Touch Visit to Chinatown

Hi all,

First and foremost, a short introduction to myself. I am Low Xi Qian, a year 4 chemical engineering student in NUS. Have been in CSC since my 2nd week of Semester 1 in year 1. So i can boost that all are less experienced than me except for Lixian, Lijie, Cheng hua, Chloe etc. not many thou. hahaha. And i will like to take this opportunity to clear up the yahoo group confusion (if u are in it), i am not a year 1 student, i trying to act young (as claimed by jasmine...). Luckily, Jasmine helped to clear up the misunderstanding or i might be classified as a non-official touch member....

In case some of you dont know who am I, ya, i put a photo of me and one of the touch elderly above. I am on the left of the photo ( in case u all cant tell which is the elderly....)

For this blog entry, maybe I just want to touch on my feelings since I started visiting Touch. I was all along from Yishun Students' Care services, another RVP of CSC, then I tried Hospice Care Association, another RVP and now, I am in Touch.

Talking about Touch, I didnt join Touch initially because it is so damn far from my home la!!! The moment i heard it is at Kallang Bahru, i was immediately turned off. Thus, the first visit in Touch was during my third year of NUS, which I went with Kailun, Joo chuan, Yiwen, denise, yuncai, mdm phua, chloe etc etc. where all the old birds are still flapping around. After the first visit, I found Touch quite near to my house, jus a train to Toa Payoh and then a 10 min bus ride! hahaha.

It is until recently that I start to visit touch more often ( after Jasmine took over). Gradually, like all the other volunteers who had stated before, I started to like to come to Touch.... How to say ah? I like to hear what the elderly got to say, I like to hear what they had experienced during their lifetime. I like to hear what they went through during the World War II. I like to hear when they said I am "yan dao" etc... Initially, I visited Mdm Tan ( the elderly who has quite a bad vision) and mdm Lim (my fav elderly till now), but as time goes by, I started to visit Gan Po and Mdm Lim ( canto grp). Although I dont understand Cantonese, but I liked to visit Gan Po, because she in some way resemble my late grandmother alot. And looking at her, it reminds me of my grandmother. And amazingly, after several visits, I knew that Gan pu becomes a widow at quite a young age (ard 36 if i am not wrong) and she singlehandedly raised up her children by selling soft drinks. My grandmother has similar experiences as well... And i really like the way Gan pu sits. She sits with such great pose, her back is damn straight la (unlike Mdm Lim hahaha) and one look at her, one can tell that she went through a lot. I really respect her for this point.

As for Mdm Lim, my favourite elderly, we have so much to talk about. Our favorite topic will always be Mdm Phua Lixian, aka 881, aka Scholar, aka Singer and Dancer etc. We jus enjoyed talking about Lixian and I ALWAYS like to emphasis how lixian bully me etc (which is true...). And furthermore, Hokkien has always been my second language, it comes to me so naturally that i could ratter off any thoughts to mdm lim so fluently. ( btw, Chinese is my first, English my third language...) And mdm lim seems to have so much to talk to us. :)

Some last thoughts about volunteering.. Maybe to the elderly, we are so called "good-hearted, kind, nice" people etc etc.. but I join volunteering cos I like to volunteer. I like the feeling that i have made an impact, i have bring a smile to the people I come in touch with, be it Yishun Kids, HCA patients or Touch elderly. Volunteering is like drug addiction as well, once you have it, you just keep coming back for more... Jus ask those old birds and you will know. Volunteering dont ask for returns, and when you did it, you normally have great surprises in the visits. :)

With regards,
Xi Qian

Chinese New Year Outing

Hihi ...it is me again.

Last thursday, we brought the eldery from touch seniors to chinatown for night shopping and sightseeing. It was a major event as many volunteers were called down to be "tour guides"for the tour. The volunteers were then spilt into their respective groups marked by numbers and colour. We then proceed to pick up the elderly. If you were there...you should have seen the excited faces of elderly as they eagerly await for the start off.I heard from Jasmine that these elderly have not gone chinatown for many years hence they really treasured this outing. So excited were they..the elderly in my group were poking me, urging me to lead them in their shopping spree...haha

Magaret and I were leading group 10 consisting of 5 aunties with 5 unique personalities.5 different shopping habits and 5 different shopping lists. There are many times which Margaret and I have to spilt up so that we can keep an eye on them while they are marking things off their shopping lists. Oh boy...their bargaining power was amazing! At the start, I was wondering why they didn't buy anything. I forgot the rule of thumb in shopping-See market first..then ATTACK! They were even teaching us things like best time and best place for bargains. Very streetsmart sia!

After shopping...we went to do abit of sightseeing. Actually this is my first time I have been to chinatown during the chinese new year period..so was awed by the decorations. We also got to see an artistry put up by this amazing caligrapher in front of temple.

Like the chinese saying goes... tian xia wu bu san zhi yan xi .The time came for us to depart from chinatown. But the most touching part came after that. A very tired Jasmine was standing next to me in the train home when she received a message in which the touch people conveyed their thanks to the volunteers. As she read the message ..every sign of tiredness disappeared and a smile surfaced. There, the beauty of volunteerism: being happy because someone else is happy.

Elicia

Visit on 12 Jan (Canto group)

Hi everyone!
Sorry for the late post. I was trying to figure out how to post a blog here. Then only I noticed that there's our user-id and password.

On 12 Jan, the canto group visited Kam Po and Mdm Lim. Kam Po is quite OK and she also told us about the Japanese war time. I find it's meaningful to learn from the elderly about their experience then we will appreciate our lives. We sang some songs but they were sad songs. Maybe we can have a few happy songs too so that we encourage the the elderly to be more involved, eg by clapping their hands when a song is being played. But to do this, maybe one or two of us can start to clap hands to lead them.
Mdm Lim was quite emotional when she thought of her sister in hospital. Maybe we can find some ways to cheer the elderly when they are sad. But I don't really know how. It's a pity that Mdm Lim didn't want to come for the CNY celebration on Thursday. Though she really wanted to, she didn't want to trouble others because of her back problem. I also can't join you all for the outing because of lecture. However, if you all are getting the elderly some food on that day, if possible, can get something for Mdm Lim to eat, something good for health :) or something to decorate her house to make her happy. Since she's a christian, please don't get for her food that is offered.
I hope we can help Mdm Lim to improve her diet by drinking less coffee and taking less MSG. But what can we do?

Besides, I also hope to improve my Hokkien to interact better with the elderly :)


Andrea

Touch visit on 12 Jan

Well, it's me again!! I have taken such a liking to writing about the visits that I have volunteered to do this particular one too! Hahaha. Well, if you are really interested to know the reason for my 2nd consecutive contribution to the blog, see my previous post.

I went to Mr Hui and Mdm Chua's (Fondly known as The couple) home with some other oldies (Jun Hui, Jooch, Zhen Qin and Jessie) to do basic cleaning up. Mdm Chua has not been feeling well recently hence she was not able to do house work for the past week or two. When we meet her, she was not feeling very cheerful, which was due to her not feeling well and having to take care of Mr Hui at the same time.

After we are finished with the cleaning up, I went to Mr Chiu's flat for...... what else, Sing-along sessions of course!! This time, we were better prepared and could sing the songs Mr Chiu selected and he really seemed to enjoy the songs too (with me singing, what can you expect? :P). After the session, he gave us even more songs that he would like to hear. So, it's learning more oldiesfor his next visit. All of us had a great time at Mr Chiu's flat.

There was a small birthday celebration for the January babies at the debrief session after the visits. Let me wish the January babies another Happy Birthday! Ok, Ok I can finally end liao. Hope I would not be 'activated' to do this for a long, long time. Haha

Khoon Hong
(YES! FINALLY!)

Late Late write up for visit on 5 Jan

I am supposed to write about the visit on the 5 Jan but I forgot all about it. As it happened like 2 weeks ago, I also forgot what group I was in (Hokkien or Chinese?). Sorry to those who are waiting anxiously for this particular write up.

Mr Chiu was happy to see us and we sang a few songs for him. However, we could not meet most of the requests as we do not know how to sing the songs, all oldies. We made a promise to learn the songs and sing it for him the next session. Singing songs was fast becoming the norm for Touch visits (Esp for Mr Chiu. We even made a list of what he wanted to sing!). We had to learn the oldies as this are the songs the elderly can understand. While this is good but I feel that this should not be held too often as this actually reduces the time we have for interaction with the elderly. but with Mr Chiu, this may be an exception as I feel that he actually prefers to sing, much to the delight of some volunteers who love to sing (Me included)!

Mdm Lim's sister was hospitalised when we visited her. She was initially quite happy to see us until she heard this sad news. Luckily, we were all there at that point of time so we could console here. As we had 2 groups in her home at that time, we decided to leave, leaving only some volunteers to accompany her till her relative comes to fetch her to the hospital.

The last home I visited on this visit is Mdm Tan. She did not seem her usual cheerful self this week. In the past when I visited her she always have this very big smile and seemed very happy to talk to us. This time she seemed a little awkward when we were there. Maybe it is because our group did not really engage her when we visited her.

Ok, that's all for the visit on 5 Jan. I've got to end this and start on my next write up (Pinchuan made me do the writeup for the 12 Jan visit too for forgetting to do this, sad.).

Khoon Hong
(never ever forget to do your writeup)