Rainy visit, Raining Love!

To the person who is reading this post right now, Hi!!

For today's (19 Jan 13) visit, I am heartened to see that there are many volunteers joining us, both new and old. It is really awesome to see so many volunteers coming down on a rainy saturday, and hope that you guys will continue to come for the visits in the future:) As there are around 30 volunteers today, each group was assigned to visit only one elderly (instead of the usual two). My group, which consist of woon yong and I, visited Mr Lin.

When we reached his place, we noticed that the area needed cleaning and we helped out by sweeping and mopping the floor. After which, we sat down and chatted with him. In the midst of the conversation, we discovered that there are a lot of rations piling up at his place, and we offered to help him tidy up. We even joked that he can open a provision shop with the amount of stock he has! (look at the attached pic)

He said that he will give some of it to the cleaners at his block as he is unable to consume everything. We also reminded him to check the expiry date before consuming the food to ensure that it is safe for consumption. Overall, it was a meaningful visit and I get to know more about Mr Lin as it is my first time visiting him:)

Last but not least, thanks to all the volunteers for spreading the love on this rainy saturday!! This song (Rainie & Love...) is for you guys... [crediting Jeremy for the idea of ending off with a MV:)]

Cheers
Kok Seng

大姐大

 HELLO! Just wanna add some photos to the blog! here's introducing mdm cheng, aka 大姐大!

for those who havent got a chance to see her yet, she's a very cute elderly very similar to mdm lim. she's wheelchair-bound, but she can manoeuvre about freely around the house. can ask her if she wants to go for a walk downstairs if y'all visit her next time. oh she's super hip too, with her sunglasses and mobile that beeps in the middle of conversations haha. totally fits her name right? alright, till next time! :)

yinmin

Fantastic 4 (Pte Lte)

KaBoOM!

Swee Fen, Hao Ping, Xuan Kai and I Conquered the WORLD

Our first visit was to Mr Tan's house. There werent any chores for us to do (WHEW, ah u know im kidding, i love chores!) so we ended up skiving on his floor. Mr Tan shared many of his past experiences during the WWII, some gruesome, others hilarious. These sharings made me ponder about the value of lives, the importance of caring for the ones around you, especially your loved ones. My thoughts were interrupted when HAHA Mrs Tan returned with a hand drill!!!!!!!! And tada, Task 1: Drill a mirror onto the wall. The boys quickly got into action while the girls stared in wonderment. Sadly, none of us knew how to drill the nails into the wall. I guess its partly due to the incomplete set of drilling tools. So KIV people visiting Mr and Mrs Tan the next session: make sure you know how to drill! Challenge issued.

12.30PM... we scrambled to Mdm Cheong's house...

At Mdm Cheong's house, we mopped cleaned swiped wiped to reveal squeaky clean sparkly white tiles :) A hearty conversation with Mdm Cheong that we, the fantastic 4, enjoyed. We joked, teased, joked and teased one another. It was also the time when WOohoo Swee Fen showcased her great canto skills. hahah the rest of the fantastic 4 just stared in awe, well some managed to decode the canto.. Others..
Time spent with Mdm Cheong was short, but i guess we all agreed that it was meaningful.


Louise

Hello everyone. Yesterday was my first official visit to the elderly and it was great starting the new year doing something meaningful.

Mdm Tan was our first elderly of the day and she was coughing quite badly while inviting us into her house. We sat down and chatted with her and she was very friendly with us. However, due to my terrible hokkien, i could only understand what she was saying but was unable to hold a proper conversation with her. Hopefully my hokkien will improve. We also helped clean up her house although it was already relatively clean. 

Mdm Tan is super cute. When jokingly asked what her age was, she wittily replied in hokkien "18 years old. Tombalek" (Translated to be 18 years old. Opposite.) and broke out into her cute little laughter. Sometimes she would tell us random stories and laugh it off, but we could tell that in her heart, she was actually quite sad about it. At times, she also appeared to be thinking about something unhappy. I think sometimes these elderly just need someone to be there to listen to them, comfort them, and keep them company. Our visitations can act as a form of distraction from their unhappy thoughts and keep them positive and optimistic. We could definitely hear a pinch of sadness in her voice when Mdm Tan said bye to us. Its amazing how just a short visit can make their day and we hope to visit her again.

Next, we visited Mdm Cheng. Despite being on a wheelchair, she welcomed us in with a smile. Mdm Cheng speaks Cantonese and a little chinese which makes it slightly easier to converse with her. The guys helped clean her house while the rest of us chatted with her. Mdm Cheng was also super cool. Halfway through the conversation, her handphone suddenly rang and she took it out of her pocket #likeaboss. We also took a picture of her with her shades on and doing the infamous rock hand \m/. 

Halfway through, she lamented about how she sometimes felt useless as she is wheelchair bound and could not engage in many activities. We tried to reassure her that she is definitely not useless. I guess this is what many elderly think of themselves, that they are useless and unimportant people of society, and hopefully our regular visitations will remind them that they are still important people for us to spend our Saturday mornings with them. Oh and on a side note, Mdm Cheng likes to drink white coffee! She says its supposedly thicker? And this is where Jocelyn's bimboness shone through. "White coffee is white right?" Haha pretty sure its not. 

All in all, it was a heartwarming experience for me and i hope it was for everyone else. Have a great year ahead(:

Joleen

6 Jan '13

A New Year, A First Visit.

My first time at T.H.E.S started off to a visit to Mdm Ho’s house. At first, my groupmates said that they are not really well-versed in dialect, but when we reached Mdm Ho’s house, I was surprised by their dialect language capability. This is probably due to the training given to them before I came, hehehe. Anyway, when I reached Mdm Ho’s house, I don't know what to say as I am not really Hokkien trained. Fortunately, Mdm Ho said she knows a bit of everything :D I was glad that I got to chat with Mdm Ho quite a bit, because she is really funny at times, for example some of the nicknames she gave to the volunteers who helped her years ago. We even witness her mosquito catching skills- While talking with us, she suddenly slam the table and all of us got stunned, and she said “mosquito…”, and we all broke into laughter. Funny moments aside, we helped her to clean her house, she lived alone and her leg couldn’t walk well, so we helped her to basically, sweep and mop the floor. And we also realize that Mdm Ho has a particular way the carpet should be arranged! I tried to picture it in my mind, but I can’t really tell the difference though :P Mdm Ho seemed happy to have us here, and she wanted us to call her “Po-po” instead of Mdm Ho, we all have one more grandma :D However, soon enough, time is soon up and we have to leave for our second visit.

Our second visit was to Mr Tay's house. Looks like he always has a Saturday coffee session, so we went to his house and accompany him down for his buttercino.

(Warning: Please do not read the following content if you are eating.)

According to Mr Tay, buttercino helps to smoothen our digestive tracks, he even used the analogy of how a machine needs oil to function. So this means you can do your big business better. Hahaha! Next up, Mr Tay talked about how he was a naughty boy when he was in Primary school, all his naughty deeds etc. I took a long time to formulate dialect sentences in my mind, so I only spoke little. Kudos to my groupmates who helped me understood his stories. We also took a photo with him, while taking picture, Mr Tay suddenly sneeze! I am not sure if we got a candid shot of him sneezing, hahaha! Then, it was almost time and we accompany him back to his house. He kept thanking us and said he enjoyed Saturday sessions.

This visit allowed me to gain knowledge about the needs of the elderly in Singapore. After all, we humans are social creatures, so are elderly, they need company too. It was a good to have this fruitful experience.

P.S. Thank you for the foods at the appreciation party. They were all nice! Esp. Shepherd’s Pie!

Kiah Yeen
6^th Jan 2013

 

Many firsts in 2013

And the 250th blog post goes to... 本大爷 hahahaha (Sadly there's not going to be any photos in this landmark post, can go Facebook see)

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

5 Jan 2013.

Today, we are Jocelin, Kah Suan, Lu Ting, Woon Yong and I.

Mdm Chow greeted us with a smile at the door. She was warm and hospitable, as usual, always telling us to 'zeh lah zeh lah' (take a seat). Usually, she wouldn't want us to clean anything, but today somehow she relented, and told us that we could do as we please. So we did, and after that, there was a short period of time when I felt the awkward silences catching up real quick as viable conversation topics were running out. Fortunately, thanks to Woon Yong, we quickly discovered her love for photo-taking. Or rather, camwhoring.

On a very random note, other than her love for taking photos, she loves to watch people 'paktor'. She was shy when she told us about it, and we were all making fun of her.

She did all the cute poses without even hesitating. :D When we praised her for being pretty, she would rock back in laughter with hands cupped on her face, as if she was too eager to express her joy at someone's compliment, only to shy away realizing that everyone had witnessed her brief loss of composure.

She then showed us her photo albums. We pointed and asked who were the people beside her, and where was she, but she couldn't recall much. Then she pointed to one photo of her with many elderly folks, and casually remarked that everybody in the photo was dead. It seemed like a joke and everyone laughed, and she emphasized that she was stating a fact. Somehow I sensed a tinge of resignation; probably a little sigh at the reality of life. There was once I heard her sniff, and I wasn't sure whether it was her flu or it was her getting emotional as she flipped through the albums, but it got me thinking. Decades down the toad, with hairlines receding and limbs gone all jelly, we could be wearing the exact shoes of Mdm Chow - looking at photos of people whom we were once together with, and wondering how our life trajectories are all so different, and perhaps, finally understanding that no matter how powerful we are, we can never stop the march of time.

We then left for Mr Chiu.

Mr Chiu was still quite physically weak today because he had just returned home after his 'stint' at the hospital. Not being home in a couple of weeks meant that dirt and grime was pretty much everywhere. So we got to work immediately! This was the first time in my few visits that we had to some serious cleaning. The kitchen floors and the entire toilet were badly stained. After sweeping, wiping, water splashing (which made work kind of fun), scrubbing, mopping, we put back his furniture back to where it came from before settling down in the living room with him. It was really heartening to see how the ladies tried to take turns to keep a conversation going with him despite being fully occupied with work on hand.

There wasn't much time left for interaction after our cleaning ended, so we spent the remaining time listening to music and him humming to the tune of songs he liked. They even tried to teach him how to use the CD player, putting on a piece of paper a blown-up layout of the buttons on the player so that he could remember each of their functions. They then painstakingly walked him through every step from switching on the power to getting his song to play.

Personally, I didn't get a chance to really get to know Mr Chiu well, but I guess there is always a next time!

Jack
5 Jan 2013