My mother has a big heart... sometimes to a fault.

I still remember when I still a little girl, it was two days before Christmas, she bought boxes of special hams and I thought, "we sure can't finish them all, what is she thinking?!" 

We then roamed around the city looking for Metro-aids. (Metro-aids are the ones who clean the streets). She then asked me to approach them and give a box of ham each while greeting them "Merry Christmas". 

Up to this day, their facial expressions were still quite vivid in my head. It started with the grumpy look, to baffled, to a smile so genuine, some even have tears in their eyes. My mom told me, "I think we just made a few families happy this Christmas Eve". Every Christmas, I think of them and I wonder if that simple gesture from our side made a difference. I wonder if they still remember that day because for sure, I still do.

Now that I'm older and have my own family, I would like to instill "helping others" to my children the way my mother did. 

My two boys helped out one time in our yearly Ramadan Company CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) activities. Giving away food boxes to labourers is one of the many that we do in Ramadan. But I thought, why should we limit helping others to the season of Ramadan.

So recently, my boys had a one week school break. We received an email from the school to bring the boys to work to give them exposure and practical experience. Since my husband brings the boys to work anyways even when they are not on school break, it feels like they can probably do something else. So I asked them if they'd be interested to give out snacks to labourers and street workers. They said it sounds like a good idea and so the idea begun.

I thought 20 packs of food is good enough. When I started ordering for samosas, I realised that's just too small of a number. And so the 20 became 50 samosas. If they have to eat samosa, they also need water, and juice and fruits.

So in the end, we have 50 samosas, 50 clementines, more than 50 water bottles and juice boxes. 

We didn't have to go far and it didn't take too long to finish off our stash. 

The first ones were 2 labourers who took a break away from their team and a street sweeper. They were pretty happy with the food and they keep on telling us "thank you, thank you".

The next were around 4 labourers waiting for their pick-up. When we asked them if they would like some samosas, they thought we were looking were to get samosas so they were saying they don't know. I figured it was miscommunication and so I just put one samosa in each bowl, put the sweet and spicy sauce and show them, their eyes lit up and suddenly gravitated towards our car. Jason happily got water bottles, juice boxes and clementines. Alex was the photographer of the day. Though he was not giving out food, he was smiling. He knows we were doing something good.

I thought, okay, I don't want the samosas to go cold. These are good samosas, I know because we order the exact ones for the office when we crave for it. I told the boys, we're gonna have to go to Media City and distribute what we have at the construction site in front of UOWD. But on our way to the exit, I saw 3 Labourers under the heat, taking a break, so I decided to take a pit stop.

3 became 5, became 6, and before we knew it, we were left with just 5 samosas. Every time we were about to leave, Jason will yell, "mommy, more are coming!". Word of mouth definitely travels fast, especially when you're hungry and it's about food.

By the rate of it, the boys were both telling me, we should have bought more samosas. :)

It was hot, I was sick, boys were getting exhausted going back and forth to get the stash and distributing them. But we were all happy in the end.

As we left the construction site and headed to the mall's parking lot to distribute the remaining 5, we saw from afar a lot, a lot, a lot of construction workers on queue waiting for their bus. We all look at each other, well we now know where will be the next place to distribute when we do this again. 

In the mall's parking lot, I saw a cleaner. I told Jason to ask him if he would like a samosa. He quickly said he wanted and so I told him, I'll give him all 5 with the remaining sauces, he can share (or not) with his friends at work or bring it home, it's up to him. He looked so happy.

Then I checked, we still have some water bottles, juice boxes and a few clementines. Apparently, some of the labourers didn't take water or juice or clementines. Some just took either a juice or just water or just the fruit, but for sure every single one took samosa.

On our way home, we decided to pass by the horde of labourers we saw and distribute whatever is left. Once again, miscommunication happened. When we asked, do you guys want water, most of them said no, because they thought we were looking for a place to get water. 

The minute Jason started waiving water bottles and juice boxes in front of them, it went all crazy. It was a good thing we were inside the car, our stash disappeared in just a minute. We had to tell them sorry, we have no more.

We left the area and for sure know that the next time we distribute, it will be to this area. We ended the day with a happy heart. 

​Looking forward to our next "lend a hand" activity.

I am all about getting inspired and motivated and usually when it works for me, I love to share it. It makes me very happy to see others benefit from my experiences. I love sharing.

I attended a workshop last week where the trainer said something about, "when you feel a little down, try to help someone, usually you'll immediately feel good and your mood will start to change." 

I never knew that before but I always have this instinct to help if I can. I must have gotten it from my mom.

So today, I'm not feeling down, on the contrary, I am actually very very happy because I am back to my cooking and baking self. I feel like I'm getting back to my castle of contentment. I am sharing because I believe it might help someone else reach their goal(s) and that would be such a grand thing!

I got my kids to join in which is really exciting. Alex is not hard to convince. I explained the mechanics, explained "delayed gratification", explained the reward, he asked questions, I answered and that's it. He got his envelope, wrote on it and put in his first 3 weeks savings from his extra money and moved on.

Jason? That's a different story. 

Jason is the skeptic. He has to see what's in it for him, like really I had to make a hard sell! There are so many obstacles and series of questions that I need to answer before he got convinced. In the end he told me, "but mommy, I only have Dh 1, because I spent the rest on food. He had to wait for the next day to have enough money for the envelope. What a labour intensive thing! 

So the challenge has been called different names and it's been going on for years but some are still unaware of it.

Basically, we have 52 weeks in a year. Every week, you make a contribution to which week you are in.  Right now we are towards the beginning of week 4, so the savings in the envelope should be the value of $10:
Week 1 - deposit $1
Week 2 - deposit $2
Week 3 - deposit $3
Week 4 - deposit $4
Total as of week 4 = $10

Then on week 5, you should add 5 in the envelope and so it continues until you reach 52.

It's up to you what currency you feel like. Jason and Alex are on Dirhams since that's as much as they can afford with their school money. I am doing it on US Dollars. Maybe another year, I'll do it in Euro or British Pounds to make it more challenging!!! 

I sent the same thing to my colleagues and suggested, if they want to, they can also save for a love one and come 52nd week, they can gift it (or keep it too, you greedy you!). So many variations you can do! You can even have an envelope for each member of your family!

Again, do it if you want to. I told the same thing to my nanny and she just shrugged her shoulders. Obviously she is not into it. 

For me, it is one of the highlights of my week. Opening the envelop and putting in a little amount, it makes me smile.

Now that I'm a lot older, I like to save. This is how I managed to afford a big Europe tour for a family of 4 in 2014. It wasn't a budget travel, it was a well thought, obsessed kind of organised trip. My whole family didn't know what's happening until I said "we are applying for visa". Even then they knew squat. I'll write all about it soon (i hope). It was an amazing experience, the sparkle in their eyes were priceless. 

It was a fully-paid and fully organised trip that the only thing we need to do is pack our clothes and go. From the air tickets, the accommodation, the tours, the exquisite dinner by Alain Ducasse atop Eiffel tower, the only thing we paid for were tips, snacks here and there and daily grocery. Imagine going for a big trip with all big chunky expenses out of the way? It was blissful.

The same amount of determination was applied last year when I found out towards the end of 2014 that we are pregnant! I had some extra stash, I didn't want to spend them all on bags so I decided to kick start investing on properties. Got us our first proper house, furnished and a vacant lot in a prime location perfect for future vacation house. Again, it was all a wonderful surprise, another story to tell, another time. 

What I'm saying is, this 52 week challenge is just to tickle your saving buds. If you can do this, you can do more. IF I CAN DO IT, YOU CAN DO BETTER.

1,300 in whatever currency is a good amount of money. You certainly cannot pick it up from the street.

This savings challenge does not replace serious savings, like kids education, retirement or emergency fund. Don't abandon those, please! This is a fun savings that should make your week bright and make you giddy with delight. Do this on the side as a reward for you to splurge or do what the heck you want to at the end of the year... for your self.

​So what do you say?

Two weeks back, I watched Discovery Channel with the boys and the title of the series was Re-Design My Brain. It was basically about a man named Todd Sampson who is on a quest to expand his brain capacity. There were activities addressing speed, memory, flexibility and so on.

He had to do juggling for half an hour everyday for the next few weeks (see I can't even remember that part). Apparently, juggling does not just improve our hand-eye coordination, it also boosts your memory. He also had to practice his attention to detail and response speed through a series of computer exercises  and help his detail retention through the art of mnemonics. At the end of his training, he is supposed to compete in World Memory Championships where individuals of different ages display their brains' prowess through a number of levels and tests.

As a newbie, he is supposed to memorise a deck of cards in full detail on exactly how they were arranged. And guess what? He was able to! It was awe-mazing!

So I thought, why not try it?

My mom always say that our brain should always be challenged. If we don't interact on the same level of people as we used to, our IQ will go down. She said, "take me for example, because I am a stay-at-home mom, my IQ was not as high as it used to be". Well, I'm not sure of the IQ part and do not entirely agree on the reason of being a stay-at-home but she is partially right. 

I remember when I stopped working for awhile and I just became a couch potato. I was not reading anything academic, not abreast with current events, I was mostly playing games on the computer or watching TV series and reading gossip columns. The silliest and shallowest things amused me. Even my perspective on various areas became laughable. When I recall some of the conversations I had then, it was awful to the point of cringe-worthy. I almost want to write a disclaimer that anyone who had a conversation with me during those years, please erase it from your memory.

So yes, if our brains became idle and are not fed with good value information, junk instead of nutrition, naturally and expectedly, it will wither away. 

It is very fortunate that we have technology on our hands, that information now is more accessible than it used to be. There is no excuse for being misinformed. It doesn't matter whether you are a full time mom, part time mom, not a mom, fresh graduate, man, woman, old, young, student, each one of us is armed with information.

I think our nemesis now is which information retention and filtering. After all, this is the generation of 6-second video Vines, 140 character Tweets and few seconds Snapchats. It almost feel like we are those test subjects being fed subliminal messages through blinking words in the middle of a movie.  

I have always aimed at continuous learning and improvement. Always into reading but now on top of my reading, I make it a point to read at least 3 articles a day about current events, technology or HR, first thing in the morning before work becomes hectic. I am also more involved now with the kids' Math and English exercises. After watching Redesign My Brain, I was even more intent on boosting my brain.

Then I found BrainHQ. So far, it's keeping me entertained, so are the boys. After all it is presented as a game. Who doesn't like a game? I for one is addicted to games. As they say, "practice makes perfect". It's not really perfection that we are looking for but improvement. Improve we all did as we go along. Our rates improve with every practice and I notice my information retention is getting better too.

The boys are asking me to subscribe. We're using the free version at the moment. Maybe I will subscribe. If our progress is consistent, I sure will.