On the 17th September 2011 was my third visit so far yet to my surprise the number of people who attended was much lesser than the previous one lols!! As usual we were split into 3 main speaking groups namely the eng/mandarin , hokkien and cantonese groups thereafter proceed to the respective units.
As we made our way to the units , we came across a crowd of elderly queuing up to get their food and many of them waved and greeted us with smiles.Thinking about it , it was quite enjoyable to hang out and mingle with the lot when we are elderly like them in a few decades.
It was a joke when all the units we went the elderly were not at home !! We wanted to chill somewhere and I went down the stairs from the 11th floor , thereafter to realise Mdm Tan was takin the lift when I was walking down the stairs. And yea the first unit we visited was Mdm Tan's house , as usual the house was already tidied and clean but we still continued the normal household clean-up. After that we sat down and chat with her and as usual the 'high' Wyne did most of the talking. Mdm Tan randomly wanted a photo of her taken previously in the pretext for informal use. But to me I guessed she wanna keep a photo for her "sheng hou shi" , for a moment we had the same kind of feeling too. Indeed life is unpredictable we should live life to the fullest and always be as cheerful as Mdm Tan. Before we went off we took some pictures with her and hopefully the happy moments with us will remain with her and keep her moving on.
The next unit we visited is an epic one that is Mdm Choi who had 'selective hearing'. She always claimed that her hearing is deteriorating but I gave her the benefit of doubt. But it is interesting though for she can filter those she dont wanna hear and listened to those she liked. But u might be surprised to see that she can actually eat quite a big chunk of the mooncake without denture on ... We also chat with her and helped her with some household chores. Oh ye she was lamenting her television broke down when Wyne switched it on and realised the tv set was actually still working just that Mdm Choi switch to a blank channel. Haha !! Elderly are sometimes quite interesting when u saw the flabbergasted looks on their face filled with innocence when u solved something which they can't. We left shortly after proceeding to Mdm Cheong's house.
Wah.. this Mdm Cheong was really hard to tackle with , she was like giving us a list on the do's and don'ts and what to do for her household chores. We even went to the extent of helping her to wipe the pipes. But afterall I found her amiable and amusing when we conversed with her. I was nearly tricked by Wyne into placing her chairs next to her bed ( chairs touching bed frame ) but luckily Li Young cautioned me not to do that. I heard that previously she was somehow unhappy when someone did that claiming that dust would accumulate on it. Therefore we had to ask her what to do first before we actually started the work distribution. Before we left we gave her a mooncake and took some pictures with her.
This visit gave me an insight to the different personalities of the elderly and better understanding of the inner world of them. My day ended with making the smiles on them bringing joy to them as well as to me : )


Shawn

On 17^th September it marks my second visit with T.H.E. Seniors, and I am really looking forward to it. We got an additional task today, and that is to distribute the mooncakes to the elderly and take photo of them with the mooncakes. Anyway, this is my first time blogging, so here it goes.

My group first visited Mdm Chua, where we get down to the usual routine of cleaning her window, floor, and fulfilling any other requests she had for us, while the others sat down and accompanied her for a chat. Seeing the conversation with her reminded me of what age can do to us (which is quite saddening). Though Mdm Chua is still looking energetic and jovial, her memory just wasn't as good as it used to be. Our conversation with her was sometime kept in a loop, where she will keep asking the same few questions, for example, “How do we know her home number?”, “Did she said the wrong number just now?”. But the group (yinmin, sheng xian) attended to whatever she ask with patience, and they bring liveliness to the same few conversation. I think this is really important as it will help her stay mentally and socially active. :)

Before leaving her home, our leader, mingyuan, suggested to take a group photo with her, and upon knowing we want to take a photo, Mdm Chua went to the back and comb her hair, and put on her spectacles as she wanted to look good in the photo. It all ends well seeing Mdm Chua is still so cheerful and happy.

After leaving Mdm Chua house, we then went on to Mr. Tan apartment, whom wasn't around, and thus, we headed to Mr. Chiu house to meet up with the other group. So we had around 12 people in Mr. Chiu house, where we sat down to chat with him, providing multiple pairs of “listening ears” too. As the conversation goes on, we found out that he bought new Karaoke VCDs, but didn't actually have any media player able to play it.

Well, the time had come for all the visits to end, and we had the usual debrief and sharing between groups, before finally parting out way. Though the turnout wasn't anything like my first visit, but it was still a really fun and refreshing experience, helping others and interacting with the elderly.

- Eng Soon

Hello everyone! 17th September was my second visit (I'm a freshie writing first time in this blog!) with T.H.E. Seniors.

Was looking forward to this one after attending the first visit a fortnight ago, as every visit would bring about a new experience. We were then split into smaller groups, namely the English/Mandarin speaking, Hokkien speaking and Cantonese speaking to facilitate with communicating with the old folks.

As we were making our way to the flats, a huge crowd of the elderly were queuing up to collect their food from the sponsoring vendors at the void deck. When they saw us, they smiled and waved at us and we did the same to them too. Can tell that they were really happy to see us around. I also saw Mdm Cheong, the lady who I visited last week (but I don't think she remembers me hahaha). As usual she would help some of her neighbours to collect their food as they are unable to do so on their own due to physical disabilities. We can tell that although these folks are living on their own, they will still look out for one and other, which is a heart-warming sight.

My group of 8 first visited Mdm Ho, 88. She was one of those whom Mdm Cheong helped collect food for. Her knees are showing signs of deformity and has difficulty moving around. She mentioned that she has to go for check ups at Tan Tock Seng hospitals occasionally. Her doctors advised her to undergo surgery but she refused to do so. A common understanding of the elderly is that when they are told to undergo surgery they will choose not to do so. Is is because of the high costs of doing so and they are not able to afford? Or the pain and after effects the surgery may bring about?

So after some basic introduction, we got down to business and started cleaning her flat, and 2 other friends helped her to buy her dinner at the hawker centre. Her request was to help clean the underside of her bed. There were a lot of dust accumulated there, and even dead cockroaches where swept out. It was understandable as Mdm Ho, being physically disabled, would not be able to reach for those inaccessible areas. Cockroaches wise, she was living on the second floor, so that increases the likelihood of these bugs 'visiting' her. She even have to place an insecticide on standby. So maybe we can highlight to the relevant authorities regarding the standard of cleanliness which gives rise to the number of cockroaches in the estate.

Once we're done with basic cleaning of her home, we sat down and chatted with Mdm Ho. While most of the time she speaks in Hokkien, she can also speak Mandarin and some English to the foreign volunteers who were with us. Then we found out from her that she is now a great-grandmother, and her grandchildren are about the age of 30-40. Her husband passed away recently. After talking to her, I think that she is generally optimistic in life and was really happy to have us around. Before leaving, we presented her with the mooncakes from PRIMA DELI and took a group photo together.

We then visited Mr Chiu, 75. He was very jovial and bubbly, always smiling. When asked if his house was needed to be cleaned, he declined and so we sat down and chit chatted with him. As like Mdm Ho, we presented Mr Chiu with mooncakes and took a photo together. Initially clad with just a pair of shorts, he specially wore a nice looking shirt with printing that looked similar to the SIA flight attendant's uniform just to take the photo. Mr Chiu loves to sing karaoke with his friends and in fact sings pretty well too, when he sanged a part of a song to us. He shown us some VCDs of Chinese oldies that he brought from Chinatown. However, he did not have a VCD player and his normal CD player was incapable of playing that. Apparently the VCDs were produced in a set of series, ie the ones he owned are volumes 11 and 12. So maybe next time we should look for a VCD player for him so that he can sing to his favourite music, as well as volumes of Chinese oldies, not restricting to the older volumes of the VCDs he owned.

That sums up the visits this week. Enjoyed myself thoroughly and I hope the rest who attended did too. The next visit will be in a fortnight's time on 1st October, the old Children's Day hahaha. Definitely looking forward to it!

- Jeremy :D

Orientation Visit Two

Okay, so it was my very first visit with T.H.E.seniors and the turnout was apparently a lot larger than usual. Most of the people who turned up were freshies, like me. We took a bus down to TOUCH Seniors Activity Centre where we met the rest of the group. After some encouragement from enthusiastic and cheery seniors, we arranged ourselves in a huge circle and began the self-introductions by stating our name, which school/faculty we belonged to and something interesting about ourselves. Somehow, most of the interesting information about ourselves had to do with our ability or inability to play the guitar and whether or not our flipflops were new. I digress.

Anyway, after we got the names of the elderly all sorted out, we split into 6 groups of 5-6 people each. My group visited Mdm Tan, an 80 year old woman and has really poor eyesight. Apparently, when she looks at us all she sees are dark black shadows. I don't know about you, but for me, imagining 6 fuzzy shadows trailing into your house is just beyond scary, much less having those shadows move around, clean your house and start talking to you.

Mdm Tan's house was really quite clean to begin with, so our tasks were pretty simple and straightforward. We helped to mop her not-very-dirty floor and clean her windows with damp rags. It didn't take very long. Those of us who didn't have any real chores to perform sat on her bed and spoke to her while helping her to poke threads of different colours through the eyelets of needles. After about half an hour or so, we were all crowded around this friendly old woman, listening to her tell us her stories in Hokkien while those fluent enough at the dialect kept the conversation going.

I'm sure many members here would already know Mdm Tan, but I'll still write a little about what she told us about herself. She has many grandchildren, and yet they only see her once a year during Chinese New Year. It was heartbreaking, really, to listen to her say that having such a large family was meaningless because she lived alone and apart from them. Even though she mentioned that her son buys her mooncakes during the Mid Autumn Festival and her daughter-in-law buys her clothes (in particular a shiny purple blouse she was wearing that day), I think anyone would have been able to tell that all she wanted was their company. I do remember seeing her face light up when the topic was eventually steered towards yummy rice dumplings, though :)

We then went on to Mdm Ho's house, which was crowded as could be with all 32 of us (including her) squeezed into her tiny studio apartment. Mdm Ho spoke mainly in Hokkien and Cantonese, with the occasional English phrases. It was really funny when she spoke in Cantonese to someone who didn't understand a word of the dialect, then attempted to do it again and again.

We then bade farewell and ended this orientation visit with a debrief session, and several group photos ;)

-Kerryn

We had our second orientation visit last saturday and I was in-charged of facilitation. Just want to say that it feels weird that Mr Tan is no longer around and I do not have to go and knock on his door to ask what time he is free for us to visit him. Yup.

So after facilitation I went to meet of the volunteers and I was so surprised to see so many volunteers!!! But it's a good thing to see some many new volunteers who are interested to join us=) When I reached they had already started introducing themselves and after which we were split in several groups. My group went to Mdm Choi Moi's house. As usual she prefer us to sit down and chit-chat with her because she insisted that her house was not dirty. She is her usual cheerful self and talks very loudly becasue of her poor hearing.

I must say she is really a very carefree old lady. When we ask her if she thinks about her past, she said there is no use for thinking of the past. When we asked her what she like to eat, she say she like to eat everything. When we ask her what songs she like to listen, she said she had no preference too. Because her theory is that people will go mad if they think too much. So she prefer not to think about anything. Maybe that's her secret of for still being so healthy at the age of 91.

She love to watch people from her window. Her job in the past is similar to that of a sum siew woman, which might explain how come she is still so fit at the age of 91. But she said she is getting forgetful. She will tend to on her water tap and leave it running without remebering to turn it off. Which according to her, the reason behind her high water bill every month :O She also don't like to close her window even though it is raining becasue she don't want the house to be stuffy. She is really a very cheerful and friendly old lady and I'm sure other than myself, the new volunteers also enjoyed interacting with her. Our new volunteers spoke cantonese to her and she responded spontaneously=) Last but not least, we went to Mdm Ho's house before we ended our visit with the usual debreif session=)

Sheng Xian

Orientation Visit 2 :)

Saturday was our second orientation visit and we had a record-breaking volunteer count of 42! :O We did a round of self-introduction and split ourselves into 7 groups (i think) instead of the usual 3 groups as there were so many of us. My group visited Mdm Low. Just an introduction to Mdm Low, she is a very frail elderly who is quite shy. As she has some breathing difficulties (asthma), she usually takes some time before responding to our questions (so I had to make a mental note to pause for a moment before asking her more questions).

When we reached, Mdm Low was sitting on a chair with her back facing us. She kept saying “Uncle!” when we tried asking if we could go in (any idea why? :|), but we just entered anyway. Her flat was quite messy with clothes and things lying around. After settling her down to eat her lunch (fried kway teow, which was left at her door by some kind soul who collected it for her downstairs), we got to cleaning up the place- sweeping and mopping the floor, cleaning the windows and surfaces. We managed to find a super dusty vacuum cleaner, and used it to clean the area around her bed which was collecting a lot of dust and not very hygienic for her sleeping there. We also chanced upon her unusual 'pet' which she kept in a bottle- cockroach!! Not sure how it landed up in the bottle, but yea there it was.

I guess as she was just discharged from hospital last week, she was not really in the mood for talking much, and we only managed to ask her simple questions which she replied mostly either by nodding or shaking her head. However, she made us all laugh when she played with the horn on her bed and gave us a round of high-fives as we left.

We then proceeded to our last stopover at Mdm Ho’s house which was overcrowded with 31 of us! The evidence can be found on our facebook group haha, so do check out our facebook group "T.H.E. Seniors" k. Yup, that’s all for now. Hope to see everyone next visit! :D