I have my gorgeous, lacy, blue hipster panty on today.  Okay before you report me to the authorities, let me explain myself.

Wearing that blue hipster makes me feel good about myself.  Makes me feel like a confident, cool and sexy woman; that I could do anything I want.  I know, sounds shallow and trivial right?  But look at the lingerie industry; millions of dollars change hands!  The Victoria Secrets of the world (by the way, my hipster is from VS) are the ones making big bucks (no returns policy!).

I am sure all of the working mothers out there agrees with me (whether secretly or not!) that there are certain pieces of lingerie that inspires us more than others!  I wish I have more of these nice lingerie but sensibility wins most of the time.

As a working mother, my family comes first.  I’d rather pay for a $300 art class for my child than a $300 teddy for myself; a month’s supply of food than the newest bra and panty set; pay for the electricity bill than the hipster panty in another colour!  You get the idea.  Most of my undergarments consist of sale items, out of fashion items, items that even grannies would be embarrass to own.  Not items that would help me with my mental image of myself.

The penny dropped for me in my bathroom today as I was putting my hipster on.

I don’t have to depend on a piece of undergarment to feel good about myself.  I can feel invincible anytime I want.  All I have to do is to look into my mental cupboard and take out the attitude that would help me feel like a confident, cool and sexy woman.  I can wear this attitude all of the time (no need for laundry) and feel good about myself all of the time!

Now to save up enough dough to buy some gorgeous, lacy new lingerie to match my new attitude!  Shopping anyone?

I feel invincible today.  Why? Because I did not let anything faze me.

It feels great to be in charge of my life, my emotions, my reactions, and in general all the other stuff in my life.  That is not to say that everything is perfect now.  I still have unpaid bills, unplanned meals, undone laundry and a messy handbag.  But I can find what I need and I know I can put a plan together to do the undone tasks.

Keeping that chin up ALL of the time is a huge effort in itself.  But it is possible, I have seen it in some of my friends.  Nothing seem to push them down for too long and they ALWAYS pick themselves up and move on.  I am working on it.  I know I can do it.  Especially today.

I pledge to deal with bad emotions and vibes positively.
I pledge to be calm and collected in the face of emergencies of any kind.
I pledge to define myself with God and the people who geniuely love me for who I am.
I pledge to keep positive people around me.
I pledge to be a good Christian, wife, mother, daughter, sister, friend, colleague, coach – roughly in that order.

I am letting this invincible feelings wash over the whole of me.  I know I won’t be able to hold on to it forever – afterall, life goes up and down.  But for now, I am enjoying it.

When I first started work, I only had a pager.  For those of you who remember, these are small gadgets that one could call with the phone number that you want the owner to call back on.  Often, my dear husband (at that time my dear boyfriend) and I would send each other codes like 9-12-21 to say “I love you”.  Basic but it worked.   Other than pre-arranged codes, there was no other way of contacting each other on the road and we all lived that way.

So in came the mobile phones.  My dear husband skipped lunches to save for a mobile phone for me.  It was an Ericsson (Sony has not bought Ericsson yet) and probably twice the size of any average phone now.  All it could do was call out, receive calls – there was no option to do texting or play games, much less surf the web or take pictures.

I cherished that phone.  It was a sign of my dear husband’s devotion to my well being.  It lasted for years and was really reliable.  It meant that there were less missed connections and we were able to get each other easily.

Then there was the laptop.  The first laptop I got was a company issued machine that was used by my predecessor.  It was a chunky Toshiba and would hang several times a day, despite my best efforts to keep it in good health.  I assured you that it was sweared at quite a few times a day.  It was really heavy and I would get a sore shoulder carrying it around to my client sites for meetings. 

Every few years, I would get my laptop upgraded (company policy to keep up to date technologically).  I cannot remember all the in-betweens but my latest is a Fujitsu Lifebook, T series – a slick tablet, barely 1.3 kg in weight – not topline but compared to my chunky Toshiba, this is a godsend.

Between my mobile phone and my laptop, and all the fantastic technological advancements, I was able to answer emails, prepare a client presentation, do a conference call with my workmates, update my status on Facebook, chat with my friend via Instant Messaging whom I have not seen in a while online, put in an online order for my son’s birthday cake, play some games for relaxation, research on the recipes for Sunday lunch, see if my ebay item has been bought, take pictures of my kids and uploading it on Flickr, text a happy birthday wish to my sister, sync up my Outlook calendar on my mobile phone so that I would not miss my appointments and more.

I could live my whole life like this.  In reality, I could stay at home the whole day and yet still able to do what I did 10 years ago at probably half the time.

How has it changed my life?  Let’s talk about the good things first.  I am more productive and efficient.  This gives me the sense of achievement that would be few and far between in the past.  I am able to juggle better as a working mother, knowing that I could pay a bill online rather than having to queue up at the bank.  Information is just a click away so I am better informed and able to make better decisions.  I am better connected to my friends and their lives.  Things move faster with the phone and Instant messaging, thus issues get resolved faster as well.  As my kids belong to the generation of instant gratifications, by being up to date, I am staying relevant as a parent and also able to communicate with them in terms they understand.  I am writing this post, sitting at the bar counter in my kitchen – thanks to wireless technology – and having a cup of coffee at the same time.

There is always 2 sides to a coin.  Being more productive and efficient means that I am expected to do more as a professional.  This means that I am always on and stress levels go up.  Text messages from workmates and clients come around the clock; once they see you online on instant messaging, before you know it, it is 1 am in the morning.  Distraction by technology is also an issue in my life.  I often catch myself or dear husband pouring over Facebook updates and games on a weekend when we really should be spending time with family.  Every text message has to be answered and every email has to be responded to.  My kids are also addicted to surfing the web or watching videos or playing online games.  If they were not allowed to use the computer, the complain I get would be, “But I am bored!  What should I do?”.  When did kids start not know what to do with free time?

For the last few weeks, I have been shutting down my laptop and leaving it off for the entire weekend.  It is liberating and on every Monday, there is never anything that is even close to the sky falling down!  I am working on ways to changing my habit to deal with the downside of technology. 

What have you been doing to get back the part of your life that technology has taken away?

PS : I later found in my inbox an article from Simple Marriage on a similar topic, title “Leave Your Work (Mostly) At Work“!  Enjoy!

It is all about choices, isn’t it?  Life is made up of choices that we all have to make.  To marry or not, to marry this person or that, to have kids or not, to have 2 kids or 4, to work or stay home, to trust or not, to love or not – these are all choices.

Right or wrong, good or bad – we also have to live with the consequences of our choices.

Ever since I became a mother 10 years ago, I have been struggling with this one choice that I made.  Although you can say I don’t have much of a choice since we were just starting off our lives and money was important to our survival.  I chose to continue working instead of staying at home with my son. 

Subsequently, every year, I had the opportunity to revisit this choice but I never really did.  At that time, I work from home.  So even though I was working in my bedroom, I could occasionally take breaks and play with my son.

I had 8 years of bliss.  I held a great job that allowed me to hone my skills professionally and yet allowed me more connection and time with my family.  These 8 years saw me raise 3 kids.  Funny enough, during these 8 years, I often lamented about how nice to be able to work in an actual office with actual colleagues.  After 8 years, the company I was working for decided that they would have an actual physical office instead of virtual ones. 

I never knew what hit me.  It might not have been apparent to my colleagues, but my family felt the change.  In a big way.  I struggled every single day trying to cope with the change.  I was like the duck, seemingly calm above the surface, gliding along, but underneath the surface, I was paddling like crazy.

I don’t think I ever recovered from it.  I am still paddling but not as crazy as before.  Why?  Because I made some choices to keep some things the way they were and to give up other things.

This choice that I made 10 years ago, I struggle with it every single day.  My babies are growing up and I am not there enough to see it.  I crave to have more time with them, to understand and discover them, to stand by them and comfort them.  I want to stay at home and watch them grow but more than ever, I need to have a constant stream of income. 

I see my friends all around me struggling with that as well.  You might say I should get comfort from that, but I don’t.  Everytime I see a Facebook update on how they are struggling with their own problems – trying help kids adjust to school life, friends fall ill because they have no help, not enough time to love their kids – I feel sad.  Like I say, we have to live with the consequences of the choices we make.  They may not be choices that we want to make but choices we have to make – either way, we have to live with the consequences.

I know this seems like a sad and depressing post.  It is meant to be.  However, by recognizing and admitting to the conflicts and dilemmas that I face on a daily basis, by identifying my challenges – I then see how I can overcome them, how I can then make other choices that can get me out of this conflict, this dilemma. 

I know I will, I just need to choose to make that choice.

“There is never enough time to do everything, but there is always enough time to do the most important thing.” – Brian Tracy

Time.  Something I don’t have enough.  Too many things to do and too little time.

Or, that is the excuse I give myself.

Recently, I saw a video that showed a Japanese man, got up, prepared breakfast, got dressed and ate breakfast and out of the door for work, in 4 minutes and 52 seconds.  In the video, he invented a lot of shortcuts to get things done e.g. how to brush teeth and wear your pants at the same time (I have pigued your interest there ).  It was pretty funny when I saw it.

Really, there is enough time but I just need to PRIORITISE.  Big word, but what does it mean?  It means I have to be time-disciplined (not sure if this is an official term, but if not, you heard it here first!).  I have to pull myself away from the facebook games that I am currently addicted to and write this post.  I have to hang out the laundry first so while the clothes are drying, I can sweep the floor.  It means I have to stop doing laundry or sweeping the floor and answer the question that my 4 year old is asking.

Time-discipline means that I have to do the most important thing first and go down the list.  Whenever a more important thing arises, I do that thing first.  That’s easy, but why do I have so much trouble?

There are 2 main reasons:

1. Distractions
   The Internet, a TV program, a messy house – these things distract me from finishing the most important things.
2. Avoidance
   The most important things normally take patience and time and sometimes, tedious.  So I avoid doing them.  I tend to do the easy-to-complete (read: unimportant) things first, leaving precious little time to do the really important things.

Not hard really.  Just a very conscious effort to do the most important things first.

There is a new TV series which has caught Dear Husband’s eye, called “Flash Forward“.  Essentially, the story is about how the world blacked out AT THE SAME TIME, everyone, for 2 minutes and 17 seconds.  In this short time, almost everyone is shown a scene from their own future,not now but in 6 months time, the date of 29 April, 2010.

It is an interesting “what if?” show.  One of the characters in the show saw herself with a man, not her husband in that future vision; her husband saw a vision of someone plotting ot kill him.  I could not help but thought to myself, what if it was me having the glimpse into my future?

If I do see a glimpse of my future, would I change the way I live my life now? 

Would each of the decisions I make as a working mother change? 

Would I scold my kids less and forgive myself more? 

Would I work less and play more? 

Would I be relaxed more and let go of control more? 

Would I want less and be happy more?

What if I were to die tomorrow? What would I do then?

These are great questions to ask myself as a modern working mother.  I then to be bogged down by the day to day that I forget to look at the big picture.  What really matters in the end?

I am 36 and have since lost 3 friends to life for 3 different reasons.

J was my secondary school classmate. I remember him to be one of the top performers in class. Me…I was mediocre and when the O levels draw near, he offered to help a group of us. He was quiet and silent in his ways. He came from a poor family and does not have a home phone which was very rare 20 years ago.

We parted ways and did not really kept in touch when we entered university. I heard he got a scholarship and went to Cambridge. I attended a class gathering during that time, and he was there. He was even more unusual then. He also told me he found God but I could tell he was not happy.

Years later, I heard he checked himself into Woodbridge to cope with his depression. I heard he did not do well in Cambridge and could not cope with the failure. He did some jobs but was not able to cope with life in general.

One morning on my way to breakfast with my mum, we saw my family electrician walking towards us. He did not seem to see us and was holding something in his hands. My mum then called him and he pulled out a photo of J and said that J was his elder son. J had jumped off a building not far from where we were staying. I was shocked to find out the relationship and also very much affected seeing J’s photo and finding out this way. It was Valentine’s day and I had the ugly job of informing all my friends. Some of us went to the funeral but I did not.

S was my senior in the course that I was taking. He always had his Ray Bans with him and never did what he was told. He was the ultimate cool bean in class and all the girls swooned over him, despite his average looks.

He was smart and never really had to study too hard to do well. He was active in a student organisation that I was also a part of. He was crazy about Calvin and Hobbes and had the rest of us crazy about it as well. He was a very close friend and he helped me through the difficult times during my uni days. He also took me to the Science prom and remembered he bought me a single rose. I never had romantic notions about S but he certainly was the big brother I never had.

I loved him so when that phone call came to tell me that he was killed in an accident years after we graduated, the sadness and regrets all came crashing down. We kept in touch now and then but we stopped being in each other’s life. He was trying to navigate a bend in the rain when he crashed onto a tree. He was instantly killed.

Looking down at S’s lifeless body in the coffin, with the handiwork of the embalmer who had the job of making an accident victim look “repaired”, tears rolled down my face.

I knew C the longest, since we were 13. We were never close individually but as a team with the other members of our class, we were tight. Even as we grew up into our adult skins, we never really lost touch as once in a while someone would organise a reunion.

C was great at basketball despite his big size and very fast on the court. He was the eldest in class (in terms of actual brithdate) and so we called him “Lao Da” for the “eldest one”. He was quiet and did well enough to enter the polytechnic of his choice. What I did not know that when he was doing his National Service, he was diagnosed with diabetes.

The last time I met and talk to him which was during a wedding of a classmate, D, in the same class, he admitted that he was young and stupid and did not really care to take care of his condition. He ate as he liked and did not take medications. Subsequently, he lost one of his leg, knee downwards, to gangrene. He was wearing a prosthetic while tell us this story at the wedding. While I was shocked to find out, I encouraged him and even told him we need to meet again for a gathering.

I accidently found out about his death from D’s facebook. I was very angry and resentful of D for not telling us. Apparently, later on D admitted that he too found out from another friend, who also found out by accident. He did not even thought to inform us. Again, I delivered the bad news to the group. One of our other friends who knew C’s parents visited them. It was more than a month after by then. C was not feeling well and was sick in bed when he started to feel breathless. He was sent to the hospital and the doctor said that although his heart was weak, he was stablised. He died that night of complications with his family around him.

It was hard coping with the loss as DH was on a business trip when I found out. I still have not visited the columbarium to see him. I am not sure I can stand seeing his picture and not him.

Note: This post was originally posted on my personal blog on 10 March, 2009.

The title of this post suggest that I might be very old, have lots of life experiences or just plain contemplative today.

I am 36, so hopefully not that old, yes do have some life experiences and definitely very contemplative today. I am on leave from work today and this is something I am not accustomed to. You will realise as you read this post that I do not take leave for no reason at all, in case I need them in emergencies. So why have I broken my own rule?

I have a full time job, a large family with 4 kids and multiple family members to manage. I am the wife, mother, business manager, financial officer, doctor, nurse, chef, teacher, disciplinarian, cleaner and whatever people need or want me to be.

I took leave today because I have quite a few days to clear. Simple reason. As I sit here in my home office, I remember the advice I got on how to spend this day.

“Just do nothing, put up your feet and relax and be yourself.”
“Go have a massage or just think about your life and what you achieve so far, what you want to achieve going forward.”

I pondered over this for a week. This is the day and I still don’t have a plan.

I had a bad night with my youngest son and woke up feeling really tired. After sending the kids out the door to the child care centre, I had a quick breakfast with DH. He had to get to work early to day and thus could not have our usual more leisurely breakfast.

I started off switching on my laptop. I even set up a few work conference calls for clients and answered a few emails. Then Facebook. I must make sure I log in so that I get my free ingredients for my game, Restaurant City. Then I proceed to harvest some corn and potatoes in Happy Farm. I read some of the feed and then login to clear my personal mail. 9.30am and still no plan.

It was then that I realise, I don’t need a plan. Just do what I want and what I like or what just comes. The point is to take it easy. I don’t need to have the usual to-do list that I will check off as the day goes. The point is to rest and not think too much. This crazy world certainly did not help with the increasing pace everyday and the need to achieve and squeeze as much work as possible into the day.

Here am I typing this blog and enjoying myself. Putting in writing one day of my life. Hopefully when I read this in the future, I will be able to gain something about myself and my life. Perhaps even put things into perspective.

Which is the whole point of today right? Okay need to get that nature walk in before lunch so that I can go for a relaxing manicure.

Or not.

Note: This post was originally posted on my personal blog on 17 June, 2009.