Back-dated posts.

'Finally' visited Mr Lim on an unofficial visit a couple of weeks ago..Been hearing from others that his house really needed much of our help..Guess the previous groups did pretty good jobs over the past months..So it wasn't that bad when I finally have a chance to visit him.. He is rather amicable but I haven't have a chance to talk to him cause been busy cleaning his house..He did mention about some health issues and require some outpatient follow-up check-ups...Was observing him while cleaning and found that his hands were trembling most of the time while eating (well that explains the food particles all over the place)...Well..I strongly encourage all to visit him whenever we can (be it official and unofficial)..just to help keep check on his overall well-being and housing environment.

Visited Mdm Chua on the most recent visitation..She kept commenting that she is really happy and fortunate that we guys are helping to clean her house, talk to her, and the affect that people from the centre has shown to her everyday..Well it warms my heart to know I can help such elderly in some little yet meaningful ways..=)..Decided to do a spot check on her fridge (which i admit that i seldom do it these days during visitation) and found that several food items had gone bad...and she kept her medication in her fridge..saying that 'the pills wont go bad easily'...Pretty surprised by her reasoning but I m more worried that she would forget to take her medication...So just keep check on her medication and food stuff during future visitations peeps!

Visited Mr Chiu as well...Haha...he is such a loveable guy la...(though sounds a bit wrong to hear from a guy)...Personally, I like to crack jokes with him and he is totally fine with it...He mentioned about going Hawaii with Ah Li and had his air tickets booked..And I admit I did fall for it..I mean What!!!I haven't been to Batam and he is going Hawaii!!..haha..kept insisiting to see his ticket (wanna catch him red-handed in his Batam ferry ticket)... But it turn out to be a 'boarding pass' / ticket to this coming sat volunteer appreciation lunch...Pretty cool!..He is really excited for it...I hope he is singing for the volunteers on that day though...haha...he was like singing the 'Wai po de peng hu wan' and we suggest that it suits the theme of the appreciation lunch..so if the rest of you are there for it..do 'sabo' haha i mean encourage him to sing for u all...

Yup..That's all from me..Sorry! No nice pictures...But hope this post is not to wordy for u all to read though....

Ken

Fun with Mdm Chow Moi~!

Hello kids! Pai seh ah now then blog, I've totally forgotten about it. So here's what we did last week! My group had Wynne, Wan Jun, Vincent and me! There wasn't many elderly available for visit so my group visited only Mdm Chow Moi and Mr Lin.

First stop: Mdm Chow Moi's place. We only chatted with her, because she usually does the cleaning on her own. Wynne came up with the idea getting Mdm Chow Moi to cam-whore so here are the results! Haha!

Wynne imparting cam-whoring 101

WanJun the Co-Lecturer

Vincent and I having tutorials with Mdm Chow Moi

Mdm Chow Moi attempting to cam-whore on her own, pretty successful. Haha!

We also managed to convince her to use her hearing aid, that she received it free from some medical organisation. She's not really keen to use it because it's inconvenient and she don't really know how to put it on. Next time, those of you visiting her can get to try to put it on on her own so hopefully she gets some practise and knows how to put it on.

Mr Lin's place next! No pictures, so you know how busy we were. Haha. We also bought him some new cooking utensils because the old ones that he had already had holes in them. Basically we scrubbed and clean. It'll be good if those of you all visiting him can encourage him to throw away the leftover food because we realised that he has the habit of keeping food and eventually forgetting about them. We left some detergent and scrubs at his place, so you guys can put them to good use when visiting him! =)

- Yi An

Ops, really sorry for the late posting~ :p

Ha, this is the second visit of mine!:) and since there're quite few elderly staying at home this week, we had only visited a elderly who are Mdm Chua~

Mdm Chua's home can really be considered quite clean that we didn't really need do too much cleaning stuffs~wat we did were just sweeping and mopping the floor and also wiping windows~all those were done withiin 30 minutes~ :) and for the remaining time, we're just chatting with Mdm Chua~~

We found that Mdm Chua really like the decoration that members of T.H.E seniors did during the week before, especially the "dragon"! She said that every time she woke up and look at the dragon, she'd feel happy^^ ha, i think person who did it will definitely be proud and happy with that^^

While chatting with Mdm Chua, we found that Mdm Chua will always keep repeating what she said, probably is because of the weakening of memory, and really hopefully, her condition will getting better and better!:)

same as the first visit, it's really a good experience!:)

Bringing some joyous elements to the life of elderly is really meaningful^^

Hello all!

This was my first visit to T.H.E Seniors and first time blogging too! But am excited to share my experience because it was a very rewarding one.

We visited Mr Ling, whom the volunteers have never visited before until the previous session. Therefore there was a lot of cleaning that needs to be done! Mr Ling refused to let us in at first, insisting that his house was very clean and didn't want to trouble us. In the end we tricked him into letting us in by saying we want to go and have a seat to chat with him! HE FELL FOR IT hehe. The moment we went in, we had someone distract him by chatting him up, while the rest of us immediately got down to work. The house looked neat, but it was in fact very dirty! The floor felt grimy and dark rust marks were on the kitchen floor.

We cleaned his toilet and rinsed the walls and shelves of the kitchen. The floors were also mopped and the windows wiped. This ledge was really black at first but some scrubbing revealed the white again!

We checked his utensils and found that they all had rust on them already. Hence we bought him two packets of new forks and spoons. It was also the first time I saw a knife being hung like that. I kept worrying that it'll drop and chop someone's toes >.<

Mr Ling is very spritely even though he is already 86 years old! He knows many languages but knowing that he was Hakka/Khek made me feel a lot more closer to him :) I was very glad that he could speak Mandarin well since I know no dialects. We had a small chat about the Hakka provinces in China and I really enjoyed talking to him. It amazed me how independent he was. We also gave him mandarin oranges as it was still Chinese New Year. I hope it brought some festive cheer to him! :)

- Jiaying (from TEACH!)

*faints* always tio blogger dunno y so heng or unfortunate... Today was the most "xin nang" visit as we only need to clean up one hse tad is Mdm Ho's one!! To start off, my group got 2 guests from L-derly befrienders, Yu Ting n Hui Min(稀客!!) plus T.H.E.S Wei Jiang. As usual we do the household chores but something different this time round is Bai Nian with mandarin oranges=)
Everything was completed within half an hour.We then sat around Mdm Ho and chat with her. Out of nowhere, enthusiatic Shawn Goh appeared and wanted to help with the cleaning up. Since we have nothing else to do he then joined in the chat. He was so outspoken that he can keep the conversation ongoing with Mdm Ho ; seriously I admire his capability.
Mdm Ho then took out her photos and shared with us her stories including her trip to Hokkaido. She then took out 2 foldable caps and wanted us to put on. We 勉为其难( cant think of a more appropriate word) put on and took a picture with her. To my surprise she was so joyial upon seeing us with the caps on. Haha, tad's was worth it though to cheer her up.
Tad's all for the brief visit today !! Hang on there fighting against the pain Mdm Ho jia you : )

Cheers,
ZW

Today was the first time I came for a Touch Senior's activity, and it was truly an eye-opening and meaningful experience for me.

I went with several others to Mr and Mrs Tan's flat. It was rather clean and well-kept, although when I mentioned this, I was told that there was still some cleaning that could be done. Indeed, the members of our group immediately set out mopping the floor and cleaning the windows, among other things.

Mr Tan's flat has been plagued by bed bugs for some time. Though pest exterminators have come before, there are still occasional bugs around. Mr Tan produced a powder-based insecticide, and asked us to help him apply some to the holes in the wiring casing and celing corners. Ken and I helped him with this, and in the process, I found a dead large bedbug in one of the holes.

The bedbugs have caused the Tans much agony. When the problem was much more severe, they would come from their nests and crawl all over the ground, eventually finding their way to the Tans. For a period, Mr and Mrs Tan had to leave their lights on when they slept, since the bedbugs seemed to be afraid of the light. The Tans have thrown away their mattresses and some wooden furniture, but even now, an occasional bug stills fall from the celing. They now sleep on blankets on the floor.

As the flat was rather clean, we finished our work in a little more than an hour. We spent the rest of the time sitting down with the Tans and watching TV. We also chatted about many things, including work, studies, health and childhood, and the Tans' hospitality certainly made us feel at home. Mr Tan mentioned how applying insecticide to the high wiring casing holes was inconvenient for him, and we promised to help him with this during our future visits.

-Pius

When the dust gets so thick...

......you can even write "TOUCH" on the wall with your fingers.

.

Okay the result of blogging only 2 weeks after is that... I've only got super vague impression of who I visited -.- so! I shall blog about the experience! (well that's kinda the main takeaway too right! :x)

When I arrived, I was told to go to the house with "the most slippers outside". (guess who gave this kind of description?) So I did and when I was looking out for the unit with "the most slippers outside" (okay lah actually I was also given the unit number so I was looking for it as well), this ahma that was mopping the floor suddenly pop her head out and said "你在找我吗？" LOL so cute right! I thought she looked familiar because I did the sample namecard of her so I kinda stared at her face long enough already haha. She's none other than our cute Mdm Cheong! :D

My group was mostly done with the deco already so after putting them up, we went to Mr Lim's house! (reaaallyyy relying on implicit memory now :/) Before we went in, he said "Don't need to clean my house! It's very clean, see! Just come in to talk can already" BUT when we went in......

It was super dirty!! Initial inspection: floor was sticky (take note of this word!), bugs in the packet of uncooked rice, salt left in the open, dangling light.

Secondary inspection: kitchen floor is super duper sticky, ALGAE on the sink (thank goodness for stainless steel! must give the inventor a big hug), white tiles turned grey/brown and the natural colour of the toiletbowl water is........ B-L-A-C-K.

Not shocking enough?

While sweeping the floor, swee fen found a half eaten biscuit.

I thought the natural colour of the sink was greenish grey due to wear and tear but nooo its algae.

Food was left in the open.

Spoons were rusty. and I mean 1cm thick of hard, solid, rust.

We can see one part of the skeleton of the ceiling! Not just the paint but a part of the ceiling has fallen off.

....and many more!

Highlight of the day:

Not one not two but THREE baby(take note!) cockroaches appeared when yingcong cleaned the second shelf that was too high for me to reach! (thank goodness for being vertically challenged, it totally freaked the beauty out of me! T^T) Luckily, yingcong was hero enough to catch it!!

I was so freaked out that I jumped backwards (literally!) when someone flipped the floor mat outside the toilet over and I mistook a broken tile chip for a cockroach -_- this is called 杯弓蛇影 *cries*

There was a point of time where I think NINE volunteers were there to do the clean up but it was still not enough to finish cleaning! And throughout the cleaning we kept telling Mr Lim "要好了要好了" but he waited for us till he fell asleep and when he woke up we are still saying "要好了" LOL.

Then, we finally found out the reason why his place was so dirty - he didn't clean it ever since he moved in!! = 20+ years *shocks*

Oh! but one thing worth mentioning is that much as the house was dirty, there isn't any ants! (:

After deciding that we cannot possibly accomplish a full makeover for the house, we left and decided that the next group shall uncover the mystery of.......

What is inside the black kitchen cabinet (read: WHERE ARE THE PAPA AND MAMA COCKROACHES??!!!)

This visit really left a deep impression in me because it really reflects the elderly's attitude towards life after he aged ): I went home and told my mum about this and the law cells in her were activated...which made me quite surprised. She told/asked me:

1) there is a law under HDB that says elderly are not allowed to stay alone when they apply for a flat, so why do most of the elderly we visit stay alone??

2) HDB can actually mend the falling ceiling for free as long as the elderly applies for it, so I think we should either apply for him or get the centre to do so, pronto!

Images of the visit were probably still in my head because I nightmare-d about getting a cockroach attack that night D: humans should evolve to fly, not cockroaches! :C

Okay I'm going to sign off with a rhyme!

- camy is kay-me so please pronounce correctly! (: