What's up everyone. Happy 2013! Earlier today we had our first official visit of the year, and just as the title mentioned, there's many firsts for me and possibly some of my group members (Zhenxiu, Pei Jie, Li Jia, Vanessa, Sheng Xian, Cheng Wei, Chun Hai and me) today. Most notably, today's visit was my first time not having to worry about using my cui hokkien to talk to the elderly as both whom I visited can speak Mandarin lol!
FIRST up we visited Mr Lin. I think this was only my second or third visit with Mr Lin, and my impression of him changed drastically after today.
I remembered my first visit to his place, not sure if I had blogged about it before. Months earlier during that particular visit, Mr Lin was reluctant to let us in and wasn't very keen on chatting with us. His place that time was really really dirty and he kept a lot of expired canned food, including rice that was infested with weevils. I had to clean the area below the stove, it was difficult work and we found a dead lizard in there... That was how bad it was.
Today, it felt really different. Mr Lin's home is now properly maintained and only minimal cleaning was required. Most of his furniture are new and the whole place feels more like a proper home to live in. And he was in a very good mood to chat with us today. He mentioned that he will be going back to his hometown in Indonesia during the CNY period and he is looking forward to it. His hometown's name is... Pontianak #truestory. Didn't know how it came about but yeah. And he taught us some basic Bahasa Indon but this joker here couldn't remember what he had learnt :(
I thought Mr Lin has really opened up to us. Compared to before, he is more receptive and welcoming, and is happy to have a good chat with us. I believe in one way or another we as volunteers have helped him to warm up with us, and he really enjoys our company. Thus, we should keep up the good work and continue to be good ah dis and ah meis to our ah gongs and ah mahs!
Next up, we visited Mr Ong. It was my FIRST time visiting him; we've always heard stories from other friends who visited him: the senior who just got discharged after being hospitalised after 11 months; the senior who fell down and unable to get up on his own and had to be admitted again. So when we visited Mr Ong, a relative was with him. We sat around him and began to talk. Most of our topics revolved around his career as a cabbie before he went for the major operation, and some of us could really relate to it because our fathers are cabbies as well. Mr Ong even had a passenger who gave birth in his cab! We also talked about celebrity gossip as we watched tv programmes with him.
Volunteers who visited Mr Ong advised us to give him encouragement. It worked, and every time we talked about him recovering, I could tell from his expression that he is very determined. Rest assured to everyone, he's doing well :)
Today's visit further highlighted to me the powerful impact of us volunteers on our seniors.
Later today, we went to Yi'an's home for our volunteer appreciation party! Lots of thanks to our steady VM for the lovely location, delicious food and her hard work (and her crew hahaha). I acted as something like a facilitator for the sharing sessions and games. The programme flow was planned the midnight before, so I somewhat feel that it was incomplete (maybe because I was a facil for Symposium hahaha), but still feel thankful that many of us had learning points to take home, especially Chun Hai's 快乐学习 学习快乐. Simple word play with deep meanings.
The questions for the sharing session were: 1) New year resolution for self and T.H.E.S and 2) Good thing, bad thing, and improvement for T.H.E.S.
For me: 1) To keep doing the things I love to do and improve on them; build on the missions concept for the past half AY and come up with more; 2) Enthu volunteers, but can do with more bonding! *hint hint*
Here's ending off the entry with a song like my previous entry. Maybe this will become a habit hahaha.
Cheeeeeeeeeeeeers,
Jeremy :D
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