really sure of this. I have been thinking about it for a long time and I feel now is the time to do something about it. So I am going to apply to NIE (National Institute of Education) on Monday. Last year and early this year, there were two firm offers made but I wasn't in a position to move. But now I am and I'm wondering if the opportunity is still there...

There are many "but"s about it - chief among them being the sheer distance. Work is just a 10 minute bus ride away now and on days when I want time to unwind, I even walk home. NIE is at the end of the human universe..... It will take me an hour at least to get there as I don't drive. Then I am really comfortable where I am now and I can see myself doing this work till I retire. But there is an itch to get back into the classroom, a feeling that I am now working in a parallel universe and my place is really somewhere else.

I miss many things about teaching, but if I had to name one, it would be being part of the "AHA!" moment when students suddenly get it, when a difficult concept clicks and the student knows that he knows. That really is the best part of teaching. I miss that.

A Song

I really like this song....



Say What You Need To Say

Take all of your wasted honor.
Every little past frustration.
Take all of your so called problems,
Better put 'em in quotations.

Say what you need to say (x8)

Walkin' like a one man army,
Fightin' with the shadows in your head.
Livin' up the same old moment
Knowin' you'd be better off instead

If you could only...Say what you need to say (x8)

Have no fear for givin' in.
Have no fear for giving over.
You better know that in the end
It's better to say too much, than never to say what you need to say again.

Even if your hands are shaking,
And your faith is broken.
Even as the eyes are closin',
Do it with a heart wide open.

Say what you need to say (x7)

Say what you need to, Say what you need to...

Say what you need to say.

I'm back and God is Good!

If I were still a superstitious Hindu, I would say maybe this was not a good year to travel according to my horoscope; that maybe the stars were not aligned right. Thinking about how excited I had been when I wrote last year about 2009 being my Year of Travel, I admit I feel a little wistful that all my trips this year seem to have been either cancelled or not all that I had hoped for them to be.

I had planned to have a proper holiday and do tourist-y things during my trip to Melbourne and Sydney in Feb 09. I thought I would be able to cross one more item off my Things To Do by climbing the Sydney Bridge and I was sure I would be able to do a 2D1N trip down the Great Ocean Road which I have been wanting to see during my past 2 trips to Melbourne and had not managed to. But somehow, things did not work out - we stayed too far from Sydney for me to go in to the city on my own and there was always something going on as there was a wedding; in Melbourne there just did not seem to be a convenient time when we could get away; I only saw Ganesh & Pushpa for a short time..... Somehow, I did not feel I had a good tourist-y holiday.

Then the mountain climbing I had looked forward to got crossed off my list as well. Due to some changes in church schedule, the dates got changed from 1 - 3 May to 8 - 10 May and I had planned to go up to KL that weekend instead as my eldest sister was scheduled to have a knee operation on the 11th. I must say I was tempted to not go visit my sister, but I am glad I did, even though it meant I did not get to cross off one more thing I hoped to be able to do - climb a mountain.

Then just before I left for the US, I got an email that said that the Isreal trip I was looking forward to in Dec was re-scheduled as well, as the group could not get tickets to fly. I felt really dispirited then, as I could not make it for the new dates as I would have to have taken more leave (which I did not have) as well as miss D's niece's wedding (which I did not want to). So there went another one off the list.

So when the time came for us to go to the US, I felt I really had had a raw deal this year and I wanted to have a really good time to make up for the 'disappointments'. But things got off to a rocky start - because 2 weeks before we were scheduled to leave, the H1N1 flu struck and the Ministry went into the 'orange' alert phase which effectively meant that no travel to 'affected areas' (in this case, the US) would be cleared without the Director's approval. So I was asked where in the US I was going to go and I spent an anxious 3 days waiting for clearance. I knew there would be no clearance if I said I was going to New York so I had to very reluctantly drop the city off my itinerary. Clearance took a long time coming because the flu situation was changing every day and noone was quite sure what steps had to be taken. At one stage I was told that if I went ahead with the trip, I would have to take 7 days of my own vacation leave and be quarantined at home! That really got my goat and I admit I did not know for certain till 4 days before the date of departure, whether I would be allowed to even come back home from the trip or be whisked off to quarantine :)

Well, by grace of God, - and I maintain, it is grace and nothing else! - that the alert level was adjusted to 'yellow' which meant that I could travel and need not be quarantined unless I fell sick. But all this toing-and-froing meant that I could not make any travel bookings or hotel booking as I just was not sure how bad the spread of flu in the US was going to be. If Washington DC, for example, got listed as an affected area, it would have meant that I could not go even there, or put myself at risk of getting into trouble with my bosses.

The outcome of this was that my US trip was a disorganised, randomly put together one, totally unlike the usual planned and precise itinerary I usually travel on. It was hard. At one point, after J's graduation, we actually did not know what we were going to do or where we were going to go. We had planned to go to New York after visiting Washington DC so when that fell through, suddenly we had 4 extra days with nowhere to go. Then we couldn't get cheap tickets to fly to Madison, WI to visit my brother because it was Memorial Day weekend and tickets were either unavailable or unbelievably expensive. I was so desperate I even contemplated taking a 17 hr train ride then a 5 hour flight to get to Madison. I am glad I saw the stupidity of my own decision soon enough :)

Many other things didn't fall into place - it rained on J's graduation day and I couldn't wear any of the nice clothes I had shopped for here (I wore jeans and sneakers because I was warned that it would be cold and muddy and it was), we couldn't travel on our own as D had trouble driving on the left side of the road, we hired a driver (Mr Ossie!) who was 2 1/2 hours late on the first day and 1 hour late on the second day and almost caused us to miss our flight to Madison, J was sad that Chad had left, we actually did not manage to see a single museum in Washington because we took a bus ride that was far too long - oh, a litany of woes! :)

BUT, let me tell you, what has been really great about all of this - in all this, God and I have had an awesome time together! Despite all the mislaid plans, or rather because of all the mislaid plans, I have had a chance to see how God has changed me and grown me and taken me to a deeper place in the knowledge of His love. I think even a year ago, if I had had the disappointments I have listed above, I would have cried and sulked and and badgered Him by saying "Why, God? Why?". But this time, I have experienced a serenity that I honestly have not experienced before. I have carried in my heart, this strange sensation that feels like 'settled-ness'. There is no other way to describe it. A sure feeling that God is in control. And the lesson I have learnt is this - to look at what God has given, each day, each moment, in each experience and not at what He has not given to me. To accept, each day, each experience, and know for sure that God is there -always, every day; His eye is on me, every moment.

And I have come to see how, in some of the 'disappointments' I listed above, He gave me experiences that I had not appreciated at that time. Mostly, I realise that all my mislaid holiday plans have involved other people and important conversations. Because I did not travel around Sydney, I had, instead, a long car drive with D's niece and her fiance where we talked about the 5 Love Languages and the commitment needed for a marriage. We talked about important issues such as understanding the family origins of one's partner and how that impacts marriage. Because I did not go climb Mt Ophir, I was able to go to KL for the weekend and most importantly, pray with my sister before she checked in to hospital. Having gone there, I realise how much it meant to her as we are the only siblings who are Christians.

And as I look back on my trip to the US, I am so glad for all that I have to celebrate and all the things that I give thanks to God for! First, I celeberate J's graduation! I give thanks that God has protected her and surrounded her with Christian witness and grown her faith. I remember that chilling moment when Jeff sms-ed me about the shooting in Virginia Tech and for a few seconds the terror I felt. The loneliness of her first year and how she cried when she was going back after her first summer holidays. Then, the slow bulding up of friendships, the comfort of Chi Alpha. Then all too soon (for her) 4 years have passed by and one phase of life has drawn to a close. So yes, Lord, I give thanks to Your protecting Hand over your child.

Then we met wonderful people who opened their homes to us and who have over the past 4 years welcomed J and loved her. We stayed with Michelle and Anthony in Charlottesville and with the O' Haras in Falls Church and we were made to feel so very welcome that surely I must count them among the blessings!

And of course, sweet Micah :)

And I see God's Hand in so many other places - by changing our original dates of visit to Madison, we were able to visit Shenandoah where God gave us the last room available (though the board said 'Full") which conveniently slept 3 and which we got cheaper than the price on the internet because it was a last minute deal.

Because we took a long bus ride that made it too late for us to visit the museums, D and I had the opportunity to talk, something we have not had time for in a long time. And maybe kept us away from the H1N1 virus too, who knows? There were hoards of school children in all those museums! :)

And because D fell ill in Madison, (on the right day! because if he had fallen sick even 1 day later he would not have recovered by the time we boarded the flight to Singapore and we would have been home-quarantined until his cold was tested!) J and I had on our own to hang out and talk important things :)

And most marvellous of all, all the trouble of getting to Madison was worth it, because I re-connected with my brother after 20 years. And discovered that he had heard the gospel!!!! Who would have thought! I didn't even imagine this in my wildest dreams. Of course he is in fact nicely positioned for the JWs to hit on him at the moment but the amazing thing is that he is able to quote verses from the KJV Bible which he studied in secondary school. I wish I had had more time with him, but I am really excited about this and please pray with me that my brother too will come into the Kingdom! That is really exciting for me.

Oh wow - this has been a really long blog!!!! I didn't realise how long I have been at this! So details and pics of my US trip will have to wait. Right now, suffice it to say, yes, I had a great trip; yes, I am looking forward to J coming back; yes, I know that the H1N1 is raging in Melbourne; yes, I am looking forward to my trip to London in July; yes, it will probably have its share of bumps too; and YES MY GOD REIGNS!!!!! :)