27th Oct 2007
It was a Saturday (weekend).
It was raining (nice weather to sleep).
It was 08:00 am (too early to wake up).
Suddenly my alarm RANG. Still feeling sleepy, I disabled my alarm and tried to go back to my dreamland. Just as I was about to sleep again, suddenly I remembered that we had a TOUCH visit. I cannot sleep anymore; I have to go to TOUCH. The elderlies were waiting for me there. Haiz…..Kind hearted is really one of my major weaknesses…..So what to do…. I sacrificed my sleep and dragged myself out of my bed for the sake of the elderlies no matter how tired I was and set off for TOUCH visit.
It was 10:30am when I arrived at the TOUCH centre. As usual I joined the Hokkien speaking group even though I have a poor command of Hokkien. Our first stop of the day was Mdm Lim’s house. We started off with some routine questions like “have you eaten?” , “what did you eat just now?”, “how is your back?”, etc. We chatted quite normally until we came to the topic on her back problems. She complained about her back; how it gave her problems and how the pain prevented her from sleeping. She then linked the topic to death like what she did sometime when we talked about her illnesses. The topic about death is forbidden in TOUCH session as we do not want the elderlies to develop such negative thinking. Maybe in future, even though we are concerned about their illnesses, we should also try to cut down on this kind of topic that can link to death. So, immediately we try to change the topic to something else more happy and relaxing. We decided to give this zhong ren to Choo Min who was sitting beside her. Instead of coming out with a topic, she colluded with Mdm Lim and started bullying the guys. Mdm Lim suan us one by one and said we are bad people. For example, Mdm Lim was telling me that tan skin is good. But suddenly, 0.1sec later, she turned to Jooch and shoot him, saying that he is too white and that’s not good. Mdm Lim was really on TOP FORM that day. She ‘shot’ all the guys down one by one, leaving all of us speechless. She seemed to be enjoying that moment a lot as she kept laughing as she continued to suan us. However, we did not mind at all as long as this can make her happy and bring laughter to her (Haiz… told you all le… Kind hearted is really my weakness). Tong ku de re zi really zhen nan guo, the clock ticked slowly to 12:00pm before we were spared of all the suaning as we needed to proceed to Mdm Tan house le.
Mdm Tan looked very happy when she saw us. As usual she is very hospitable and wanted to offered us drinks and food even before we sat down. And as usual, I will tell her that we ate something before coming up to her house. As Mdm Tan is illiterate, she took out some mails and asked us to help her see what they were about. One of the mails were in fact some post cards, however, we have difficulties explaining the use of the post card to her. Luckily after some attempts we managed to explain to her. After that we started the chit chatting session. As compared to Mdm Lim, I feel that Mdm Tan is much more optimistic, at least she didn’t talk about death and unhappy things. But that day she and Mdm Lim seemed to have one thing in common – that was they were both on form. Mdm Tan seemed to be talking much more that day as compared to last time. There was a point of time when she talked to Khoon Hong and De Rui for quite long. Because she spoke quite softly, I cannot catch what she was talking about even though I tried very hard to listen. This chat continued all the way until 01:00 pm where we had to stop our session and gathered at the void deck for debrief which will round off the TOUCH session for the day…….
Everytime I went to TOUCH, I feel quite sad for the elderly living there. They seemed pitiful living there alone. Moreover, as most of them have difficulties in moving around, this will mean that they will have to stay in their home for most of the time. Staying alone in the house with nothing to do may also allow them to have more time to think of negative things just like Mdm Lim, so our visits would mean alot to them. I can tell that they feel very happy whenever they see us and they appreciate our presence a lot. Maybe we cannot always keep them happy during every visit but our chatting with them and singing for them can make them feel that there are still people out there that care for them and they are not alone. So let’s hope that everyone can continue to TOUCH their hearts with our care and love for them and keep this spirit going….until…… even after we grow old and students from NUS CSC will also come to visit us like what we are doing now…… (Pls don’t be surprise.Yes I am Jun Hui. These are all written by me. Haha)
Everyone pls feel honored because this is my first ever blog entry. Wo ba wo de di yi chi xian gay ni meng le.
Jun Hui
