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!!!!! :)

I'm Leaving on a Jetplane....

This is it. The bag is packed (in singular form because the husband's isn't) and I am just sitting down to gather my thoughts and pray before we set off to Washington. J's graduation is on Sun 17th and I hope I am not too jetlagged and fall asleep during the ceremony!

This trip has been a time of pre-departure anxiety. I hope, even as I am writing this, that J has booked a car to pick us up from the airport. She has promised to make all the necessary arrangements and it is nice to be on the receiving end of arrangements than the one making them. One of the benefits of having your children grow up on you :) But my anxiety has stemmed more from the uncertainty that surrounds my return. With this spate of H1N1 flu, I almost was not given permission to leave for the US and it was truly a prayer answered that the alert was downgraded from orange to yellow, thus allowing me to travel, but with the dire threat that I will have to "exercise social responsibility" and might have to self-quarantine if the situation worsens between now and my return. I have just committed this to the Lord and focused on finishing my work and getting packed. What is the use of worrying and why worry anyway when God reigns!

I am looking forward very much to seeing J again. It has been a long time and though she isn't thrilled about it, I am looking forward to having her home again. It will also be a time of meeting many new people - people who have loved my daughter and blessed her in many ways and been a part of her life these past 4 years. I am a little bit anxious - it would be a lie if I said I wasn't - largely because I think J has made me out to be this larger-than-life person and I know I am not. Just because my daughters love me, it doesn't mean everyone else would, right? So well, I hope I just relax and enjoy myself, because I know that one thing I struggle with is this deep desire to be liked. It has been an area God has grown me in, especially this last year - just being myself, just a child of God and accepting that.

Well, I didn't set out to write a reflective piece, so I'll stop. My great desire to visit New York has been thwarted by H1N1, because then surely I would be quarantined! and we have changed our plans to visit Chicago instead after we go to Madison. I suppose that is another source of anxiety - meeting my brother and sister-in-law again after more than 15 years. But at the same time I'm also looking forward to it as my brother has gotten on in years and I do want to meet him now that I will be in the US as he does not travel.

Well, there will be silence from me for a while as I set off to the US. Please keep me in your prayers.

My Mother's Days

This is the first Mothers' Day that I have not had either one of my daughters with me. Last year I was in Melbourne and I remember how R made me scrambled eggs for breakfast :) Well, this year, both J and R are away so it didn't feel much like Mothers' Day.

However, today I thought about my own mother a great deal. I confess I have not really thought much about her. Somehow, my dad figured more in my childhood memories than my mum did. And my memory of her has always been that she had an air of resignation and sadness around her. It is strange how I seem to have picked up a number of vibes, whether these were justified or not I don't know. I suppose the inner life of our parents will always be hidden from us. But I felt she was somehow unhappy with what life had dealt her, that my dad could never do enough to please her. I felt that she always wanted me to take her side and I didn't understand what it was that I could do to please her. When I grew older I also felt like a pawn sometimes - especially if I was allowed to go out with my sisters - because when I came back she would ask me to repeat conversations to her. Which I did. And which did not endear me to my sisters. So they would accuse me of snitching on them and I remember not knowing what it was that I was supposed to do - tell and incur my sisters' wrath or not tell and endure my mum's silent anger.

But she was my mother and I loved her. I knew that she loved me in some fashion, shown mostly by letting me sleep with her, by excessive feeding and protection from my sisters and my dad especially when the report cards were not good! That she loved me I have no doubt. But she did not always have time for me.

This morning, I was in KL and my 2 sisters got talking about our relatives in India and the conversation got round to my mother. And somehow, this morning, my mother began to come to life for me as a real person. I heard how her mother (my grandmother) died giving birth to her. So my mother grew up motherless, brought up by her eldest step-brother and his wife. My sister told a story that brought a lump to my throat - how my mum's sister-in-law once gave all the children in the household a cup of milk before bedtime but did not give my mother any. She cried and ran downstairs to her brother who then took her on to his lap and made his wife give her some milk too. And I thought of that little child, being shut out of family life, overlooked among other children and felt sadness. Then I heard that my mother was brought to Malaya to marry my father when she was 14. She had her first child, my sister Rajam, before she turned 15. Then came 8 other children.

What would she have known about raising children when she was a child herself? What would she have known about being a mother when she had not been mothered? And then 25 years of child-bearing! Her first child born in 1931 and her last one (me) born in 1957! No wonder she was tired! I can still see her in my mind's eye now, lying down on the easy chair in the hall with her eyes closed. I used to wish she would get up and talk or do something. But now I think, would I have had the energy if it were me? What did she feel, coming to a strange country at 14 to marry a 23-year old man she had not met? Who helped her - to learn to cook? look after her child? What did she dream of and did any of her dreams come true? What happened that made her suspicious of almost everyone? Did she feel loved?

I wish, now, I had spent more time with my mum.

Where has the time gone?

Here I am again. I have missed writing on my blog. But I have a number of things that keep me occupied in the evenings and I find I don’t have as many hours after work as I seemed to have before….

One new activity I have begun is watching the show ‘The Biggest Loser’ on the Hallmark channel from 7pm to 8pm. I started watching it as I thought it would motivate me to lose weight and that I would learn some tips on how to eat right and exercise. But after a month of watching it I realize I have not been motivated even an iota by the programme. In fact, yesterday, I ate 4 Mark & Spencer’s raspberry tart biscuits while I watched the programme. Hahahaha… The absurdity of it struck me when I was on my second biscuit but the remaining 2 biscuits looked so forlorn in the box that I fnished them off anyway :) And anyway I also realized that the programme is like any other reality show and focuses on who messes up and how they mess up instead of telling us what to eat etc. So, has this realization made me stop watching the programme? Nope. There is something fascinating about waiting to see the contestants stand on the huge weighing scales and see how much weight they lost that week. Weird.

Well anyway, this fat-watching happens only on Mondays and Tuesdays because I am at church on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday evenings - CYAN cell on Wed and my own cell on Fri. And on Thurs evenings, I am in a 10-week course called ‘Search for Life’. So that is about half my week taken up. And now there is a kind of pattern to my week. Wednesdays to Fridays I am at work and then at church. Mondays and Tuesdays are my free evenings when I either catch up on reading or preparing for my Thurs classes or preparing for my cell discussions. Saturday is my ME day – long walk, leisurely breakfast, QT, meet friends, do my facial, get a massage, watch a movie etc. Sundays – I go to church then basically keep D company. I try hard to cook on Sundays so he has some lunch at home and then basically leave space in the day to see what he wants to do. Most times he wants to eat then sleep in the afternoon, and that works great for me too. Hahaha…

I am looking forward now to my trip to the US. D and I will be leaving in mid-May to attend J’s graduation. I wish R could be with us too. We are planning to some traveling while we are there but my niece tells me my planned itinerary is too ambitious so I will need to re-think... :)

What I've Been Up To

Wow It's been a long time since I blogged. And I am disappointed that I have not been missed more! Hey is no one reading my blog anymore????

So since I last moaned about my weight gain, I have not done anything to rectify the situation. I think I am having low-grade depression. Because all I want to do is eat thereally bad stuff - like chocolate, ice-cream and biscuits and drink coffee.

Speaking of coffee, that is what defined my last trip to Melbourne for me - COFFEE! I have officially declared Melbourne the coffee capital of the world. I drank coffee every morning I was there and the best part was I didn't have to look for a particular shop or anything. I could walk into any cafe and the coffee would be gooood! How do they manage that?

Well, anyway, here is a quick update of the months that have passed... R went to the US for 2 weeks in Dec (of what a generous mother she has...) and by all accounts the 2 sisters had a good time - except when they almost froze to death in Times Square because the mother persuaded them to go to the Count-down on New Year's Eve. Then in Feb, R and I went to Melbourne. R has decided to read Behavioural Science & Social Work in Monash. The campus is not as pretty as Melbourne Uni's and had a number of students from India (who without fail asked R "Are you IT?") but I had a good vibe about the Social Work Faculty.

We flew to Sydney over a weekend as D's niece got married. It was a beautiful wedding and the pictures are on Flickr if anyone is interested. I'm quite upset because my Blogger account makes the photos smaller for some reason I have not bee able to figure out - so am not posting them here. Also caught up with my friends Bee Leng & Neena and the newly migrated Pushpa & Ganesh. It's funny how I miss them - after all when they were in KL we only met once or twice a year but now it seems sad.

I've watched a number of movies I quite liked - 2 of them in Melbourne at the exorbitant price of AUD16. I liked Slumdog Millionaire but I feel it is overrated and not really worthy of an Oscar. I think it had the same effect on the West as Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon did - people who have never watched an Indian movie before and then go gaga over it when they finally do. There are a number of excellent Hindi movies that deserve an Oscar but never did get one. Also watched He's Just Not That Into You - and you know what, I think there were quite a few truths in there :)

Also watched the musical 'Menopause' with my friends from JI - we had a great time! The musical dragged a bit in the middle - I guess there are only so many laughs you can wring out of hot flushes - but I think the fun was in watching it with a bunch of other women. Funny thing is none of us had any of what the musical was laughing about :) We are going to watch The Winter's Tale next Fri - we are becoming quite the theatre crowd...

Currently reading an extremely consoling book called 'What's So Amazing About Grace'. And not looking forward to going to work tomorrow.....

My Oprah Confession

So I too, like Oprah, have "fallen off the wagon". But THANKFULLY, unlike her 19kg, I only have 3 kgs to rue. And here are the reasons for this...


Meeting up with my 95E students over pizza and KFC..

Celebrating with my CYAN cell

Ice cream at Swensen's with my 95A students...

One too many BOWALA sessions with my kakis from office...

Ben's wedding dinner...

And our office farewell lunch...

And in case Maya thinks she got away from the blame game, here it is too...

Wow. Considering all this, it is a MIRACLE It's only 3 kgs.... Hahahaha...

First Entry for 2009

Just 2 days after my last post I have to admit failure. Already I have 3 makan dates set up - a lunch on Sunday with my CYAN youth leaders, a dinner on Monday with my student who is in town on holiday from Hawaii and a dinner probably on Friday with my mami kakis from JI and dinner with Neen who has not accepted an offer of a hike in lieu. Sigh.... so much for the Battle of the Bulge. It didn't have a chance....

So it was a pretty good New Year celebration for my family. We went to D's brother's place for New Year's Eve. My bil organised an Ox-themed party as 2009 would be the Year of the Ox according to the Chinese calendar. It caused me a lot of grief in terms of finding appropriate wear and in the end D brought a ridiculous looking headwear which was essentially pom-poms mounted on a hair-band which I tried to make into horns and ended up looking the Statue of Liberty. My niece had better success with it by fashioning a pair of horns out of foil. But after all the groans before the event, we had fun as my BIL had put in quite a bit of effort and set up games along the Ox theme with the evening culminating in a 'treasure hunt' that ended in Clarke Quay where we could watch the fireworks.

R and J are in New York for the new year. Apparently it is an unimaginable -14 degrees celsius. They gamely went to Times Square to watch the ball descend largely because their mother was trying to do some vicarious living but then the cold and the crowds got the better of them so they came home to watch it online instead :) I am glad though that they are spending some time together. With both of them away in university in different countries with a 15 hour time difference it has been hard to keep in touch. And I think as they both enter new phases of life - work, study, dating.... - they will have to make time for each other or risk losing chunks of each other's lives. It has been interesting even to me to realise there are now larger and larger parts of their lives that I do not know about. Of course they strenously deny it and claim to tell me EVERYTHING but I know they can't really do that. I guess that's part of our children growing up and becoming adults in their own right.

Well, here's to a new year - of possibilities, promise and potential. Despite the gloomy economic prognosis for 2009, I am looking forward to it. I read somewhere that when you hit middle age you begin thinking of time as "time left" instead of "time ahead" and I realised that was true of myself. So I am choosing to continue to think of "time ahead" and I have been surprised at the change in attitude this simple re-framing has resulted in. So yes, I am looking forward to 2009. May it be a blessed year for you too. "The Lord is God and he has made his light shine upon us." (Psalm 118:27)

The Battle Begins Tomorrow

AAAAGH!!!! I have put on 3 kgs!!!!! Aaaaaagh!!! This is the result of birthday dinners + trips to KL + Christmas + Ben & Jerry since R came home. I just caught sight of my paunch in a Christmas photo of me. The horror! The horror!

Hear ye! Hear ye! on 1 Jan 2009, the diet begins. The exercise begins! The 3 kgs will be conquered! I have made this public declaration to make myself get started and to warn - no, beg - all my friends not to tempt me with all manner of chocolates, ice creams, cakes and cookies. And anyone who wants to meet me will have to make an exercise date with me. No more coffee dates, no more dinner dates and no more dessert sessions until those 3 kgs are wiped out, vanquished! Neen - we have to walk around Botanic Garden when you come or climb Bt Timah ok :) Aaaaaaagh!!!!! :)