And speaking of dreams...

Not only did I want to be a fashion designer once upon a time.

I also wanted to be (a) a famous novelist (b) a successful lawyer (c) a glam globe-trotting journalist.

Plan A was my fondest dream. My old secondary school pals can attest to the many short stories (romantic trash!) that I wrote for them to read. They all had the same plot - beautiful heroine, handsome hero, tragic ending! In my stories, no one worked for a living but lived mysterious lives in glamourous surroundings! Hah - I wish! Plan A sort of quietly fizzled into oblivion as the years went by.

I think Plan B died a natural death when I could not make it to Uni.

The closest I came to my dream job, I guess, was in Plan C. Yes, I did become a journalist. Though it certainly was not globe-trotting. The furtherest I went in the name of the job was to Batam!!

My first job after 'A' levels took me to SBC then the Singapore Broadcasting Corporation, where I wrote for the RTV Times, the forerunner of 8 Days. Where, despite my pathetic state of Mandarin, I managed to struggle through interviews with Xiang Yun, Chen Zhicai, Zoe Tay and the Star Search bunch etc and HK, Taiwanese celebs - mind-boggling! The pay was low - $800+ was my first pay-check. Hardly the glam life I wanted. But it was fun and got me off to a decent start. Where else can you sit at the same table as Julio Iglesias for lunch or chat with David Copperfield over tea? (Yes, his eyes are very piercingly dark and no, I cannot confirm the raw meat in the hotel room rumour.)

From hobnobbing with the celebs on Caldecott Hill, it was off to hobnobbing with authors and the literati at book launches, autograph-signing sessions and so on. My favourite trio of writers - funnyman Colin Goh, angsty Colin Cheong and intense Nicky Moey, possibly the best horror writer we have in Singapore. Baptism of fire it was at Times where I spent two years. Everything I learnt about marketing, sales, book editing, publicity, media relations, advertising, I learnt at Times thanks to my fire-breathing dragon lady boss.

Then it was off to another 'glam' (haha) job as editor for Teens mag - this time hobnobbing with boybands, attending product launches, fashion shoots etc.

Nowhere in those early days did pregnancy, labour, birth and breastfeeding figure in as a career option. And certainly nowhere in those dreams were there five (count 'em!) kids/babies hanging around!

I cannot imagine life without my five rascals in my little yellow house at Riang. But at the same time, I wouldn't change the way my life has evolved. Everything I am today is the nett result of all my life experiences.

How life changes. Who knows what life holds around the next corner? But I bet it would be fun finding out.