Wednesday, March 03, 2010
Busy Monday
4-MAR-2010:
Monday was a very busy day. In the morning, I registered Dom for his primary school (which he is starting in year 2012). The night before, I googled the Internet to find out what documents I needed to bring along with me, but there was no such information, no even in the MOE website. Seriously, the MOE website is like shit. It is totally not informative (not for me anyway) and it doesn't even look good. When we were in London, the primary school application procedure was clearly documented and we were able to find out all the information that we needed, even for people like us who had no idea which school we wanted to apply for. Anyway, my SIL told me that I only needed Dom's birth certificate and a photocopy of it. Later that night, my brother called and he told me that I should bring along photocopy of my own IC and proof of address (i.e. water/electricity bills). Even later that night, my friend TS called me and said that I would need passport size photographs of Dom! In the end, you know I just brought whatever I had (just in case), but my SIL was right. All I needed was the birth cert.
We reached the school at around 8:30am (I went with SIL) and there were people already queueing up. The queue wasn't that long but the office was small and there were two queues. On the desk were two manila-card-folded signs that said '2004' and '2005', meaning one queue was for children who were born in 2004 and the other for those who were born in 2005. The trouble was that a lot of people missed those signs because there were placed on the desk and not hung up high and it was impossible for people who just came in and were at the back of the queue to see them. There was some confusion and a few people who misunderstood that one queue was for boys and the other for girls, gave the wrong information to others who came in later. I felt rather disappointed. They must have done this many, many times since every year, students need to register for school. Why haven't they learnt from their mistakes? Or maybe they just didn't bother to improve things. Anyway, the process was very quick and we managed to reach home at about 9am and I reached the office at 9:30am. Thank goodness it's not like in Singapore where you have to be a sponsor and do all sorts of volunteer work to get your child into the school that you want.
At work, it was rather busy as well. Saimun has finally decided that he will come back in mid April, so there was Oyster cards to be cancelled, vouchers to be claimed and used, loyalty points to be redeemed and all sorts. :-D Plus the renovation work on our new house has started and there were details to be finalized and huge checque to be issued. Top that up with my daily milk-expressing routine, I have to say, there was very little time to 'relax'. Hehe! And of course, I did some 'real' work too. I had a meeting offsite in the afternoon and met a professor from Netherlands who has been living in Malaysia for 17 years. He just said that he prefers Malaysia to Europe! That's a new one.
In the evening, my reno contractor came over to have a chat, and that totally messed up my schedule. I was so late and Emily was fussing to go to bed and I didn't have time to breastfeed her. That night, she had her last feed at 6:30pm and didn't wake up to drink until 3:30am! It almost made me worried.
