{"id":13289,"date":"2011-02-25T20:30:25","date_gmt":"2011-02-25T12:30:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/2011\/02\/25\/tgif\/"},"modified":"2011-02-25T20:30:25","modified_gmt":"2011-02-25T12:30:25","slug":"tgif","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/2011\/02\/25\/tgif\/","title":{"rendered":"TGIF"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I was at an army camp yesterday afternoon for my bi-annual medical check-up to certify Singaporean males past 35 years old whether they\u2019re still physically fit to undertake the yearly physical fitness test. I cleared all the stages \u2013 but at one stage, the attending medic remarked; \u201cSir, you\u2019ve got high blood pressure.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That really pretty much killed the rest of the day and week, though that I\u2019ve got HBP has not come as a surprise. Since September last year\u2019s receipt of new work \u2018appointments\u2019, I\u2019ve been coming home each night physically weary and emotionally drained. I do not innately enjoy management roles, and even though I\u2019ve got 7 years of it under my belt before joining my current institution, I still find myself out of my natural element. As I remarked to my own reporting officer, I\u2019m an exemplar of a product coming out of the Singapore education system &#8211; I can\u2019t think creatively and \u2018out of the box\u2019. Nor am I especially clever at reading nuances or subtlety in communication. And I absolutely suck at differentiating between being forthright versus exercising discretion on when it\u2019s best to hold one\u2019s peace. All I can offer is determination, honesty, a good work ethic (hopefully), and an ability to see patterns, rhythm and organization in everything I do, see or hear. <\/p>\n<p>&#8212;<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve found joy each night though especially in Hannah. We were at Hougang Mall for a kopitiam dinner again, and while Ling was away to buy and bring back her usual plate of noodles, I took these few pictures of Hannah:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; display: inline; border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px\" title=\"blog-2011-hannah-OLYP5917-hougang-mall-dinner-flickr\" border=\"0\" alt=\"blog-2011-hannah-OLYP5917-hougang-mall-dinner-flickr\" src=\"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/blog-2011-hannah-OLYP5917-hougang-mall-dinner-flickr.jpg\" width=\"550\" height=\"367\" \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; display: inline; border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px\" title=\"blog-2011-hannah-OLYP5931-hougang-mall-dinner-flickr\" border=\"0\" alt=\"blog-2011-hannah-OLYP5931-hougang-mall-dinner-flickr\" src=\"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/blog-2011-hannah-OLYP5931-hougang-mall-dinner-flickr.jpg\" width=\"275\" height=\"413\" \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; display: inline; border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px\" title=\"blog-2011-hannah-OLYP5936-hougang-mall-dinner-flickr\" border=\"0\" alt=\"blog-2011-hannah-OLYP5936-hougang-mall-dinner-flickr\" src=\"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/blog-2011-hannah-OLYP5936-hougang-mall-dinner-flickr.jpg\" width=\"275\" height=\"413\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Hannah seemed completely lost in thought again as she gazed at some distant object at kopitiam. But as I watched her, there was again that indescribable sense of having been blessed with a lovely daughter whom we see growing each day, better using her senses and better able to understand the world around her. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was at an army camp yesterday afternoon for my bi-annual medical check-up to certify Singaporean males past 35 years old whether they\u2019re still physically fit to undertake the yearly physical fitness test. I cleared all the stages \u2013 but<\/p>\n<div class=\"entry-read-more\"><a class=\"read-more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/2011\/02\/25\/tgif\/\">Read More<span class=\"cleanwp-sr-only\">  TGIF<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,7],"tags":[468],"class_list":["post-13289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-at-home","category-children-blues","tag-e-pl1","wpcat-6-id","wpcat-7-id"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13289"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13289\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}