I just realised I didn’t write anything for the month of April. Well that’s simply because april was really a busy month. I had planned to post up something on my reflections during Holy week, but the influenza that I had contracted over holy week (ironically I got sick on Holy Thursday all through the whole week post easter) was one nasty one that kept me sniffling and sneezing throughout. All plans to do any kind of reflection and to even treat holy week with reverence and solemness went out the window. I ended up spending most of my time drinking water and resting.
This kinda sucked as well as I had two back to back major presentations to deliver at work so whatever strength and spirit I had left in me was all channeled and consumed by these two major presentations. The first was a major change workshop at work – this was the first time any of us were embarking on such a programme and we were anxious to see how people, especially the leadership team from the client side would actually respond to it. Thankfully it was a half day event and we managed to successfully deliver it according to expectations.
The second presentation was a change college program at SMU. I had been “nominated” by the company to cover a couple of modules for the change college program and this required some serious rehearsing all through the weekend to ensure I was fully comfortable with the material. I found the best way for me to really prepare for a presentation is to just write out my script line by line, word by word and just memorise and go over it a couple of times. Stressful and labourious as it is, it does eventually pay off at the end of the day. I have to say, both events really left me drained and tired at the end of it all. However I was really thankful it was over at the end of the day and life could return to some degree of normalcy at the end of the day.
Oh and on top of all of this, I also submitted my PR application – what a roller coaster ride that was because I had spent the second half of March just trying to collate all my documents only to realise that there was an eAppointment system in place and I had to first get an eAppointment and then, and only then I could get my company to issue me an employer letter. I was really disappointed to know there was no available appointment until October! What a real bummer and so I began the ritual of doing periodical checks on the ICA website to see if I could get any slots within the next few weeks, hoping someone would drop out last minute and their space would be released. I got almost lucky one tuesday morning as we were heading out for Cashew’s checkup and I was so surprised to see a slot was available for the next day – but unfortunately I could not take that slot as it was just too close and I hadn’t had all my documents prepared at that moment.
But that did give me a glimmer of hope that we could possibly get a slot afterall – so if anything that little glimmer of hope fueled my motivation to keep pressing. Eventually, two days later, the wifey was also checking the website for me, and it was by sheer miracle we had gotten so many slots available! – the reason I call it a miracle is because just 15 minutes before the wife went in to check, I was also checking the website as part of my usual routine and as always, there were no slots – so its really by divine providence she managed to check at that time and we had so many slots available for us to choose from. We finally settled on April 18th to submit my PR application at 9.15 am.
The road leading up to the PR application also was not an easy one. For one, I had to reprint my birth certificate and so we made a trip up to penang to see my brother as well as my dad and one shot obtain a copy of my birth certificate. Thankfully that went smoothly without much issues and we managed to get the certificate. That was one of the last missing pieces in terms of my document checklist I had to do before completely submitting my documents.
I have to say, April has probably been the most eventful month for this year – having to see so many things and respond to so many obligations and commitments was one real roller coaster and eventful time for me – probably that was why I did not have much time (in fact very little time at all) to really blog and write anything.
Oh and on April 30th, my beloved Robocop computer passed away – I think the system was just getting too old and it required an upgrade and face lift – I finally decided this time to get a smaller PC desktop casing – something that is easier to carry and manage moving forward. The reason I got such a big casing back in 2013 (it was a highly highly scalable casing) was in the event I could plan to add more and more hard drives for my movies – but in the end, I only upgraded it once and thanks to Kodi, it didn’t make sense to “hog” movies anymore. From downloading to Streaming – I guess times have changed.
