13 oct visit

Hi, Kai Him here and today, 13th October 2012 it was my second time volunteering with you guys. Today my group (Yi An, Louise, Valerie, Clement) and I went to visit Mr Tay and Mdm Cheng. Mdm Cheng is a new addition to the elderly that we visit.

I visited Mr Tay on the last visit as well, and I felt that he was much happier today! As usual, we went to his place and he will do his standard moves:

1. Ask if we have eaten.
2. Offer us can drinks.
3. Repeat 1 and 2 indefinitely.
4. Ask if we brought him newspapers.
5. Go drink kopi!

So as per usuals we brought him to drink kopi + butter. Having tried this drink last time round already, I decided not to join in this time as I didnt want caffeine today. As I was terrible at hokkien, I always had difficulty talking to him, and even listening. I could probably catch 20% at most, and many times I want to open my mouth but nothing comes out, except maybe jia ba liao. Today, he was more mischievous and told us his childhood story, when he erm, pee-ed into his principal's coffee mug and happily watched him drink it! We were quite stunned yet amused by that. He also told us that he had many female friends, but they only went out but he did not bring them home. And when we mentioned about his teeth being yellow he suddenly shocked us by removing his dentures slightly and moving them around, shaking in his mouth!!! Scared us, but extremely adorable Mr Tay is (:


Mdm Cheng lives further away and we had to walk a bit. Mdm Cheng is fluent in mandarin, cantonese and probably hokkien too! She told us she learnt mandarin from watching TV! She is wheelchair bound and stays indoors mostly, except when her friend comes around to bring her to the hawker center for food. I would believe that if we visit her the next time we can try our best to bring her down too. She said that her house is quite clean and I think our volunteers can just help out with a little bit of housework the next time round. Clean the windows or something. She rents a room out as well. I think the important part is that we talk to her. She says it herself that she is very lonely after her husband departed from this world a few years back. As she mentioned about her husband, she could not control her emotions and tears began to well up in her red swollen eyes. I didnt know what to do or say but at the point of time, I understood her. She just wanted company, and whoever saw this scene would surely want to be her friend. I want to be back for her.


And as usual, the comm will be asking for people to blog about the visit after the day, and once again most people were reluctant or hesitant about doing it. Me too. I wasn't passionate enough to raise my hand and say I will do that. I guess we are all lazy to do so, or too busy in our own opinion? But as my group and I were trying to play a game to decide who shall do the blogging, I suddenly saw how wrong this was, and i felt bad, maybe even disgusted by myself. Blogging about the visit should not be a punishment, for the loser of the game to settle it. And so, I said I would volunteer to do so, and hoped the rest would volunteer once in a while in the following weeks.

For me, I feel that it is really not so much important how much you write or what you write, but to give you a chance to type things out and rethink of the significance and effect the visits might have on you. It is especially useful for the new volunteers like me, as this gives us a good chance to look back and to find and explore further insights and feelings and thoughts that we might not discover had we not reviewed it. I hope we can all give it a chance and who knows? We might discover something new about ourselves that we never knew existed.

Lastly, if you are still reading this, I would like to say that I had been very impressed by the energy, the vibe and positivity that many of you guys possess. And I'm truly grateful for that. Be it the older experienced volunteers, the newer ones or even the elderly, I have enjoyed the energy from you guys totally. Positivity is very contagious and I feel that we should all keep it up, as we interact with each other and with the elderly, this energy can spread or even go a long way to making someone's day, just as you guys have made mine.

Saturday mornings, catching up with friends, with elderly, befriending new ones. Life is awesome, isn't it. (: