Top 10 Memories of 2020

 In no particular order:

1) The obvious. Need I say more? Who would have thought that a distant virus from Wuhan would wreck so much havoc on the world. It has been tough, not the least of which was the cancellation of my much anticipated 3-week trip to Israel.😭😭😭 Still, I'm cognisant of being sheltered from the more devastating effects of the pandemic. The Singapore government is doing a relatively outstanding job of controlling the spread. I still have a job when so many have lost theirs. I rather live through a pandemic than war (lesser of two evils...right?). So all in all, I can't complain or whine too much.  

2)  The Year the "Impossible" Became "Possible". If you had told me that working from home would become a reality starting in 2020, I would have snorted. Singapore's working culture is NOT FLEXIBLE, so WFH was a distant dream. Well, not anymore! Not to mention streaming concerts and shows online, class reunions via Zoom, etc. The pandemic forced change habits and policies, and I think life is better because of it. And top of my "Things Changed for the Better in 2021" is...

3) Work from Home. Working from Home has been an excellent experience. I don't want to work from home 100%, but a split-team arrangement is perfect to me. 

4) Church from Home. Mixed feelings about this. Simplified church was really nice, and NO TRAVELLING (my commute is an hour each way). It was easier to attend meetings since it was online, and Sundays were less tiring. However, I also found it harder to keep the Sabbath Day, and missed the fellowship and gathering of members after a few months of Zoom church. 

5) That being said, while change can be good, the constant policy changes made it super frustrating to plan for anything. Take Young Women activities for example. We went from meeting every week, to having no activities, then having activities via Zoom, then in small groups. I would have to re-plan everything with each change. Similar developments happened at work and for Sunday church meetings. It was exhausting to keep adapting, and enforce the bazillion safety measures. No surprise I was burned out by the end of the year, and I'm still not quite recovered. 

6) Also, almost 2 months of Circuit Breaker (Singapore's beautified term for "lockdown"). See point 2 to 4 again. Schools emptied; malls shuttered. Neighbourhoods turned into ghost towns. PLEASE NEVER AGAIN. 

7) 2020 was also the year that the United States exposed its deep fissures and bi-polarity to the world. Very messy, and very sad. 

8) On a better note, both my sisters and one brother-in-law managed to come back to Singapore despite travel restrictions. My youngest sister was here for 6 weeks, while the other sister and her husband visited for a month. It was chaotic, messy, but fun. My sister and brother-in-law held their Singapore wedding reception on 01 January 2021...so I guess that post will be for next year's "Top 10 Memories 2021"😊. 

9) Near the end of 2019, I noticed that I had started to slip into a "blue funk". The days blurred by, and I felt apathetic toward many aspects of life. Hence, I made it a goal that for every day in 2020, I would post something on Instagram that highlighted an aspect of my day or life. Well, 366 posts later (2020 was a leap year), I'm shocked that I DID IT!!! Not gonna lie, there were days when I had to dig deep into my brain/ gratitude list/ photo archives for anything to post. But overall, it was a great mental, reflective exercise for me. And I qualify to preach the platitude that even amidst a pandemic, life is still rich and flowing with good memories.😝

10) Speaking of IG, while scrolling through my 366 posts, I realise that I managed to take one overseas trip before everything went kaput. My maternal family held a family reunion at Bintam (Indonesia) in January 2020 for 3 days, and I LOVED the short getaway. 

Look at how blue the waters are! It was here that I had the most-expensive-but-also-totally-worth-it massage in my life. And I got to catch fireflies with my bare hands during the night river ride. 

A good note to end this post. I'm fighting to be optimistic that things will get better. It's true that we are still very restricted, e.g. no overseas travelling (which in tiny Singapore is 😱) . But I've changed too. Now I'm much more selective about my travelling goals, and am more focused on other financial goals. Life will never return to pre-Covid state but that's okay because I'm not the same person either. 

We adapt, and life goes on. 

Fight on!