Well, if you reading this post after this blog has been neglected for close to 2 months, “THANK YOU” for visiting. And I think it’s good for me to recap some of the events in the past two months coz I know my day-to-day failing memory cannot recall any of these if I were not to pen it down soon *haha*
On 23rd Nov, we took flight SQ835 to head back home@SG, leaving behind the cold Shanghai behind us, where we lived for close to 15 months. We were ahead of schedule for the return as I need to return to SG for my research data collection and more importantly, we need to return to SG to start work as our “income” has stopped and there’s now 2+2 mouths to feed. And yes, that leaves the fact that I have left Shanghai and my course is far from complete. On this day, we dragged with us some 140kg of luggages with us to board the plane (with special mention and thanks to SQ’s Shanghai Customer Services Manager for granting us extra baggage FOC for our relocation). Yes, the load is nightmarish.
And back home, one of the major event is to unpack all the things that we brought back from Shanghai (did I mention we have another 12 boxes of stuff that took a 1 mth ship ride which costs us >RMB3000 for it?). And before we left for Shanghai, I have an entire room locked out with boxes of things. Yes (x2), it’s nightmarish (x2) for the whole unpacking business, and it’s only _almost_ done after 2 months. CNY’s round the corner so there’s not much time left to complete it.
Other major “events” for the past two months include hunting & registering yh juniors for school/childcare, hunting & buying a car for all the ferry purposes, yh2 starting work 7 days after we landed back in SG (this is the single most impactful event that slows everything else down. and the best thing is she’s not paid a single cent for all the work done in the whole month. and it’s for you to guess the why), completing the second and third last assignments for my coursework (yes, ONE last module and dreadful assignment to go), handholding events for my thesis research etc etc). And yes, finally I get to sit down to blog this entry.
The way ahead is going to be quite an unimaginable one. I have less than 1.5 month to complete analysing all my data and to write out the entire research thesis becoz I intend to graduate by Jul 09. This would accelerate my 3-yrs course to 2-yrs and I cant guarantee I can make it as life comes with so many events unpredictable. We can only pray for the best and prepare for the worst. I will be returning to work wef 1st Apr as I mentioned we needed the income to feed the 2+2 mouths. Where I’ll be posted to has been decided and I hope to get it ‘un’-decided and ‘re’-decided as I hope to be able to return to school to teach (and to lead). In any case, I would be glad to return to where I ‘left behind’ if the re-deciding part fails 🙂
And for now, Chinese New Year is just round the corner and I’m very much in the festive mood. This year for CNY we’ll not be able to fire up fire crackers and fireworks as we did back in Shanghai 1 yr ago. But this year, we’ll have our friends and relatives and students with us for the celebration. Nothing beats this human relationship, not the snow (definitely not the freezing icy coldness), not the fire crackers (though personally I felt it’s time for the relevant authorities to review the 30(?) yrs old ban. In Shanghai neighbourhood, you get to buy and fire up as many of those as you want to, and everyone abides to some social norms for the firing. No fines, no black-n-white written rules, no road closure, and everybody gets their chance to contribute their part to the festive moods). And so, that’s about all I want to pen for now. And to you if you have patience to complete up to this point, may I wish you and your family:
Cheers 😉
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