Hi everyone! My group visited Madam Ho yesterday. I remember she was the very first elderly I met when I joined THES about a month ago.

When I arrived (late :p), most of the work has already been done. I helped to clean the mirror. She’s quite particular about the cleaning marks left on the mirror, so she will direct me where to wipe. Got help from Yu Lin because I couldn’t understand her instructions in hokkien. After that we sat down and chatted with her. Thankfully she’s multilingual because Mohammed and I couldn’t understand hokkien. I could tell that she put in lots of effort trying to engage us in the conversation because she switched between chinese, hokkien, malay, cantonese and english so that we all could understand. Amazing right?! She said that she can speak seven kinds of dialects/language but not hakka. Really hope that next time she can teach us some new skills (:

Mdm Ho told us that yesterday, 19 Jan is her birthday! And she mentioned that one of the volunteers agreed to buy her a cake, but…. did not turn up :X

Before leaving, we changed her bedsheet and sprayed baygon at the corners of the bedframe. While doing so, two of her relatives came by to visit her. They were very happy to see us helping Mdm Ho with the housework. They asked where are we from, how often do we visit the elderlys, do we get points for volunteering, etc. They kept on thanking us and really appreciated our help.

It was quite a fruitful day, and I’m really glad I went down for the visit despite the nice weather to sleep in. 

Cheerios, 

Vanessa