I am so sorry for the delay of this post!

Belated merry christmas everyone! And so grateful that our major outing turn out fine even though it drizzled a little=)

Last saturday my group went to visit Mdm Chua, Mdm Ho and Mr Chiu. I swept the floor at Mdm Chua's house and found it quite dusty becasue she said she won't clean or sweep the floor herself. She will mostly spend her day at the centre during weekdays. Also she keep saying that she is very fortunate to live in this estate because there are volunteers like us who will visit her. She said she gets agitated rather easily and will feel like crying for no apparent reason. We feel sad to see her like this. Hope that our presence did bring a tinge of joy to her!=)

Next we visited Mdm Ho and I also swept the floor. She told us about her gradchildren and god-children. She treated one of our volunteers to a bao and another to the chee chong fun that they got from the church.

Last but not least we visited Mr Chiu. He received a very interesting electrical appliance which can help to wash his butt. But we did not know how to fix it to his toilet bowl and to prevent us from spoiling his toilet bowl, we gave up the idea of fixing for him. Zhenxiu bought 3 more cds to add to his collection. It's a pity that it is a karaoke cd so he cannot listen to cd at home since he does not have a vcd player. Maybe if we can, we can try to get a cheap vcd player for him?

Yup that's all. Looking forward to the next visit!=)

Sheng Xian

My first experience with T.H.E

Last Saturday was a special day for me because it marks my first volunteering experience with T.H.E.! I was assigned to be in the same group as Yinmin, Criss, Pheng Heong and Jeremy that morning. :D

We started off our day by visiting Mdm Cheong. Upon arriving, I noticed the cute lady in the house walking towards us. But the rest laughed and joked about Mdm Cheong being a “Commando”. I was taken aback by Mdm Cheong’s superb memory as she could easily recall who she had seen before and pointed out that I am the newcomer! HAHA. As usual, Mdm Cheong delegated task for each of us. After completing our “missions”, we settled now and had a good chat with Mdm Cheong. I was touched and amazed by Mdm Cheong’s positivity towards life as she talks about how she actively tries to stay healthy by exercising frequently and how she tries to活到老，学到老. I was surprised that Mdm Cheong actually knows so many languages! That morning she demonstrated Chinese, English, Teo chew, Hokkien and even Malay! I’m ashamed that I’m struggling with Hokkien even though it’s my dialect. Goshh. :X

After which, we visited Mdm Tan. She is a petite elderly who greeted us with her lovely smile. We helped Mdm Tan cleaned her house and checked her mails that morning. During our conversation with Mdm Tan, she told us that she plans to stop accepting meals provided by the Buddhist Society as she heard from her friends that the CC may be catering daily meals for the elderly. Moreover, the volunteers from the Buddhist society have been interviewing her frequently, asking her about how many children she has and how much money they give her monthly. Mdm Tan was worried that this may implicate her children. As such, she is hoping that the CC would be catering food for the elderly so that she can stop accepting meals provided by the Buddhist Society. We might want to take note of this matter during our next visit to Mdm Tan’s house. Also, Mdm Tan was telling us that she enjoys the food provided during the occasional buffets organized by the CC. However, she has stopped attending such activities due to her failing eyesight. She can’t exactly see what food she was taking and was afraid of asking the other elderly for fear of troubling them. This broke my heart upon hearing that. I am really amazed by Mdm Tan’s courage towards life. Regardless of the difficulties she is facing, Mdm Tan is always bearing a smile on her face.

Lastly, we visited Mdm Chow Moi’s house. Mdm Chow Moi greeted us with her wide smile. We didn’t have time to clean up Mdm Chow Moi’s house today due to the shortage of time. During our conversation with her, she noted Pheng Heong as the giggling boy. HAHA. As Pheng Heong and Mdm Chow Moi tease each other, we noticed that Mdm Chow Moi has been coughing quite badly. We asked her if she has sought a doctor but she said it would be a waste of money. As such, she is only taking 枇杷膏to relieve her cough.

I had an enjoyable and enlightening experience interacting with the elderly at T.H.E. I have learnt so much from the elderly I visited. I’m surprised by their spontaneity and their strong will towards life. These are lessons that we can’t learn from books and school. My experience with the elderly last Saturday morning certainly motivates me to quickly brush up my Hokkien. There is so much that I would like to learn about them. I am looking forward to the good memories and laughter to come! I am praying hard that it won’t rain tomorrow. I am certain that tomorrow’s major event would be filled with love and fun! :D Aja Aja Fighting! ^^

lots of love,
Carline :)

3 Dec 2011 Visit

Hey! Sorry for posting so late. Had to settle other things :/

Anyway, Jian Ting (I may have typed her name wrongly, do help me edit it Im wrong), Guowei, Eng Wee and myself visited Mdm Lim, Mdm Tan and Mr Chiu.

We went to visit Mdm Lim first. We didn't need to do any housework so we just sat there and talk to her. She was telling us that she quite frequently get breathless and her heart will beat very fast. Then she will need to take medicine to calm these symptoms down and if she take 3 tablets already and the symptoms still dont stop then she will need to go down to see the doctor. Because of this condition, she was feeling quite depressed and was saying that if she passes on then so be it... better than having to suffer through this :/ She also said that sometimes her legs will feel very weak and will give way so she need to walk around with a walking stick. And because of her spinal cord sticking out, she has to sit up to sleep instead of lie down. Her visitation reports show that we never really visit her either cause she's not at home or not feeling well. If any of us get to visit her again do try to cheer her up :D :D and also check on her condition :D:D

At Mdm Tan's house we help her do housework - clean the windows, sweep the floor and mop the floor. Her eyesight as usual not very good. She told us that she ask her friend to help her buy those packet coffees from the supermarket. She said that she every morning also need to drink coffee.

Finally, we visited Mr Chiu's house. No cleaning was needed. He was reading chinese newspaper before we arrived. He showed us songs lyrics of an event he attended organised by the CC if im not wrong. There were quite alot of people that participated in the event. I think it was something like there were a some people who had to go up on stage to sing the songs that were on the song lyrics paper he showed us.

Yep that's about it. Sorry can't really remember everything we talked about with the elderly. If i miss out anything do add in! :D

Cheers,
Yixiu

3 Dec Visit! :)

Heyhey! Sorry for the late post oops!
My group consisting of wynne, zhenxiu and ying cong went to visit Mdm Chua and Mdm Cheong on saturday.

Mdm Chua was a little emo that day, as she was having a headache too. She tends to be very forgetful, and I realized her bedsheet hasn’t been changed for some time although she always said that she’ll change it the following day. Maybe we could help her with it if it hasn’t been changed by the time we next visit her. Mdm Chua also insisted on treating us to coffee, so maybe we should arrange hers to be the last slot, so we can bring her down for coffee next time. We did the usual cleaning, and settled down to watch the tv, which was airing the show about celebrity dads learning how to take care of their kids. Mdm Chua told us that in the past, only the woman in the house takes care of the kids, while the man goes out to work and earn $$ for the family. Guys must learn from these celebrity dads k! :)

We then proceeded to Mdm Cheong’s house. We could smell the aroma of the jin zhen hua liang teh she was boiling from the doorstep. She was very cheerful that day and looked really pretty in her flowery blouse. :) After splitting the work among us and having done them all, we settled down to chat. Mdm Cheong told us that she is trying to learn to speak Chinese, so she kept trying to identify objects using Chinese. I really take my hat off to Mdm Cheong’s 活到老学到老 spirit. Meanwhile, Wynne had a good sleep in the beach chair while Mdm Chua looked on and laughed. Hehe.

Yea that’s about it for last sat’s visit. See you guys and the elderly soon! And please help publicize about our MAJOR OUTING on 20th Dec and get your friends to join us too, it'll be fun! :D

yinmin

12th Nov visit

Hello all! Pai seh ah, exam period then I mug until forget to blog. Haha.

Anyways, we visited Mr Tan! It was the first time I visited his place since I joined and I was excited so I took a picture of it. Haha. He would be on his way out more often than not when we wanted to visit him. So for those of you who weren't lucky enough, here's a picture of us in his house!



I came only for the later part so I wasn't too sure what happened earlier but I heard them discussing about the European debt crisis so I guess Mr Tan is quite an interesting elderly. And I arrived late, so they're just done with the cleaning up. Haha.


Mdm Ho

And so I jumped group and joined the group visiting Mdm Ho. Her legs are slightly better already I guess, but she looks skinner compared to the past so she needs to eat more. But anyways, we moved her sofa down to the void deck because she doesn't want it anymore. It's a good thing I guess, no sofa means lesser place for the bedbugs to breed because the bedbugs situation seems quite bad at her place. As usual, we helped her to clean the floors and fans and to beat the carpets. There's quite a lot of hair stuck to the carpets so maybe we'll need a vacuum cleaner to remove them or something like that.

Anyways, we created quite a mess trying to operate the washing machine because she only wanted us to remove the curtains and put it into the washing machine but we thought she wanted us to wash the curtains for her. First, we had difficulty figuring out how to add detergent into the washing machine, which took us some time. Second, we didn't know that we have to put the water outlet pipe into the toilet so the waste water ended up flooding the kitchen. Lucky for us, we managed to clean up the mess before she realises. Haha!

That's all from me and good luck for all your exams, though it's a bit late! =P

Yi An

Newbie in the house yo! Anyway, 12th November comprised of visits to Mdm Tan and Mdm Cheong.

Mdm Tan seemed like a really cheerful lady. Bright smile and all. The first thing we did at Mdm Tan’s place was to do the routine clean up- sweeping and mopping of the floor, and cleaning of the windows. Next up, we helped check the bag of canned foods at her place; whether they were expired etc. In addition, we had a difficult and somewhat hilarious attempt to explain the different canned foods to her in dialect e.g. instant or required cooking, and what they were. After which, we sat around and had a little chat with her. Being terrible in dialect, I just sat in the circle and listened. I understood (partially) but I could not participate in any way. Language barrier; I need to work on my dialect and overcome that. First up on my to-do list after exams! We had also found expired medication on her shelf, to which one of the eye drops had an expiry date in 2009. Therefore, I personally feel that the checking of medication expiration should be a key agenda when doing house visits. We definitely do not want medication which was intended to improve their conditions to turn around and end up aggravating their conditions, do we?

Next up, we made our way to Mdm Cheong’s place. She seemed like quite an energetic lady, given that she was active in helping out in the housework which we were performing for her. Apart from the usual clean up, Mdm Cheong requested that we cleaned the back of her television which was somewhat her mini storage area and it was collecting dust. After the clean-up of her place, Mdm Cheong was so kind to offer us drinks! While sitting around chatting, she showed us photos of the chalet she had recently attended which was a 2 day stay as she explained. She seemed quite excited when she took out the programme booklet and showed it to us, and in her attempt to introduce some of the people in the pictures to us. Seeing that such events bring so much joy to individuals like Mdm Cheong, I believe that the upcoming visit to Botanic Gardens for Christmas would be a visit that many of the elderly would look forward to. However, we should consider factors like walking durations for future outings as Mdm Tan from our first visit of the day had raised this concern because she said that her legs were weak and feared that the outing would be too physically strenuous.

Anyway, exams are coming! Good luck and mug hard to all! Till we meet again for the next visit.

Regards,
Kelly

Good to be back!

It's been quite some time since I last visited the elderly..well at least I'm done with all those assignments for now..and exams are really around the corner!

It's heart-warming to see the 'lao jiaos' and at the same time, abit 'alienated' to see new freshies as well (laughs). But it's really good to see more people joining the seniors. And this time, more guys than females! Definitely have to give credit to the new committee for the successful publicity! (heard that most of the 'gong lau' came from Yi An who sacrificed his 'se xiang'..Well done 'tong zhi'! (Salute!no wonder you been hitting the gym to buff up)..Okie enough of the crap...

Visited Mr Tan of blk 62 today and asked about the bedbug situation in his house. Conditions have improved, however only slightly. He is still able to catch some of them at night, crawling underneath his pillow etc. Anyone knows how to tackle the problem of bedbug? Does spraying of insecticides help? or are there something that we can do to help? feel free to share! Got to chat with him more today and realize that he is very knowledgeable in current affairs (i.e. European debt crisis etc) and he likes singing! So do chat with him more on these topics while you watch the TV with him.

Next we visited Mdm Choi Moi. Jovial as usual, I hardly remember any instances that she ain't smiling! However, my 'dan tian' is not strong enough to sustain a long convo with her (cause she is hard on hearing and most of the time we had to raise our voice to talk to her. And if she still can't make out what we said, we had to repeat it again and again..). Was working on a project for my prof earlier on the elder's attitude towards assistive technologies (i.e. usage of hearing aid and walking cane etc) and it kind of struck me why she does not put her hearing aid even though she has one. Citing that it is troublesome and not comfortable, she doesn't use it. I guess lots of other elderly also think that way. Perhaps we should try to encourage them to use these AT, as the more that they don't use it, their conditions would deteriorate way much faster...

Lastly, visited Mdm Ho. The other group of people helped threw away her sofa under the request of Mdm Ho's daughter. Guess the sofa is also kind of old and I think it's wise to throw it away to help alleviate the bedbug problem in her home as well (of course, the sofa is kind of spoilt as well, given its long serving services to withstand the pressure exerted by particularly zhen xiu la, Wynne la, every visitation. Haha). Mdm Ho is still in and out of the hospital for her leg problems but her mental status is all well and good!

All right, that's all the update for now. Nice to meet all the new people! (I will ask the names next time la..haha.. I old already, lazy to memorize names). All the best for the exams peeps!

Ken Chandrakumar s/o Muthusamy Pillai Narendran - gosh it's damn hard to remember this la!