Hello everyone!

Ms VM is finally blogging!!! After such a long time (: Just a background about myself…I actually entered T.H.E.S close to August/September this year , despite how old I look *cries* Being an inactive volunteer for much of my Year 1, I can safely say that I was more than happy and grateful, to have that volunteering spark reignited in me. And for that I give my thanks to Remy and Criss for pulling me into this family…and of course, our elderly..What made me stay after the first official visit was none other than Mr Tay himself. Come to think of it, my first visit was to T.H.E.S’ dumpling festival celebration where I met all the elderly (some of which are not under our visitation list) and the impression they left was a deep one, with their happy faces and spontaneity to the MCs’ questions. I was also ultra-touched to receive the VM gift which was a handmade rice dumpling keychain. Still have it till today :’) because it serves as a reminder to myself to put my heart in my work.

I know I don’t express much gratitude on the social platform in general. But I am, deep down, really relieved and jubilant that this batch of newcomers (with a mixture of senior year and junior year students) has given me a sense of security that T.H.E.S and our elderly would be in very safe hands. Not only to this motivated bunch of volunteers (new and old), our dear seniors taking time off their weekends to help out with our visitations never fails to make me feel more secure and safe. So thank you, thank you all for always backing us up (:

I really, really hope that while we constantly derive joy from our own volunteering experience, this spark can be passed on to others as well...because only then can our elderly be receiving a constant stream of care and concern which is self-enhancing through one batch inspiring the next <3 nbsp="nbsp">

SO back to our visit which took place on the awesome date of 10/11/12!

There are actually two parts to my day! :D 

The first actually begun at 9.30am where Rui Fang, Yu Lin and I did facilitation! Knocking on the doors of the elderly and making sure that it was okay to visit is actually something that I enjoy doing more than picking up volunteers from the train station :P  It’s like saying good morning to them and giving them something to look forward to with our volunteers coming to visit within a few hours’ time. At times, some elderly require a little “push” for them to say yes to us visiting (: Facilitation allows us to do that, and it also allows me to get a good feel of how our elderly are doing, and I can make changes to the manpower allocation accordingly.

The second part comes when you guys make your way down to TOUCH center!!! I’m always damn very excited and happy to see our volunteers strolling into the void deck XD IT MAKES ME REALLY HAPPY CAUSE PEOPLE ARE COMING!!!!! And so I take attendance and try to chop chop send you angels to the elderly ^^

Today I allocated myself to visit Mdm Cheng and Mr Tan with Pei Jen, Woon Yong and Jeraldine together with 2 newcomers from Ngee Ann Secondary (: I was hoping that they’ll have a good time with us, not sure if they did at the end of the day…but super glad I found pei jen, woon yong and jeraldine thoroughly enjoying the process of guiding our elderly through the making of ketupat and sand-art :B

Mrs Tan wasn’t around when we visited so we guided Mr Tan along. He liked the end product a lot and was eager to put it up somewhere in his house as decoration xD So glad they liked what our Programmes cell came up with ^^ 

Our newcomer engrossed in making Ketupat

Mr Tan!!! 

 He shared stories of how he met Mrs Tan and turns out, they met through a common friend and she was working as a seamstress at a factory in the past. When asked how he felt when he first met his missus, he said:

“灵魂颠倒”

Hahahaha it was such a great experience listening to him going on about how they used to frequent Queenstown bowling center and movie theatre, also, Princess and 大世界！Like zomg. Cos all these places are sorta defunct already. I also learnt from him about the importance of health, cause he says they don't paktor much now due to deteriorating health :'(

And because most of us had our eyes glued on the TV show showing footage of animals gone wild, he brought in the topic of a circus in Singapore in the past! Like a cool O.O We then moved on to talking about Japanese Occupation in Singapore and the cruelty of the soldiers from the past. Like placing humans into the fridge to freeze them and sawing the human ice cubes after ><

We then visited Mdm Cheng who resides at Blk72! For those who have yet to visit her, she’s a keen and quiet lady who’s one of our newer beneficiaries! She converses in Mandarin mainly which is a language she picks up from watching Channel 8 drama serials! She handles herself very well by making adjustments such that it’s easy for her to move around on her wheelchair. She’s very ready to answer our questions, but to me, there’s always a quiet sadness lingering around her because of her husband’s recent passing. The sewing machine which stands at the doorway is an object which is dear to her, left behind by him. Really hope that we can be with her as much as we can :/

Due to her deteriorating eyesight, she watched us as we did sand-art for her and held easy conversations. We managed to clean the windows for her which she requested since a few weeks ago. Her favourite colour is red! So our floral pattern was filled with a lot of pink patches heh. Like Mr Tan, she loved the art piece a lot and wanted to keep them to show her friends visiting her next week =)

Our product :D

A mandatory tutorial for self-shots

Jeradine, Mdm Cheng and I

I know that this is a really long post that I’ve churned out hahahaha so thank you, if you managed to last till the end here =) It’s funny how easy it was to type out 1000plus word document on my Saturday at T.H.E.S relative to churning out an equivalent word-count on microbes.

At the end of this all, I just want to say Thank You All once again for making Semester 1 such a memorable one. Thank you all for the teasing and cooperation during visits, and turning up week after week after week :’) It’s not time to bid goodbye forever yet, but it is, goodbye for this semester as everyone turns their attention to studying. So all the best to everyone for your exams, please work hard and have a well-deserved rest afterwards. 

I’m really sure our elderly would be looking forward to our outing on 21^st December 2012!!! (((((:

Chop yall for that date ah! 

T.H.E.S forever <3 font="font">