Staycay

We had a staycation last Thursday & Friday. It was a 2D1N thingy at Rendezvous Hotel.

I'm not sure who enjoyed it most though lol...K and I were deadbeat tired.

We had room service for lunch on the first day. Nadya enjoyed it pretty much and fed herself quite okay but Alyssa was a handful. She was playing with her food and cutlery and climbing all over the sofa more than eating. Eventually, Alyssa vomitted her lunch out on the first day and we brought her to the PD clinic near our place in the evening. She had also vomitted the previous day and we were getting worried. Doc eventually diagnosed her as having stomach flu, on top of the cold that sh was already nursing and fighting.

So much so for a staycation hahaha....We dabao-ed dinner back to the hotel room to eat in the end.

When it was bed time, the girls' rejected the hotel's cots and they ended up on the queen-sized bed. K got relegated to the floor and he slept on the cot mattresses. I was on the bed with the girls and didn't sleep much at all because Alyssa woke every hour for the first few hours. Then Nadya threw a hugeass tantrum at 3am in the morning. The girls had also slept later than usual because they were not used to the room.

I'd always known that Alyssa slept in a "chor lor" manner. I didn't know she was THAT chor lor. Nadya pretty much slept within a particular area. At the most, her arms were spread wide. Alyssa on the other hand...rolled from left to right and then back to the left. She got up to a yoga child pose position, twisted herself, lay flat on her back and then lay flat on her tummy. And on and on. And of course, amidst all these "action sequences", she was sometimes on me, on my arm, on my thigh, etc. Plus I was punched by her a few times. Chor lor. Really chor lor. Lol.

Breakfast was pretty ok. Alyssa, after taking medication, managed to keep her food in. There being not much around the hotel in the morning, we just took a leisurely stroll to SOTA and Cathay and then back. Along the way, we ran a little, we took pictures, we played some games, we looked at trees and flowers and we took more pictures :)

Will we do another staycation anytime soon? I don't know haha...maybe not. ;p

Questions

Do well in a mediocre school or do mediocre in a good school?

Be in a mixed race school or in a school dominated by Chinese and whose curriculum is heavy on the Chinese culture?

audit period

My team is in the midst of an internal audit. Definitely not the first time we've been audited by the internal audit team.

But erm....it's the first time ever in our 20 years' history and in my 10 years tenure here that my area of work is being audited.

FML!

I have a feeling I will receive quite a few audit observations. Just a matter of whether the lapses are severe, moderate or minor. :( I admit I've not been the most compliant....but hey, I started out with no process in place ok...and I slowly built them up over the years....

*fingers crossed*
*toes crossed*

Hope I don't kena too many observations....

Of careers and jobs and progression? Or the lack of...

My current boss is a nice guy. A people person. He's more of a "get everybody involved and everybody discuss together" kind of boss. He's not afraid to get his hands dirty and muddied in operational matters and he is rather independent in terms of admin issues. He has a PA but doesn't rely on her much. 

He's a techie and he's also experienced, having assumed several different managerial and leader roles over the years. He's quite lor sor though and can be quite abit of a broken record at times. He was even seconded to Brunei and led their government tech agency as their Director-General for a good 5 years.

Despite his experience, when he returned to Singapore, he remained a Deputy Director and was not promoted to a Director. And I wonder why. At his age (he's in his early 50s)and in his current role as our boss, I doubt he has enough key and strategic responsibilities to be promoted to be a Director. 

I see some of his traits and work style in me. And I wonder what my path would be if I am still in the same agency 5, 10, 15 years down the road...

Of course, from my current SM position, I still have many years to go before I hit an Executive Manager or Assistant Director position...and only thereafter will I hit a Deputy Director position. In the current team where I am comfortably at, we are already quite top heavy and I am fully aware I won't progress anymore. 

We spoke last week again. On the possibility of some role switching and some restructuring of our team. He mentioned he did consider putting the marketing function or customer service team under my care. Let's see how that goes...talk is just talk sometimes.....

人，大，小，天，口

These days, Nadya's scribbles and drawings include Chinese words and characters...
她长大了...*emo wail*

Number 2

Alyssa is progressing at her own pace. Slowly but steadily.

She's finally starting to speak in slightly longer sentences. "Mama, jie jie where?" or "Dada there. I want."

She can sing Twinke Twinkle Little Star fully though her diction is still rather unclear.

She is able to self-soothe a little. Sometimes when she gets upset over something, she wails and then runs into her room and grabs her blanket and her favourite teddy bear. And then she's okay, even if her lips are still pursed. :)

She is still our happy pill...Cheerful and happy and smiley and charming.

My firstborn

It started raining earlier tonight.

Nadya woke and said to me, "Mama, I think it's raining. Did you bring in the clothes?"

My heart melted. I felt touched that she actually remembered that this is what I do when it starts to rain.

It's at times like this when I don't feel like I have a soon-to-be 4-year-old girl. She seems so mature for her age sometimes.

Nadya

She's gotten a lot braver compared to before. At the goat farm a few weeks ago, she fed and petted the baby goats on her own. 

And at the Animal Resort, she fed the horse, the rabbits and guinea pigs on her own! She used to either cower behind me or I had to hold her hand to feed the horse!

She's growing bigger day by day. *beams*

Nosebleed...

Nadya has always given me middle of the night shocks with her nosebleeds. It happened more often when she was 1 & 2 years old...then it slowly tapered off.

Thereafter it was only once in a blue moon. For a long time, like maybe 6months to a year, she didn't get a nosebleed. Then suddenly 1-2 weeks ago she had an episode. And last night again. :(

I hope she grows out of it soon. And I hope she stops picking at her nose!

...

Seeking affirmation for my frigging whole life.

When will I ever be enough? For myself and for others? 

Patches

I did a patch test on 1 Aug to determine if there were any allergies which might have caused my lip dermatitis. I had to put on the patches for 2 full days before removing them. I couldn't wash my back and even after removing them, I still couldn't wash my back till after I saw the doc on 4 Aug. So the entire process took 4 days.



The result?

I'm allergic to Fragrance Mix and Cinnamyl Alcohol (which is found in Fragrance Mix as well). Fragrance Mix is a combination of 8 of the most commonly used chemicals used to create fragrances. Any combination of these fragrance chemicals can be used in a wide range of products like toiletries and toothpaste.

When I heard it, I wondered if I needed to change all of my toiletries and cosmetic products to something fragrance free. Thank goodness the doc only advised me to switch my facial wash and toothpaste to a fragrance free brand since it was only my lips that were flaring up.
Managed to grab some Simple products yesterday.  Using paraffin wax and steroid gel on my lips too.....

Here's to better and more chio lips in the days ahead!

Pek Chek

...is when you try to help a colleague with a piece of work to improve herself and to minimise customers getting back to her with questions because they simply don't understand what she is trying to say in her emails.....

....but the colleague doesn't get what you're doing and doesn't want to improve...

Feel like I'm talking to a wall.

Sigh. 

$$$$$

One of my business partners is a young guy. 4 years younger. But heaps richer lol.
He started his business with another guy, who is maybe 1-2 years younger than him. That makes them 33yrs old and 32yrs old this year.

They started their business back when they were 21 or 20. Built it to an impressive size....and yesterday, the first guy, who's on pretty ok terms with me, updated me that they'd sold their controlling shares to a publicly-listed company in Australia. I did not ask what the transaction value was. Nor did he share with me.....

After our conversation, I googled about it. And my jaw dropped.

The deal was valued at S$30million.

OMG lah. When will I ever see such an amount of money? Gosh.
Rupee and rupiah maybe can haha.

As it is they already came from well-to-do families, now their coffers are spilling over. The rich get richer.

But I don't deny as well these 2 guys are smart, entrepreneurial, hardworking and absolute go-getters. I know they worked their assess off in the early days of their business, pulling in 15/16 hour days or even more...becoming their customers own 24/7 technical support (their in the hosting and domain name business) when they couldn't afford to hire enough staff.

Hats off to them for pulling this deal off. :)

Alyssa

I was engrossed with our own wedding anniversary and our proposal anniversary....that I forgot about Alyssa's 22months special day.

She turned 22 months on 24 July!

Our little happy pill is picking up new words everyday. While her enunciation is still quite rudimentary, at least she can communicate with us alot more these days.

She's quite fearless and runs around in the playground or attempts to climb various things. Nadya used to stand and freeze at the playground, especially when there are many others around. Nadya also didn't dare to climb many things and has only started being more adventurous in the recent half a year.

She's still smaller than what Nadya was at the same age but I just upped the amount of her night-time milk and hopefully that helps to bulk her up a little. :)

She's still a charmer. So many have called her a doll and when she smiles, she melts all our hearts haha.

She's a protestor now. As all 2-year-olds are. The minute you say no to her, she wails and/or throws a tantrum on the floor. Quite the drama queen.

Looking forward to seeing how she's gonna develop over the next few months! :)

Conversations with a 22-month old

Me: Alyssa can you say "good night"?
A: goo nai
Me: I love you
A: urrf yoo

===============
Me: Alyssa can you say "elephant"?
A: fern
Me: air-lee-fernt
A: fern
Me: AIR-LEE-FERNT
A: FERN!!!

===============
A: *makes a buzzing sound*
Me: Bee?
A: *nods*
Me: You want the bee biscuit?
A: *nods*
Me: Say please.
A: Peesh. *waits expectantly*
A: Peesh mama. *waits somemore*
Me: *doesn't do anything*
A: Peesh mama. Kate. KATE!!! I want!!

Awkward Skype Call

My colleague and I had a Skype call yesterday with our Malaysian counterparts. The call was initiated by them as they wanted to find out some things from us.

The Chinese lady leading the call on the other end is quite a straight person. No nonsense. Policy-abiding type. She had 3 other colleagues with her. I was leading the call on my end, with only one other colleague with me.

So the lady tried to engage me in some small talk first before diving into the proper discussion. I'm all for making people feel at ease and setting a friendly atmosphere to the call...But, I don't wish to engage in forced small talk longer than necessary. It was a painful attempt by that lady yesterday...While I appreciate her effort, I think we'd all be better off if we limited that exchange. My colleague was grimacing and rolling her eyes at me.

It started simply enough with the usual pleasantries.

She: Hi Michelle! How have you been? It's been awhile (since we last caught up)
Me: Hi YL! Good good. Things have been ok on our end. And yourself?
She: Oh the same. You know lah.

Then it started getting weird. To me, we should have introduced our teams/colleagues to each other at this point and then gone into the discussion proper....but she apparently didn't think so...

She: So.....so......What's your working hours like? What time do you guys end the workday?
Me: Oh erm...6pm is the official knock-off time.

Then it started getting draggy too....

She: Oh so what's the unofficial knock-off time?
Me: Some people stay abit longer if they need to clear their stuff.
She: So what time do you guys get off work usually?

My colleague grimaced and rolled her eyes at me.

Me: I used to OT from time to time but with kids these days I try to knock off on time everyday.
She: Oh hahahaha.
Me: *awkward laughter*

And it went on for a few more sentences before I decided to kill the awkwardness and asked her what they wanted to check with us.

That is not how you do small talk and engage in pleasantries....
Nope...that was pretty awkward. :)

22/7

22nd July. T'was our 5th Chinese wedding anniversary.

Oh how time flies! 

I remember we kind of just missed it altogether last year cos we were busy with the kids and work and other stuff. 

It was not a rushed and hushed thing this year and we managed to get a lovely Japanese lunch at Ikoi! 

Muacks! 

We went from 2 peas to 4 peas in a pod within 3.5 years from our Chinese wedding lol. 

24/7

Today is 24/7 i.e. 24th July. 

A colleague told me that it's the day that married couples should reaffirm their love for each other and that they would love each other 24/7 always. 

So witty. Love each other 24/7 always i.e. 24hrs by 7 days always. 

I told this colleague that K proposed to me on 24 July 2011. And he said: "Wah! That means 'love you 24/7 一生一世' leh!!

I'd never thought of it that way haha. But it sounds so romantic when my colleague pointed it out. 

My response to him? 

"Nah. My hubby probably chose that day/date coincidentally and didn't realize what the date meant too! Lol!" 

;p

sigh

various things
myriad things
work
family
the girls
self
medical appts
home
helper
friends
kin-keeping
relationship-keeping
career
future
finances
insurance
eyes
health
........
.......
...
..
..
.
.

The Girls

Nadya. Head thrown back

Her laughter shrill and merry

A kid’s innocence

Alyssa. Joins in

Her big eyes bright and sparkling

Kids merry-making