Half year review 2016

I had a very productive half year 2016.


From the 1st Jan, I had already started the year running. With the most heartfelt gratitude towards my ex-students and those parents who recommended friends to me, I spent very little time catching up on my income to bring it near to where I had left it last year. As a private tutor, every year I will have a mini 'retrenchment' exercise, where the graduating students leave and a new batch of students come in to take their place. It's the time waiting between the leaving and the coming that is most anxious to me, because I will have low income during that period. It's all part of the job that I've been doing for the past 12-13 years.


The variation of the work I'm doing this year also increases tremendously. I'm teaching 2 new modules - one is a new option topic for IB, the other is a university engineering math module. Both took me to new realms of business maths/statistics/discrete mathematics that I had to spend a lot of time researching and studying. I practically spend my free time reading up on the notes and materials to prepare for my lessons. If I want to be calculative, it's not worth the effort taking up the assignment because of the sheer amount of preparatory work needed. But it expanded my mind tremendously. Some work you do it to pay the bills, some work for the sheer satisfaction of a job well done. Fortunately for me, these new modules I'm doing falls into the latter. My university student eventually got a B+ for his effort and was extremely delighted. He had initially just wanted to just pass it.

Due to the amount of work needed to prepare for the course that ended around April, I had been lacking in my reading. I'm in the midst of reading my 15th book. Based on my target of 1 book per week, I should have been on the 20th book now, so I'm like 5 books behind time. All in good time, I think I'm starting my reading habit now. I don't think I'll be that far behind when the year ends. I can't wait to give my year end review of the mind blowing books that I've read this year. I already did one book review of this book in February here.


I broke my own record for the most number of hours worked in a day this half of the year. 14 hours a day! That took me from 8am to 11pm with half an hour of lunch and another half an hour of dinner. It was crazy, and I'm unlikely to repeat it again, but hey, one more notch on my belt that I've been there done that. With this new perspective, I broke another self imposed limit. In the past, I used to work 4 hours a day and thought that was hard work. Eventually it progressed to 8 hours to 10 hours per day and I thought that was it. Never in my wildest dream/nightmare would I think I'll be working 14 hours a day! An easy day is now 6 to 8 hours for me. This goes back to my philosophy of life - growing bigger than your problems. I blogged about this theme here and I still think it applies to my life right now.


I saved a good part of my income too and I've stashed about 35k. I'm not sure if I can hit my target of 60k, but I believe 50k is goal that can be reached. Again, I'm grateful for the opportunities presented to me. This year, I experimented with my own style of social work too in the area that I'm specialised in. I started giving very low rates for students who are from financially poor background. Some are struggling single mums, some have kids who have special needs while others have kids who have a lot of problems in school. It took all my creativity and *ahem* charm to negotiate something that works out well for 4 of them and also won't be financially too disadvantageous for myself. I think I can see myself doing this when I truly reached financial freedom. Once I've settled myself and my immediate family, I'll work hard for others.


I'm still doing my chin ups and push ups. I think this had been going for maybe 1 year or more and I can see the results for myself. I failed miserably at waking up to jog, and I'm still thinking of starting some cardio exercises. I have many more reasons and motivation to do that now. I'll work on that aspect.


Spiritually, I've started and stopped my 100 day meditation exercise. Mind blowing! It has tremendous impact on my mood and sleep patterns. I know it increases my mental strength and thought-reality manifestation (don't ask). I'm also doing intermittent fasting every now and then, sometimes eating just fruits for lunch. Again this broke my concept of how much food one actually needs, and I'm very happy with how things progressed.


Looking forward to the next half year 2016, which promises lots of exciting events and progress in my life.