Things are slowing returning to normal again. The last 2 years seems like a long nightmare we have just woken up from. Though it felt like such a long period of time, the last 24 months also felt like they have passed us like a blink of an eye.
S’pore is finally opening up and masks are not required outdoors while outlets are allowed to open beyond 1030 pm. I have been conditioned to go home and sleep early and I am not sure if I can have late nights anymore. Further relaxations are in store for 19 Apr.
Live music is allowed now and I went to the same venue last Sat to watch a band play where I watched my last performance back in Mar 2020. At that time, I requested the song “My Corona, I will Survive” (as a parody to “My Sharona”) as my private protest to the unknown virus. I had no idea that our world would be turned upside down for the next 24 months.
Going outside for a few hours while been trapped inside the house was the norm for a long time. My daily morning runs felt so precious as I breath the fresh air around me, wary of keeping a large social distance from anoth human being. Even going out for half a day was infrequent when we navigated the ever changing restrictions as the various strains swept through the world. Better to err on the side of caution in the absence of data before vaccines were available a year later.
This week on Tues, I finally completed a full day outdoors! Went to the gym in the morning, met friends for coffee. Visited the National Gallery and then my favourite Sim Lim electronic mall before heading to Dhoby Ghaut to do my regular blood donation. Came home by 5 pm filling very satisfied that I had done a lot that day.
My NUS FinTechSG course has also come to an end this week after 3 months of Zoom classes with 30 classmates. The 3rd module consist of 2 topics – Blockchain Smart Contracts and Algo-Trading. Our concept project presentation on voting using smart contracts, Blockchain, NFTs and Metaverse which I mentioned last week went OK. The trainer was a bit impatient to want to get it over with and felt that it will not work for countries as large as America. Oh well…
Overall, this course by the School of Computing enabled me to dive deeper into the technical side of Fintech topics. I struggled with Module 2’s DevOps/API concepts while trying to pick up HTML, CSS and JavaScript programming languages. It was a good intro for me into the nuts and bolts of FinTech as I don’t think I will will be able to do so if I tried to do self learning.
We would have a e-Speed dating-like interview session this week to meet up with potential employers. It will help me assess my marketability given my past experience and newly acquired skills, given the ageism disadvantage. Meanwhile, I have proposed a face to face meet up with my classmates next week as we have never done that at all throughout the course via Zoom. It will also be good to do some FinTech networking while celebrating the 19 Apr reopening too 🙂
Before I reassess my next steps game plan after the completion of this course, I will take a break for now. This is thanks to an opportunity to join my wife for her business trip to New York. We will be there in late Apr with our younger son.
The last and only time I was in New York was in 2005. I will now have the time to fully explore the city and feel its vibrancy coming back to life after Covid. Like us, they had battled the virus that had ravaged big cities. New York was one of the major epicenter of the virus. The residents did not know what hit them and they suffered a lot of casualities. It has a long history of fighting back (eg. 9/11) and I would see it first hand on how it is making a comeback and leaning to be normal again.
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