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

My First Visit with T.H.E Seniors!

Hello everyone!
Firstly, I'm really sorry this post is coming in one week late! >< Secondly, I'm here to share abt my experience last Sat morn! (Yes, I'm a freshman! So it was Orientation Visit 1 for all of us freshmen last Sat!)
I was rather apprehensive in the morning when I was heading down to Kallang station where we were supposed to meet. This was cause I was going ALONE for my FIRST visit! Yikes! However, when I got there, I met a few other Year 1 students who came alone too! (haha so much for worrying.) We introduced ourselves and the mood quickly changed from awkwardness to friendliness. (:
When majority of the student volunteers arrived, a grp of us bused down to the place. We were met by many others who were there earlier than us. I was nicely surprised by the crowd I saw as I was kind of expecting only a small group! :/ haha anyway after splitting ourselves into 3 grps, English/Chinese, Hokkien and Cantonese, we headed to the homes of the elderly!!!
I joined the Hokkien grp despite my poor limited knowledge of Hokkien. (Actually, I'm a Teochew-nang, not a Hokkien-lang, but I can understand the dialect! just not speak it ://) Yes, haha the first home we visited belonged to a gentle and sweet-looking ahma called Mdm Tan. From the seniors, I learnt that Mdm Tan's eyesight is poor. Yet, she still welcomed all of us into her home jovially. We quickly set ourselves at work, sweeping/mopping the floor, wiping the window grills/panes, washing her fan, etc. There were 10 of us so the cleaning up of her alr very clean house was done in no time! haha the rest of the time was spent talking to her, or rather, listening to her talk! ^^ Wow she really likes to talk! She kept saying she's vey "hua1 hi4" that there're so many of us to talk to her. She shared abt herself- the no. of children and grandchildren she has... then she shared abt her past- how she had to go all around the kampong area looking for her 6 children after work everyday... THEN she shared abt her pastpast!- how her father worked so hard as a farmer to support the family... woah haha ;D
After that, we went to the home of Mdm Chow Moi! oh my she really speaks (and laugh) very loudly! But that's due to her poor hearing. We didnt clean her house. She insisted we "zeh zeh" and talk to her. Actually, we spent most of the time laughing with her and at her cuteness! :D I was indeed very delighted at the sight of her, even at the age of 90, laughing so heartily.
All in all, I'm glad to have plucked up the courage and joined T.H.E Seniors last Saturday morn visiting the homes of these two elderly ladies! haha yay! I've come to the end of my rather loooong post! Thank you all and I'm looking forward to my next visit! ^^
Regards,
Carina!

Johnny Tan

"eh, Richard just informed me that Mr Tan Po Seng just passed away, maybe he fell in the house" text message from Yi An.

Seriously. I was totally shocked. No, Im still in shock now. Mr Tan.... though kinda old, but he is one of the healthier beneficiaries we know of. Few weeks ago he just sang Japanese song for us, and waved the Singapore flag happily! And now... he is gone.

Remember how Mr Tan used to repeat his stories? He worked in a Japanese Tobacco Coy when he was young, so had to learn Jap language. And he had travelled to China before, with his good friend whom isa teacher. And many more stories.... I used to tell this joke to the freshies whenever we are heading to Mr Tan house " Mr Tan confirm tell you guys these stuff later... I used to work in Japanese company, then I learnt Jap... etc", and it ALWAYS happen as expected.

[Stolen these photos from facebook. The caption was "Mr Tan telling his army stories again"]

I thought ... I could have told the same joke last Saturday during Orientation visit 1.

On a more personal level, I have some interesting experiences with Mr Tan which accumulated throughout the past 2 full years of volunteering at T.H.E. Seniors.

- He once cut holes in his shirt (the tummy area.. like really big to see tummy) so its more cooling. So cute right! haha

- Volunteers were always so "afraid" to clean his house cos of the slippers trail! But we were always there cos we love to talk to him!

[ lifting his leg high up like a young boy!]

- When I was in Year 1, I helped Mr Tan to get an english name! He wanted Michael at first, but found it too common, so he decided on Johnny finally! I thought its just some random conversation we have with the elderly (and ya, given the memory disk space of most beneficiaries, they would probably forget the crap I said in each visit), but he actually remembered it! The following visit when I called him Johnny he responded! And he kinda love that name, and continued using it!

- How he appreciates the gifts we gave to him during festive seasons. like the Christmas hat, the part hat! he kept them with him and hang up high high!

[we found this in mr tan place weeks after the celebration. he got it washed!]

- Being in T.H.E.Seniors for so many years. I always feel kinda guilty towards Mr Tan. During festive seasons, we have to host celebrations in C

hinese as majority as most of the beneficiaries can understand Chinese. Mr Tan, could only speak english, always looking so blur and lonely, and needed help from volunteers (good that our volunteers can speak good english. haha). Though having difficulties joining in the celebrations and fun, Mr Tan ALWAYS turn up for our celebrations, knowing we have put in a lot of effort! Thanks Johnny!

[Rong Sheng helping Mr Tan during Christmas celebration!]

- when Yi An and I went to knock on his door (about a month ago) , he actually said to Yi An "Pardon? Are you speaking English?" . Seriously, I burst out laughing on the spot! HAHA. Mr Tan's command of english language is really powerful. He uses words like "pardon, excuse me" when I only "HAR? SIMI? OI! SIAM LEH!"

I guess volunteers who have visited Mr Tan before must be sad to know he is now no longer there waiting for us anymore. No more Japanese language, no more massive cleaning, no more free English and Japanese tuition.

To be honest, when I just received the news from Yi An, I felt quite useless. He might have fell at home and we werent there to help him. If... only if we were there with him, we could have sent him to the hospital immediately and nth like this gonna happen. For a moment I felt useless in T.H.E.Seniors.. Then I talked to a close friend of mine, kinda figured out that at least... we have at least brought joy and memories to Mr Tan and ourselves.

Yes Johnny! Enjoy your life up there! I guess its cooling there and you dont have to cut holes in your shirt anymore! And probably you will meet some of your army boys there, and you can repeat your army stories for a thousand times! And if one day, I see a black line across the sky, that must be your famous slippers trail! :)

Mr Tan, we will miss you!

Wynne (my name is not Winnie okay! Mr Tan please dont get my name wrong again!)