So apparently as a working mum, it has always been a challenge for me to commit some of my time to teach linguistic subjects to the kids. Is either the kid becomes bored of me after sometimes and for younger kids, their focus ain’t really there.
Especially in the past 1 year ever since the pandemic. From home-based learning, after school hours and holidays… I have been trying to find something for Yahyah (No.4) to do. The 3 others can make their own plans and not much of an issue.
Another challenge close to my heart is that, majority of my friends are English-speaking with their Chinese being super duper “private limited”. The people at home whom the kids spoke Chinese to are my parents and my siblings at some intervals and my mum has been strict on our Mother Tongue since young. She went that extra mile to send us to 读经班 and our temple camps and I must thank her for the great foundation in Chinese.
However many parents tend to overlook the need for Mother Tongue and the lack of use for the language will also result in poor command of it.
I am thankful that I managed to get an exposure to Gua Gua Long Qimeng 瓜瓜龙启蒙 and joined the Singapore Team. A fun fact about Gua Gua Long — an AI-tech Chinese Education Product by Bytedance to help the children (Age 2 -9) increase their proficiency in Mandarin/ Chinese Language. Many asked me if the policies in China will affect the Product as a whole. The straight forward answer on a broken record is no, not much of an effect. We are in Singapore not other locations afterall.
Anyway to cut the chase, Yahyah has difficulties in focusing on learning through the virtual format. She will get distract easier and when I signed her up for the Gua Gua Long Annual Class (3200RMB), I was thinking that she will never want to continue after 1 or 2 lessons but to my pleasant surprise, she’s looking forward to it and she loves all the animation, classes and has learnt and memorized at least 10 new verbs with just 3 lessons.
She is 3 years old for god sake and 10 is quite an achievement for her. As a mother, I’m glad that my investment did not go to waste. 🙂
Yahyah attending the Gua Gua Long lessons before and after school.
Just a quick intro and insights to the Gua Gua Long Annual Class Package:
One-year subscription to teacher services
240 days of online video courses with machine learning interaction included (Courses are unlocked daily and users can playback on demand anytime and forever. Excludes public holidays and weekends in China)*
Each daily class is split into five modules (some which include AI interaction)
Supporting learning materials
*Come on, we need to give the kids a break at times.
As Gua Gua Long is kind of new in Singapore, we have too, curated a Parents Community via Facebook Group to facilitate discussions and also aid parents on this journey to unveil our Chinese Language and Culture.
THERE IS A 7-DAYS FREE TRIAL WHERE YOU CAN EXPERIENCE 7-DAYS WORTH OF THE ANNUAL CLASS PACKAGE! I am gearing up the Fake Twins (No 2&3) for their upcoming school holidays!
Okay, Bitcoin is mooning (yay!), so are the 2019-nCoV cases. Over the past few days, many of my groupchats had been flooded with tons of videos/ messages of nCoV virus news, prevention tips and many more. However I notice a trend that suddenly, everyone become 鼠(su)per duper paranoid, overstoring of:
Surgical Masks
Sanitizers
Dettol Wipes
Alcohol Swabs
And it hit me real hard when my family members started to stop me from going to the mall near home due to suspected case surfacing. Even the paranoid-ness set in with my daughters and it placed me in a dilemma.
I wondered. What will happen to the economy? Ok maybe for the fact that that the purchases of the masks and etc will thrive but what about the others?
To be real honest here, I always feel that we just need to be socially responsible and not overly paranoid, to protect ourselves and to others especially during this time of crisis.
And how should we start?
Do not hoard supplies of the above 4 mentions. Some people might need it more than us.
When sick, do not go out and loiter. Stay home or minimize contacts with anyone. Wear a mask when stepping out.
Practise good daily hygiene. Wash your hands with soap thoroughly. Avoid constantly rubbing of eyes.
Avoid touching handle bars, grips, metal surfaces and then rubbed your eyes/ put it into the mouth. Please note this for the kids.
Drink the daily Vitamin-C and plenty of plain water. Plain water help to flush out the “toxic”.
EAT YOUR GREEN VEGETABLES and less of raw foods and do not go near livestock.
Squeeze/ Cough into tissue paper and fold it in and dispose into the trash bins.
LASTLY, do not spread FAKE NEWS. Get the latest updates from the Government sites. Otherwise sign up with Gov.Sg WhatsApp via: https://go.gov.sg/whatsapp
Take good care of the babies, young children and elderly as their immune systems are lower as per compared. Oh yes and pregnant mummies~
During this time of crisis, we need to really be socially responsible for the benefits of others. Because imagine, if we really hog the masks, practise all the good habits and etc, and someone really sick decide to go out to shop and then we kana. It’s seriously a wtf situation and don’t make any sense at all.
I do understand that everyone will argue about the 14-days pre-hibernation period that the virus might not be detectable but as long we practise the good habits, there is a good percentage that the virus might not spread like wildfire or maybe “killed” by the soap and all before it penetrated into our body/ immune system.
And it really saddened me that some of the people whom I know that needs the alcohol stabs for their medical condition is unable to purchase what they need due to OOS.
On another random note; Oranges are good source of Vitamin-C and thus I used the left over Mandarin Oranges to make fruit juices and ice pops to make sure the kids are well covered with Vitamin C and minimize outings for them.
Mandarin Orange Icepop! 🙂
Ironically, it made us more opportunities to bond together as a family nucleus, because the kids had already planned out what to cook for lunch/ dinner over the weekends as we will be “stuck at home”. Although many times when I passed by Orchard Central and all, there is NO/ lesser crowds.
My hearts goes out to the Business Owners, Patients, Kins of Patients, Frontline Personnels and the people in Hubei/ Wuhan – Bless you all.
Another lesson to remind that we must not take things for granted, heavily emphasized and validated by the Kobe Bryant’s case.
Indifference will result in being a toxic being to self and others.
I once chanced upon this video by Ellen DeGeneres where she tried to seek help after she came out on her sitcom and everyone turned against her. She didn’t have a ring up for years yet she suppressed and won at her own depression to do her own talk show.
She says something along this line; If you feel different and depressed. Don’t worry… because:
“Things will get easier, people’s minds will change, and you should be alive to see it.”
And the above stuck in my head till now.
I decided to keep on trying. Suppressing my own demons within. There is nothing sort of giving up. Trying to find that winning formula through limited time and money but I know I will figure it, outgrown it and finally succeed.
The first thing on my mind is to create an ample runway for budget flow. Everyone have their own stories. Their debts, their commitments and there could be a way to figure something out.
I figure out mine through crypto investing and copy trading (forex trading). I learnt and made a lot of friends through this. And just kept on moving, to grow the pie. It’s a long tedious process but I made it happened. I had never thought I would grow from a Teletext-reader for my dad to a leisure trader/ investor myself.
No one ever thought I would one day become a Semi-SAHM and work from home and created a work-from-home empire. No one. So the key… Taking risks sometimes will lead you to surprises and perhaps, one will get to enjoy the whole process. 😉
Shall pen down more thoughts on my mumtechpreneur journey in my next post. 🙂
I just happened to be busy with all the unnecessary stuff since Christmas and furthermore, Lunar New Year seems to come real quick this year (less than 1 month FROM Christmas) and there is so much to do yet with limited time. And I realized that I did not set down a time to review and do up the resolutions so here I am.
Reviews for the Year 2019:
Changed a new job. Left the Blockchain world for some space and peace.
Completed a Prof. Diploma in Digital Marketing
Begin to spend more time home/ with parents/ with kids.
Begin my journey in leisure Crypto-Investing/ Investment Strategies (for self)
Joined an Accelerator for Piggyback.
Relaunched Scentimental Singapore.
Reorganize my thoughts and launch this space.
Year 2019 had been a year of soul-searching and understand what I want and need. A thorough awakening moment to redefine the core of things.
Year 2020;
<Priority> Less toxicity includes the environment and the people.
Focus on my goals in self attainment for business/ self/ family.
Spend more time with the girls/ family.
Spin-off Piggyback/ Scentimental/ Consultancy.
Achieve S100K
Learning to be a bigger person.
I need to learn to let go in the Year 2020 and by doing so, I held back on my social media postings where I am determined to go for the social media detox for a year and focus on my #willynn2020goals.
Seriously, this could be the only year where I focus on the business and leave the “stable” job for good. I only have 11 months left and my life is still “intoxicated”. I would be finding my winning formula to build my “Work-From-Home” empire and leverage on the gig/ sharing economy where the passion lives.
Sometimes I don’t understand my mum because the double standard-ness is at sky high level that sometimes I can’t comprehend with her thoughts.
She always said that; “Wah, you can be a boss leh because you got the brains and the guts” but on another hand “Why you wanna be a boss ah? Find a proper job lah. You need to feed your kids. Be a boss hor, very stress one leh.”
Like hello mum, a boss is a proper job. Ok perhaps my entrepreneurship was never a smooth sailing one. My first venture was into blogshops in Year 2011 if I remember correctly?
The idea came about during some free times during the maternity leave and it triggered me to explore a second income but it becomes a good learning ground despite the fact that it’s the blogshop bloom era where majority are hosted via either blogspot or livejournal.
First Venture — Female Apparels Blogshop
But apparently I didn’t become the next Love, Bonito. 🙂 I feel that the reason was that the instability and the full-time job are already too overwhelmed to handle so it didn’t give me the diehard PUSH factor.
So I closed down the now-defunct blogshop and donated all my new clothing to SCWO for the name of charity and hopefully finder keepers theory.
This is not the end. I didn’t give up and work on the — many ideas which came upon me during the pregnancy, maternity period and post-period. Helping to solve my “own” personal issue as a mother of one, two, three and now, four kids (plus 2 furkids) and this is how it evolved to Scentimentaland Piggyback.
Failure is not everything. It’s a good lesson learnt and it made me a stronger person. Sometimes you win some, you lose some.
It was never easy to hold a full-time job and work on the other portfolios during the wee hours. Sometimes I only get to have 2-hours of sleep each day and at times when I got burnt out but at the end of the day, it’s to solve a particular problem, a common problem.
Perhaps will share more about each company in coming future. 🙂
“Manager says: GO! but a Leader will always says: Let’s GO!”
Recently, there is so much negativity that overwhelmed me that I relooked back on what I’ve done, learned and where can I improve. Then it reminded and re-emphasized on the theory of leadership.
There is so much to learn and I sincerely hope that all these can be taught to the younger one since young.
One needs to create an impact and not just direct blindly.
Comfort zone should not be embraced that much if one wants to grow significantly. Saw this picture on Facebook and finally understand how much one can achieve if there is less resistance, So ta-da. 🙂
Credits to DAN LOK.
Just got to keep reminding myself to look forward, keep going and stay sane.
Okay, for the past 30 days, major cryptocurrencies had faced a “pump-and-dump” pattern, for leisure traders like me, it granted us opportunities to enter the market and flushed out disruptive traders and for new “whales” to be granted of their position.
However on the good sight, the volatility only fluctuates within a stipulated zone meaning to say it is for the trading to gain support and this support will be a base for further movements, normally upwards.
BTC [Month for Sept – Oct]Not sure if this is a deja-vu that prior to the bull run 2 years back. Same trades patterns were seen. 😉 Can’t wait especially Bitcoin is halving in May 2020.
I wonder if it’s a psychological effect that it will boost the price or rather it’s downright to the supply and demands where the Governments are slowly accepting bitcoin as a form of payments/ usage.
Not sure if the volatility is something that the Governments or the Future of Work would want to deal with. Should I even consider to shift my investments to Copytrading? Argh.
The inner demons are making their ways in. And I do know that if one is looking at short terms gains, one should consider Copytrading/ Forex and not Crypto.
I was writing this during my gap time commuting to work. Sometimes I think back, everyone just envied the lives of Entrepreneurs but no one exactly knows the pain and fears behind one’s hard work to build a budding team, dream and perhaps, an empire.
For 1st time Entrepreneur, it will always be a steep learning curve where every steps and the path is relatively unknown but on another hand, I think it would be exciting.
I always believe finding a mentor to guide will help if one do not have the gift of business acumen as experiences will help to build it.
Sometimes I would to travel back time and advise my younger self,
I would say,
Start early because the first mover advantage will definitely help in Business.
And also be a bigger person.
People will laugh at your idea, shame your idea, put you down and etc. Dont bother to argue. The time spent to argue can be out into better use to build the business.
The biggest takeaway that I learnt during this tenure would be, the ability to say no and the ability to walk away. Both sometimes coincide but again, it takes a courage to say NO in Business.
When everyone always praised, “I wish that I can also earn this amount as you.” and all the I wish that I am you. But none will actually look beyond to realise whats the amount of efforts to reach where one is today. If one actually says, “I lauded your efforts and perseverance.” Most prolly, he/she is an Entrepreneur too.
So, support small and local business. You are helping one to build that dream and collectively build a sustainable business.
Thus I made it a point to support a friend’s business first prior to anything else. 🙂
The past week had been challenging, so is the trade markets. Oil prices, commodities, even the protest in Hongkong had created an impactful shift across all markets and including myself.
HA. Because currently, I’m in a role where I faced more rejections than anything else so I decide to YOLO once and went for a social experiment on how people reacted to me and whether anyone will cast judgment without knowing me as a person but just by my outlooks especially with my…
First Tattoo. Yes, I know. “Imprints” get judge more often.
Followed by, the change of my hair color, not to a monotone but a unicorn tone. As this totally fits into my bill of fickle-mindedness because right after I dyed it at my trusted salon, J2 Hair Salon, I just realised that whichever color I feel like showcasing more, all I need was to change my hair parting in accordance.
Left (2016)/ Right (NOW)
Attitude. Adopted a heck care attitude because I just want to find out if gracious people tend to be bullied. And I wondered if I ever get beaten up if I keep on tsk-ing people (Check out how to tsk people correctly with strong support from CPF. Just joking.)
To be honest, I’m quite fearful that my parents/ colleagues/ bosses cannot accept the change as I did not inform them in advance/ prior to this.
Random note; the girls love it. They love anything unicorn. HAHA.
So during the weekends, when I bought the girls out, everyone seems to give a disapproving look on the streets and I even overheard a comment,
“See, girl. You must study hard if not next time, you will need to be food delivery rider and bring kids along for work.”
O-M-G. I carried a Grabfood paperbag with my kiddos waterbottles in it doesn’t meant I worked for them leh. I just cannot find a bag to contain their items when I’m rushing out. AND SOMEMORE, I graduated with a degree and alot of self-improvement certificates that helped me excel in my career. -_-
Best part, my mum did not even notice it when I was working around with my stuff when I’m back at my maiden home, for hours. Perhaps, tying up my hair helps.
Actually, the real challenge in me is actually how my bosses, colleagues, business partners whom I will meet, will react to my new looks.
So I reported for work on Monday. Here’re the results:
My boss did not comment but I feel he’s ok with this. [Boss ah, let me know if you are not ok hor?] Updated as of 16 Sept, my direct supervisor told me the CE disapprove of the colors. LOL so I dyed back on 17 Sept.
Colleagues were shocked and my Teamies gave me a look of affirmation then disapproval.
The guys who’ve worked at a different level and whom I’ve always spoken to in the lift saw me during lunch and thought I was “another” person. They couldn’t even recognize me.
My friends saw my social media postings, gave me thumbs up instead of thumbs down.
Ok lah, to be honest, I’m not sure if they would have discussed this behind my back though but I couldn’t care less. :]
And the real deal came when I am running late for a meeting at Ayer Rajah. I was changing my route to cross over from East-West line to the Circle line at Buona Vista MRT and I heard a man standing in the middle of the pavements asking into the thin air if anyone can direct him to the East-West line (towards Jurong direction). I then realized he seems to have a partial visual impairment. Many of the people of different diversity and dress codes, walked past him without helping him.
Despite telling myself — to adopt a heck care attitude mentioned earlier, it just couldn’t get through me. Yes, I might be late if I lend a helping hand but well, that few minutes might matter more to him than to me. Imagine, he lost his footings and…
So I walked up and approached him and directed him to the right direction. Realising that the lift is a long walk from where he is, I asked him if it’s ok for me to lead him up to the platforms via escalator. He was apologizing that he might delayed my time and etc. I told him I’m free and asked him to hold onto my elbow.
Thank god for my stint in PA that exposed me to various techniques to deal from the physically challenged peeps.
In any case; to guide a blind/ partially sighted person; one would need to follow these steps (Courtesy from RNIB and Webeye):
Walk up, introduce yourself and speak to the person whom you are going to guide him.
Offer the person your services and ask him/ her on how would they prefer to be guided.
The person being guided should lightly grasp the guide’s arm, thumb out, just above their elbow. Right elbow of the guide will be grasped by the left hand of the person being guided, and vice versa. The left elbow of the guide will be grasped by the right hand of the person being guided. For children, have them grasp your wrist or hold your hand. When an individual acts as a human guide, they should walk a half step ahead of the person they are guiding.
Tell them about every steps/ curbs/ stairs as you approach them. Tell them to step “up” or “down”.
Mention any potential hazards/ narrow corridors that lie ahead and say where they are.
If you are guiding someone into a seat, place their hand on the back of the seat before they sit down, so they can orientate themselves.
Don’t walk away without saying you are leaving.
So that minute of help resulted in me knowing that he had his vision partially lost due to genetics. Despite the fact, he’s still making efforts to look for jobs and being mobile to stay positive.
When we parted at the platform, I was asking the few of the people standing on the platforms to look out for him and directed him to the right station (and yes, I got a few disapproving looks from some onlookers due to my tattoo and hair while I help the guy). Thank god for a couple of kind souls and he wished me well in my life.
Conversations like this pulled me up from all the rejections I had to face during my course of work (as they are downright demotivating) and I felt even more determined to help the community via Piggyback.
And thus I instill a habit for myself and the girls while decluttering those that I do not need. I will either post via Blessing for Low Incomes-Sg, Yishun Blessing group and my own BTO closed Facebook group to ask if anyone closeby would need the things that I no longer need.
To my surprise, a lot of my so-called stuff became prized processions of their new owners.
And this boils down to…
“When you judge others. You do not define them. You define yourself. No one had ever walk the same path as you. Experiences made current choices. Future choices are based on your aptitude towards life and attitude on how you approach it.”
Like what my mum always say, “When you are pointing 1 finger at others, you are pointing 4 at yourself.”
Brace on people and do lending a helping hand when possible because you’ll never know when you will need others to lend you theirs.
