5 Jan 2013.

Today, we are Jocelin, Kah Suan, Lu Ting, Woon Yong and I.

Mdm Chow greeted us with a smile at the door. She was warm and hospitable, as usual, always telling us to 'zeh lah zeh lah' (take a seat). Usually, she wouldn't want us to clean anything, but today somehow she relented, and told us that we could do as we please. So we did, and after that, there was a short period of time when I felt the awkward silences catching up real quick as viable conversation topics were running out. Fortunately, thanks to Woon Yong, we quickly discovered her love for photo-taking. Or rather, camwhoring.

On a very random note, other than her love for taking photos, she loves to watch people 'paktor'. She was shy when she told us about it, and we were all making fun of her.

She did all the cute poses without even hesitating. :D When we praised her for being pretty, she would rock back in laughter with hands cupped on her face, as if she was too eager to express her joy at someone's compliment, only to shy away realizing that everyone had witnessed her brief loss of composure.

She then showed us her photo albums. We pointed and asked who were the people beside her, and where was she, but she couldn't recall much. Then she pointed to one photo of her with many elderly folks, and casually remarked that everybody in the photo was dead. It seemed like a joke and everyone laughed, and she emphasized that she was stating a fact. Somehow I sensed a tinge of resignation; probably a little sigh at the reality of life. There was once I heard her sniff, and I wasn't sure whether it was her flu or it was her getting emotional as she flipped through the albums, but it got me thinking. Decades down the toad, with hairlines receding and limbs gone all jelly, we could be wearing the exact shoes of Mdm Chow - looking at photos of people whom we were once together with, and wondering how our life trajectories are all so different, and perhaps, finally understanding that no matter how powerful we are, we can never stop the march of time.

We then left for Mr Chiu.

Mr Chiu was still quite physically weak today because he had just returned home after his 'stint' at the hospital. Not being home in a couple of weeks meant that dirt and grime was pretty much everywhere. So we got to work immediately! This was the first time in my few visits that we had to some serious cleaning. The kitchen floors and the entire toilet were badly stained. After sweeping, wiping, water splashing (which made work kind of fun), scrubbing, mopping, we put back his furniture back to where it came from before settling down in the living room with him. It was really heartening to see how the ladies tried to take turns to keep a conversation going with him despite being fully occupied with work on hand.

There wasn't much time left for interaction after our cleaning ended, so we spent the remaining time listening to music and him humming to the tune of songs he liked. They even tried to teach him how to use the CD player, putting on a piece of paper a blown-up layout of the buttons on the player so that he could remember each of their functions. They then painstakingly walked him through every step from switching on the power to getting his song to play.

Personally, I didn't get a chance to really get to know Mr Chiu well, but I guess there is always a next time!

Jack
5 Jan 2013