I finally finished my virtual training course, which involved several half days of logging on in the morning over the past few weeks. I’m done with training for the year and will start to discuss my training plan for next year with my manager in the next few months. While I enjoy learning new information and skills, it was a challenge finding the time and focus to do the training. I had to balance it often with my work, household chores and childcare duties. Just going to take a break from training for now.
Work has started picking up for me recently as we are in the last quarter and there’s a push to get things done by end of the year. I am in the process of going through my performance review with my manager. The feedback is that I have done a good job given how the year went with Covid-19 and work from home arrangement. It was a tough adjustment at the beginning (especially during circuit breaker) but got better after that. Regardless of my performance, it seems like there is likely to be minimal or no salary increase and bonus when the remuneration outcome is announced next year. Looking at how badly the Singapore economy is doing, I’m fortunate enough to keep my job so I’m already going in with very low expectations.
It’s a nervous wait for my wife as discussions among her senior managers will take place from next week onwards on placing the staff into roles they have applied for. And there will be staff that don’t get any roles that should be offered redundancy payouts. Not a good position to be in as the major restructuring drags on at her bank. There’s still plenty of work to be done at her job so it serves as a distraction while waiting for the outcome. When there’s so much uncertainty, it can be difficult to make plans for the future but we have to try. Just got to make estimates and assumptions about how things can turn out. Then adjust accordingly.
We are in the process of enrolling our kid for childcare in 6 months’ time. He’s turning 1 year old and growing up so quickly. Considered a little boy now rather than a baby. Didn’t realise we had to do this so early until we found out enrolment spaces at the popular preschools for next year’s intake are already being taken up. We went for a tour at one that is near to the area we would like to live in eventually. The premises are nice and we walked to the teacher and principal. Curriculum is play-based and seems more fun for the kids. We will probably go ahead to enrol our boy there.
In the meantime, we have also been searching for bigger apartments to rent in the same area as the preschool too. We have delayed our property purchase decision until we can get more clarity on a few things. Whether my wife would still have a job at the end of the major restructuring at her bank. How long it takes to sell our current smaller apartment. Whether our boy likes the preschool and us living in that area. Whether we want to have another kid. Until we get more certainty on these matters, we can’t commit yet to putting money down to buy a bigger property. So many considerations to think about and we just need more time before we decide.