Visiting Penang, Malaysia, recently, I was struck by a pang of homesickness, stronger than ever.

Our first evening there was spent visiting three Hindu temples – Waterfall Hill Bala Thandayuthapanai Temple (ThaNNeer Malai Kovil), Sri Meenakshi Amman Temple and Nattukottai Chettiar Sri Muruga Temple. These three temples were quite farther away from the Georgetown City Centre and the calmness and the quietness in the locality lent an added divinity to these temples. Right below the Waterfall Hill Muruga temple, there were organizations like Hindu Mahajana Sangam, a Tamil school and Gandhi Peace Centre which were housed in small buildings. But for the Malay nameplates for these buildings, it wouldn’t have been surprising if someone had forgotten that they were not in Tamil Nadu, but were in a faraway country.

Some of the temples in Penang date back to more than a hundred years and temples like Sri Mariamman temple date back to 1833! Seeing our culture and traditions intact there, I wondered how it would have been back then.

No aeroplanes, no telephones, no WhatsApp to help you constantly stay in touch with your family back home. What made those people leave their home, board ships and migrate to a faraway island which practically didn’t have much back then? How many days did it take for them to reach this place from their home? How many times did they actually visit their home again? It obviously wouldn’t have been as easy as boarding a flight and reaching your home in just 4 hours!

As they were trying to recreate a piece of their home in an unknown place by following their culture and traditions and building temples for worshiping their deities, how did they handle the life here amidst unknown people from different countries and their longing for the life back at home? As the years passed by, did they miss their home more and more or did they learn to seek comfort in their new life and get settled there happily?

As thoughts after thoughts raced through my mind, I eventually realized that my thoughts were no longer about those people who migrated more than a century back, but it was more about only my own thoughts and feelings.

It could be visiting a place like this or it could be something as simple as listening to

en veeDu thaai Tamizh Naadu enre sollaDaa
en naamam Indian enre enrum nillaDaa

You never know when you feel that pang of homesickness triggered within you!

I was reading some time back about how to unblock the writer’s block. Reading the point which talked about remembering the intention behind why one started to write had me getting back my inspiration in a flash. After all, I am still as passionate about all the things that I was passionate about back when I started to write and it was to share more about those passions that I started to write.

I had started writing this on January 2nd and had just written down the next two paragraphs when Murphy struck even before I could finish all that I wanted to write and thus, this too ended up as a draft like several other posts lying unpublished! Anyway, now that I thought it’s better to restart again, I am posting this now.

I have never been a person who has successfully stuck to new year resolutions, since I can’t keep up at anything beyond a few weeks. But, new year or not, every time I come back to Singapore from a trip to Madras, I come back with an increased level of motivation and inner energy and thus, end up sticking to some new small daily goals (just another way of saying resolution 🙂 ) for a few weeks. I usually stick to those till the sameness of the everyday routine gets on to me or till the feeling of missing my home that is Madras intensifies.

Anyway, getting back to the title of this post, tapping into the energy I have got from just returning from India, I am planning to take up some resolutions for January and first among them is the daily goal of writing something here, be it two lines or two hundred lines, it doesn’t matter. Wish me luck, folks! Wishing you all a very happy new year and tons of luck in getting all your goals, big and small, accomplished.

Last year, my son started primary school. Within a few weeks, he wanted to know why one had to go to school to learn stuff when the answer to everything can be found in Google! Thankfully, the reply I gave convinced him to some extent. I asked him how Google got to know everything and he didn’t have an answer. That’s when I told him that he should go to school and study so that he can teach Google the things it doesn’t know and make Google do even more things.

Even as I told him these words, I started to ponder about how learning about anything and everything under the sun has become so easy now, all thanks to Google. But has it really become easy?

Gone are the days when one could confidently say that they didn’t know something. Be it cooking a new dish or finding the way to a small shop in a new city in an unfamiliar country or getting to know the plot of a movie or learning a complex Maths concept or clearing primary school grammar doubts or mastering a new yoga asana or, for that matter, even parenting, one ends up turning to Google for everything from education to entertainment.

For me, the year 2021 has been a year of learning. As I wrote in the opening paragraph, last year my son started going to full day primary school. Suddenly, I was left with a good chunk of uninterrupted 5 hours. In a bid to get back to refreshing my technical skills and updating myself on the latest technologies and programming languages, I started utilizing the time to study. After all, everything was only a Google Search away.

But I found myself feeling overwhelmed with a lot of stuff – Cloud, Java, Python, R, Statistics, Data Analytics, Geographic Information System, Probability, Regression, SQL, Javascript, Scratch Programming and what not. Each time I didn’t understand something, I found myself jumping from one website or a YouTube video to another before finding THAT correct resource which would make me understand the concept or the sequences clearly. While I was learning whatever I set out to learn about, some time was also getting wasted in the hunt for the correct learning resource. It took me a while to pause, come out of the enthusiasm and start focussing on one thing at a time.

That is when the realization that, how in this world of multitasking and information overload, it is easy to lose oneself and end up setting unreasonable expectations. But, with proper planning and focus, it is indeed easy to learn so much without any hassle whatsoever.

Be it Microsoft’s Learn Programme or Google’s ‘Digital Garage’ or Oracle Academy or any of the huge number of MOOCs and the YouTube videos, there is a whole lot of highly informative and well-structured free learning resources available out there.

Of course, it isn’t just in the field of software engineering and development alone that these resources are there. If you only you choose to focus, research, pause and concentrate, you too can embark on a beautiful learning journey on any field of your choice.

Happy Learning!

At 11:30 in the night, I sit on a revolving chair by the window and gaze outside. It has been raining almost the whole day today and the roads are wet.

Yet I see the busy junction of roads is still bustling with activity. I see people in their running outfits waiting for the signal to turn green. ‘Who on earth would run at 11 pm on a rainy night?’, I wonder.
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It is one of those rare mornings here in Singapore where it really cloudy and not hazy. Bringing respite from the haze caused by the burning of forests in Indonesia was yesterday’s rain. The cloudy weather still continues.

I am now sitting in one of my favourite neighbourhood parks in Singapore. On a comfortable seat under the shade of a tree with chirping of birds and buzzing of insects for company. I hear the voices of dozens of small children coming from the preschool nearby. The bouncing of Basketball in the Basketball court in the park and the engine of the digger or whatever construction truck it is, are also constant company. Then there are Tamil and Chinese words coming from different directions. As tweets of the birds and the chatter of people continue, I sit in complete silence cherishing this moment of calm that I have got.

From phonics to transitive verbs, o-n-e to minuend and subtrahend, as I traverse from preschool to primary school subjects, this month of September has been one long learning journey so far, the journey not restricted just to studies but also of my own patience levels.

There were two main days when I was at my worst max as I struggled to maintain a calm while trying to make my daughter study for her Tamizh and English exams. For all my claim of being a parent who doesn’t pressurize the child to study, I ended up on that annoying lecture mode of mine as I tried in vain to make my daughter practice some portions. The rest of the exam preparation days went by so well.

Anyway, now is not the time to ponder on the exams, but on the nag that I become every morning as I struggle to get my kids ready for school or many a times when we go out somewhere. Even as I tell myself that I should remain much more calmer, I am just not able to and end up getting worked up so much about even trivial things. I always feel like ‘Jab We Met’ Kareena who fears missing her train and catches her train in the last minute every single time. 😉

The calm had to be tossed aside quite often this month as the children have been at home for most part of the day what with half a day school and holidays and that obviously meant more frequent sibling fights to manage and more tantrums to handle.

Of course, it also meant a lot more relaxing moments with kids as we had a lot more books time, games time and conversation time together.

As I now sit in complete calmness amidst the presence of nature and her sounds, smell and sights and do a retrospection of sorts, I realise that the relaxing moments with the children does outnumber the moments I was a total nag. But that doesn’t mean that my own yelling or lecturing mode can ever be justified.

I wonder if I will ever have an improved level of patience. I wonder if this feeling of inadequacy while dealing with certain moments will ever completely go. That’s when I tell myself that I am just another human being and I really cannot do it ALL all the time. But my quest for inner calmness and improved patience levels will continue and, who knows, maybe someday I might really achieve it.

You know how time and again, it is to my blog that I have turned to for solace, comfort, relaxation and sharing a blissful moment or two. But, this time, I didn’t want to bore you. But, as I browsed through the archives, I saw that this has now become my rant journal in the recent years and, hence, I don’t feel one bit guilty about adding some more entries to it now. 😉

The first half of April saw my children carrying with them all the excitement back from their short trip to India during the end of March and letting it all out in the form of crying spells, naughty acts, tantrums and unfinished lunch boxes which once again translated to more naughtiness and tantrums. The new academic year had started for S and all her close friends had moved to a different section or to a different country. So, she was in a bit irritable mood till she found some new friends. Add to it was the fact that my husband was away on a trip. And then there was the sweltering Singapore heat. By the time the third week of April ended, I was this crazy, cranky version of myself!

These apart, ever since intense heat and sweating took over Singapore earlier this year, I keep having throat issues on and off and because of that, my singing has once again taken a beating! That’s another demotivational thing going on in life.
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