Surviving Empty Nest

Lisa (not her real name), is a young mother who drives for an e-hailing company after dropping her kids off in school. And come the school dismissal time, while she waits near the school, she sources for customers for her insurance business over social media and when she reaches home after picking her kids up, she bakes pastries to be distributed to a few bakeries in her neighbourhood. Her pastries are picked up by Eddy (not his real name) and sent to those bakeries, right before he starts his shift as food delivery person after completing a full day’s work at the office. Welcome to the gig economy, ladies and gentlemen! According to cnbc.com, there are about 60 million gig workers in the United States and by 2027 it is expected that majority of US workers will be contract workers. This has been attributed to the rise in the block chain system, usage for more and more contract employees for optimum output by large corporations, the advent of Internet of Things which facilitates re...

So, your nest just went empty? The last kid just left for college? The house feels so quiet? Suddenly, you have nothing much to do? Too much time at hand? The house, too, feels so big? Well, here are 6 things that you may want to consider doing: 1. Space X : No, folks, I am not talking about Elon Musk and his Space X programme. Get rid of the unwanted space in life. Suddenly, you will find more space at home after the kids leave. Time to think - do you need that much space? If you have three rooms in your house, how many do you actually use? The extra space would mean extra work for you - cleaning, tidying, dusting - things that you may not want to keep doing till you kick the bucket. So, down size if you need to. I have been thinking about tiny house for some time now.  Yeah, tiny house movement has been going strong in the west and in Oceania countries, but my idea of a tiny house is probably a wooden kampung house with one room, one bathroom, kitchen, living and bedroom - ...

Sometimes, I like to scan through the Net for the craziest things. Trust me as crazy as 10 things that you can do with a coin! And the most useful thing I found that one can do with a coin, is to save it till it becomes a dollar and then save more till you get more dollars and then buy an ice cream cone!  One such crazy search was jobs that disappeared over time and here is a short list: 1. Bowling Alley Pinsetter - apparently before it was mechanised, human beings manually set the pins back each time a bowler throws a ball. 2. Knocker Uppers (aka human alarm clocks, trust me, the first time I read those words, I thought of something else 😤) - it seems these were the folks who woke people up those days. A close resemblance in the 1990s was the hotel receptionist who would give wake up call, as long as you book it the night before! 3. Ice cutter - up till the time I left my hometown in late 1980s, these jobs were still there as I remember it. Roadside stalls which sold d...

My prayer was `please God, I need a great job', most of us pray like this or to some extent along these lines. Time and again when we are in a fix or caught in a situation where we think only Divine intervention can help, we often focus on what we need. No, that's perfectly all right. I did, too. I asked for a great job and landed one, too, in 2006. My prayers were answered. Thank you, God. Only after starting work there I realised that I should have worded my prayers better. It should have been - Please God, I need a great job in a location with no traffic jam, less than 30 minutes from my house, with great work culture, superb bosses and lots of job satisfaction. Trust me, I know what you all are thinking but after starting work there I realised that I had short changed myself.  It took me almost 3 hours daily commuting to and fro my office; it was a start up so work culture was somewhat uncertain, though eventually became great. Had a few Bosses (for everyone's peace, ...

Dabke is a native Levantine folk dance performed by the Lebanese, Jordanians, Syrians, Palestinians and Iraqis Dabke combines circle dance and line dancing and is widely performed at weddings and other joyous occasions - so says Wikipedia. I had no inkling about Dabke till our lives were invaded by the Arabs! Yeah, #Limkokwing university where my daughter studies, is filled with them - Jordanians, Syrians, Yemenis, Saudis, Mauritanian - wait, is Mauritania part of the Arab world? It was one of her crushes, an outrageously handsome Arab, who had 'kicked us off' into Arab world. It's human nature to find out about someone's culture when we like them. So, in came shawarma, habibi and Dabke, plus Amr Diab.  Initially, it just seemed like a dance but after watching it a few times, I realized that it is a very physically challenging dance. A single session can go on for about 20 to 30 minutes where handsome men (without tummy, lean and agile) do synchronized dancing wit...

It's Friday evening. Most of my colleagues have left the office for the weekend. I arrived late (no thanks to my lactose intolerance in the morning) so will leave in another hour. I will return to my empty nest - yeah, since Abby, the second one, left for college. But I was the scheming b**ch who foresaw the nest becoming empty, and jumped into a few things but many parents, especially the single ones, would not have expected life to change dramatically after the kids leave home. So, how does one keep oneself occupied on weekends, especially if you are single? Here are some of the things that I do and am planning to do: 1. Get rid of the washing machine ! Hey, and I mean it. Get rid of the washing machine and if you are very hardworking, hand wash your clothes especially if you have a place outside the house to wring and dry them. Else, go to the nearest laundry bar and spend some time there washing your clothes. If you meet interesting people, have a conversation, else, t...

Yeah, folks, I am talking about the strike by Food Panda riders, which had started from Monday. I, for one, actually felt the bite because during the days when I work on producing stocks for Bollywood Begum, I would order my dinner as soon as I reach home. Not to mention the motorcycles of Food Panda riders parked at the entrance to the lift lobby at my condo - that sorts of reminds me to place my order - what a sinister campaign by the food delivery company 😃. However, from Monday, I did not see even one Food Panda rider around. Everyone is on strike. Even those who had not planned to join the strike may have had to do so because of peer pressure because food delivery is indeed a `peer business'. You survive by relying on tips and information that you get from your peers. That is how the business is designed - just like taxi drivers, e-hailing drivers - you need to network to survive, like it or not.  So, the riders are off the road. The claim was that the company had cut ...