(Note: Life has taken over and Singapore suitcase-ing has officially had to take a back seat. Yet, I feel this sense of responsibility to deliver, now that I've been receiving personal notes, emails and verbal requests to keep them flowing. Not only am I humbled with the popularity that these Suitcases have generated over the past 45 odd weeks, but also I am immensely thankful to each and everyone of you, who has read them, been a part of them and most importantly continue to pester me to keep churning them out. I really want to keep these afloat, despite the time crunch I sense offlate, especially over the next few weeks, until we bid goodbye to Singapore.
I anticipate the last Singapore Suitcase to be out, the week ending October 19th, as that is our official deadline in this city-state.
For now the best I can do is write as much as possible in as little as possible. Thus pardon me for an abridged version of Weeks 44 through 46.
I hope you will still enjoy these (relatively) compact carry-on versions :)
1. These were to be Breather Weeks - Remember the kinds where you stay local, enjoy your weekends in town doing nothing and prepare for the travel coming up in the few weeks from now? Simply put, after three consecutive weekends of travel, the next few days were to be spent in town, striking off things to do from the local bucket-list.
But of course, that was not to be! As volatile as our lives have become this year - news arrived on Friday, that Hubster and his team had to ship themselves off to NYC, within less than 24 hours, for yet another 'last-minute' client negotiation.
A vacation plan postponement that took place a few weeks ago and now this - him taking off to NYC for two weeks at a moment's notice! All of which was still alright - except that it meant that the toddler and I, would have to fly to London by ourselves, at the end of those two weeks! Now, it's no secret how I've avoided travelling alone with the little one, like the plague this far, except for the one time she and I flew to India (a short flight that one, hence relatively manageable). This flight to London was going to be 13 hours long. All I could hope for to work in my favour was that thankfully this was going to be a red-eye, which meant she would hopefully sleep through the flight, almost entirely.
I applied my 'skip-the-jet-lag' theory on her, as part of which I kept her up late on the nights leading to the flight. What helped was that, I had friends coming over both nights anyway. Moving out her bedtime on both nights worked as on the night of the flight - she crashed at 1:15 am, which was just when the flight was taking off. Thus she ended up getting her full nights sleep on the plane and was happily awake when we landed - at 7:30 am London time. My theory worked like magic and there was no sight of jet-lag for the next week that we were in the UK for. Needless to say, a jet-lag free toddler is a happy monster and a jet-lag free toddler's mother, an even happier monster-manager, so we were sorted!
2. Back to Week 44, (the week when Hubster took off abruptly for NYC) - which was otherwise, coming along just as it should have - relaxed and casual, suddenly became serious on the Friday evening. Hubster's team and their families, who intended to go sailing aboard a gorgeous rented yacht that weekend, instead ended up spending all the time that they could with their families, since they would be gone for two weeks.
In our case, both Hubster and I are used to these intermittent long travel trips, although I must confess that - this will be his longest absence from home in about a year now. Just when a consultant's wife starts to think all the travel is perhaps done with, new itineraries such as these pop up! And though this will not be the first time that the little one and her Papa were going to stay away for, (Their longest has been a month apart in the past but it was when she was only a few months old. Yet you could tell how much she missed him when he walked through the door that fine crisp Saturday morning, in September last year).
This time around we are pretty sure she'll wonder where he's disappeared. So we sat her down to talk to her about it. She seemed to understand and nodded, even happily bidding him good-bye as he took the elevator with his suitcases, yelling out "Papa, I ll see you in London." Clearly that inbuilt 'defence mechanism' in her, that I wrote about in one of my previous logs, was at work again. The one where she copes with absence in a very adult-like, mature manner. Something from her little self that I know, I can surely learn from!
3. The next couple of weeks seemed to fly by, now that I had to take care of a lot of stuff, as Hubster was gone. More research and back-and-forth with Mumbai realtors, preschool-staff, planning future itineraries and co-ordinating with friends who were organising the little one's belated birthday celebrations in the two cities, kept my plate quite full. The little one occasionally tugged at my heart strings when she would stop near the elevator and say out loud "Papa is coming". Perhaps she's going to say she does miss him, I hoped when I asked her the question - "Do you want to see Papa, Zoe? Do you miss Papa?" "No" came the answer in return, almost every single time, as she left me sighing away, wondering what it is, that is really going on inside her mysterious little self. Overall, she takes absence well, hardly ever asking about the 'absent parent' or barely rushing to talk to him/ see him on Skype, when he calls. But I do know that she'll be elated when she sees him after a few days at Heathrow. That is one reunion, I am looking forward to the most in the near future!
4. Reuniting in Europe has become our thing. When Hubster and I lived apart - he in NYC and I in Mumbai for a few months, we met in Europe after 10 weeks of having seen each other. This time too, we were going to meet at our fave mid-point continent, after a 4 week separation.
Some continents are just made for reunions!
5. New itineraries are being charted in honour of the big 3-5 coming up in my life! The bestie initiated this plan, as she decided to tag along with her hubby to a conference in Adelaide in early October.
The big plan is to meet in Australia with both families, during the week following my big day. And the cherry on the cake is that she has a 12 hour layover in Singapore, enroute to Adelaide, which means she gets to come visit us for half a Sunday in September. I was over the moon when I heard this news and have happily gone ahead and planned the 12 hours to the Tee!
If there's one thing that Singapore has given me that NYC didn't, it is the opportunity to host three of my closest friends in this city. I always thought NYC is the centre of the world, when it comes to people visiting or criss-crossing. But funnily enough, it's almost like Singapore is not far from being a focal point too, when it comes to visitors. In just 10 months, I've hosted so many friends/ family here and of course with the Bestie visiting in September, I would have finally hosted all three of my closest school buds here, something I can't say about having done in the 10 years of living in NYC for sure. Small pleasures!
6. Since Hubster flew out to NYC, I had a spare ticket in hand for Comme Un Chef - a light french comedy that I'd been meaning to see for a while, that was playing at the Alliance Francaise. I asked the neighbour to join and she sportingly came along. The movie is a definite fun-watch for foodies & film-buffs alike and rarely is there a moment when the audience is not laughing. So go watch!
Watching foreign-language short films is my favourite past-time. I can spend endless afternoons watching shorts back to back and emerge feeling strangely rejuvenated. Cinema is my favourite story-telling medium and subtitled cinema (or that which is shot in a language that I don't understand) is a boon for short-film afficionados like me. Whoever invented subtitles, opened up the whole world for us, for sure!
7. The Bestie's ex-flatmate from grad days in Oregon, has moved to Singapore from Korea and is put up literally across the street from where we live. So naturally, we have had the chance to hang out and the little one has happily made yet another new friend. It is ironic how when we are on our way out of this city-state, the network here is seeming to grow wider. I think I now get, why most people give at least two years of their lives to this country - given how outside the city-state one ends up living on account of frequent travel, it makes sense to be here for at least a couple of years to have fully experienced this place.
8. Yet another visitor this week - another bestie from Bombay, who's visiting Singapore again on work, came over for dinner on the night of our flight out to London. As always, she came bearing lovely gifts for the toddler and both of them spent dinner time playing little games with each other, as I checked our bags, one last time, for the flight out to London, in a few hours.
The next couple of weeks will be spent in the UK and then in the US. We are looking forward to many reunions with friends and family (and so many of you, who've been reading and encouraging these suitcase-updates all these months) in both continents, amidst belated birthday picnics for the little one. Of course this means that the next update will be delayed, but try I shall, to pack it off as soon as we get back and before we jump onto our next itinerary. Travel after travel after travel....life is good, but the passport pages are running out....Need to get on that once we are back as well!
Thanks for reading!
Love,
Shweyta
I anticipate the last Singapore Suitcase to be out, the week ending October 19th, as that is our official deadline in this city-state.
For now the best I can do is write as much as possible in as little as possible. Thus pardon me for an abridged version of Weeks 44 through 46.
I hope you will still enjoy these (relatively) compact carry-on versions :)
1. These were to be Breather Weeks - Remember the kinds where you stay local, enjoy your weekends in town doing nothing and prepare for the travel coming up in the few weeks from now? Simply put, after three consecutive weekends of travel, the next few days were to be spent in town, striking off things to do from the local bucket-list.
But of course, that was not to be! As volatile as our lives have become this year - news arrived on Friday, that Hubster and his team had to ship themselves off to NYC, within less than 24 hours, for yet another 'last-minute' client negotiation.
A vacation plan postponement that took place a few weeks ago and now this - him taking off to NYC for two weeks at a moment's notice! All of which was still alright - except that it meant that the toddler and I, would have to fly to London by ourselves, at the end of those two weeks! Now, it's no secret how I've avoided travelling alone with the little one, like the plague this far, except for the one time she and I flew to India (a short flight that one, hence relatively manageable). This flight to London was going to be 13 hours long. All I could hope for to work in my favour was that thankfully this was going to be a red-eye, which meant she would hopefully sleep through the flight, almost entirely.
I applied my 'skip-the-jet-lag' theory on her, as part of which I kept her up late on the nights leading to the flight. What helped was that, I had friends coming over both nights anyway. Moving out her bedtime on both nights worked as on the night of the flight - she crashed at 1:15 am, which was just when the flight was taking off. Thus she ended up getting her full nights sleep on the plane and was happily awake when we landed - at 7:30 am London time. My theory worked like magic and there was no sight of jet-lag for the next week that we were in the UK for. Needless to say, a jet-lag free toddler is a happy monster and a jet-lag free toddler's mother, an even happier monster-manager, so we were sorted!
2. Back to Week 44, (the week when Hubster took off abruptly for NYC) - which was otherwise, coming along just as it should have - relaxed and casual, suddenly became serious on the Friday evening. Hubster's team and their families, who intended to go sailing aboard a gorgeous rented yacht that weekend, instead ended up spending all the time that they could with their families, since they would be gone for two weeks.
In our case, both Hubster and I are used to these intermittent long travel trips, although I must confess that - this will be his longest absence from home in about a year now. Just when a consultant's wife starts to think all the travel is perhaps done with, new itineraries such as these pop up! And though this will not be the first time that the little one and her Papa were going to stay away for, (Their longest has been a month apart in the past but it was when she was only a few months old. Yet you could tell how much she missed him when he walked through the door that fine crisp Saturday morning, in September last year).
This time around we are pretty sure she'll wonder where he's disappeared. So we sat her down to talk to her about it. She seemed to understand and nodded, even happily bidding him good-bye as he took the elevator with his suitcases, yelling out "Papa, I ll see you in London." Clearly that inbuilt 'defence mechanism' in her, that I wrote about in one of my previous logs, was at work again. The one where she copes with absence in a very adult-like, mature manner. Something from her little self that I know, I can surely learn from!
3. The next couple of weeks seemed to fly by, now that I had to take care of a lot of stuff, as Hubster was gone. More research and back-and-forth with Mumbai realtors, preschool-staff, planning future itineraries and co-ordinating with friends who were organising the little one's belated birthday celebrations in the two cities, kept my plate quite full. The little one occasionally tugged at my heart strings when she would stop near the elevator and say out loud "Papa is coming". Perhaps she's going to say she does miss him, I hoped when I asked her the question - "Do you want to see Papa, Zoe? Do you miss Papa?" "No" came the answer in return, almost every single time, as she left me sighing away, wondering what it is, that is really going on inside her mysterious little self. Overall, she takes absence well, hardly ever asking about the 'absent parent' or barely rushing to talk to him/ see him on Skype, when he calls. But I do know that she'll be elated when she sees him after a few days at Heathrow. That is one reunion, I am looking forward to the most in the near future!
4. Reuniting in Europe has become our thing. When Hubster and I lived apart - he in NYC and I in Mumbai for a few months, we met in Europe after 10 weeks of having seen each other. This time too, we were going to meet at our fave mid-point continent, after a 4 week separation.
Some continents are just made for reunions!
5. New itineraries are being charted in honour of the big 3-5 coming up in my life! The bestie initiated this plan, as she decided to tag along with her hubby to a conference in Adelaide in early October.
The big plan is to meet in Australia with both families, during the week following my big day. And the cherry on the cake is that she has a 12 hour layover in Singapore, enroute to Adelaide, which means she gets to come visit us for half a Sunday in September. I was over the moon when I heard this news and have happily gone ahead and planned the 12 hours to the Tee!
If there's one thing that Singapore has given me that NYC didn't, it is the opportunity to host three of my closest friends in this city. I always thought NYC is the centre of the world, when it comes to people visiting or criss-crossing. But funnily enough, it's almost like Singapore is not far from being a focal point too, when it comes to visitors. In just 10 months, I've hosted so many friends/ family here and of course with the Bestie visiting in September, I would have finally hosted all three of my closest school buds here, something I can't say about having done in the 10 years of living in NYC for sure. Small pleasures!
6. Since Hubster flew out to NYC, I had a spare ticket in hand for Comme Un Chef - a light french comedy that I'd been meaning to see for a while, that was playing at the Alliance Francaise. I asked the neighbour to join and she sportingly came along. The movie is a definite fun-watch for foodies & film-buffs alike and rarely is there a moment when the audience is not laughing. So go watch!
Watching foreign-language short films is my favourite past-time. I can spend endless afternoons watching shorts back to back and emerge feeling strangely rejuvenated. Cinema is my favourite story-telling medium and subtitled cinema (or that which is shot in a language that I don't understand) is a boon for short-film afficionados like me. Whoever invented subtitles, opened up the whole world for us, for sure!
7. The Bestie's ex-flatmate from grad days in Oregon, has moved to Singapore from Korea and is put up literally across the street from where we live. So naturally, we have had the chance to hang out and the little one has happily made yet another new friend. It is ironic how when we are on our way out of this city-state, the network here is seeming to grow wider. I think I now get, why most people give at least two years of their lives to this country - given how outside the city-state one ends up living on account of frequent travel, it makes sense to be here for at least a couple of years to have fully experienced this place.
8. Yet another visitor this week - another bestie from Bombay, who's visiting Singapore again on work, came over for dinner on the night of our flight out to London. As always, she came bearing lovely gifts for the toddler and both of them spent dinner time playing little games with each other, as I checked our bags, one last time, for the flight out to London, in a few hours.
The next couple of weeks will be spent in the UK and then in the US. We are looking forward to many reunions with friends and family (and so many of you, who've been reading and encouraging these suitcase-updates all these months) in both continents, amidst belated birthday picnics for the little one. Of course this means that the next update will be delayed, but try I shall, to pack it off as soon as we get back and before we jump onto our next itinerary. Travel after travel after travel....life is good, but the passport pages are running out....Need to get on that once we are back as well!
Thanks for reading!
Love,
Shweyta
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