NUH Volunteer Visit

Yesterday was quite a busy day... Woke up at 8:40 am feeling extremely sleepy, but nevertheless had to drag myself to the washroom and get ready for the day.

Today's agenda was a voluntary visit to NUH at 10am sharp, but before then Mum drove me to the neighbourhood temple for some quick blessings. Reached NUH at about 10:00am, met up with stephanie, poh leng, lay nee, xue fen, and hui lin in the volunteer room at NUH's MSW (medical social work) department. i must say it's quite intimidating to meet about 5 gals when you're the only guy there.

Job today: to entertain people in Clinic A, Children's specialist clinic, for approximately 2 hours. We will teach them to make balloons and bookmarks. Well, i've been to clinic A on a regular basis for seeing a doctor there about my epilepsy, and according to jingwen who did the job on monday it didn't seem to be very hard.

So we went. There is a side room (a creche?) where all the kiddy toys were there (chairs, tables etc) enough to sit a group of nice toddlers, next to the main waiting area. there were two kids there and they were colouring some drawing but we forcefully evicted them from their tasks and forced them to PLAY WITH US!! haha. no la. just kidding. anyway myself and xuefen got the balloon pumps working (darn those pumps, they're darn inefficient, i had to expand almost half of my energy to get one up), while the other more enthusiasic and loquacious gals began to chat the kids up.

we got them to draw a face on the balloon (about 10cm in diameter), i.e. eyes, nose, smiley, some ears, then we tore strips of construction paper and stuck it (with glue) on the "head", i.e. the balloon to create the hair. Sounds easy enough. Then to make it even nicer the gals (fellow pharmacists) have came up with stickers to paste on the balloon's "cheeks", forehead etc. The kids also weaved a few nice ideas, for example sticking shirts and dresses on the bottom of the balloon (which i would have never thinked of).

then inspiration hit me and then i blew up a blue balloon and attached a mohawk-like hairstyle to a menacing face... haha like some skinhead. very easy. just take a rectangular piece of paper, fold along the length, then give a few spaced-out cuts along one side. not bad.

the gals also gave the kids some alphabet macaroni (i.e. macaroni shaped in the form of letters.) to stick onto coloured ice-cream sticks and then attach a paper clip onto it as a bookmark. sounds easy too, but finding the required letters was a matter of quick scanning... haiz. didn't take some pictures back... only took one picture of our "last customer" haha. sorry cannot reveal any thing about what the kids said or the nature of their illnesses.

Intermezzo

then when i finished, jingwen called me if karaoke (k-lunch) was still on the agenda. well although choir practice was just yesterday, i was quite sick of singing all those christmas songs, like every song got christ or jesus or he is born. And i sang tenor so i was using falsetto very often.

But, the temptation to sing again in k-box is too much for me to bear... and so i rushed over to clementi where the poor gal was waiting all by herself and sung k-box with her. never been to the clementi branch of k-box so it was quite an eye-opener... heartland singing.

performed a nice rendition of zhang zhen yue's (yes, that bald rocker) zi you (freedom). not much of a time, although cos we only had two hours to sing. But who cares, its goddamn cheap!!! only about 7.50 per person. and now i sound like a spendthrift.

SCD...

again rushed back to sheares hall just in time to begin dance practice. i dunno why i actually can do the whole set (well, not perfect moves), like i could actually catch the timing for the entire finale dance. so happy for myself haha. well that took some of the stress away i guess. then fang xi (dance instructor) taught us the WHOLE THING, i.e. from the start of the music to the end. whew, it's gonna be hard memorizing those sequence of steps. and i'm not lifting lin qun but a (relatively lighter) girl called felicia (?) whom i have no prior contact with.

ok, the worst thing about the first part is that i have to SPIN felicia in 2 counts (i.e. about 1 second), then in the time of 1.25-1.5 seconds run over to another group and muster enough strength to lift puay san together with another guy called yiming, carry her for about 2 seconds and carry on with the dance! arrrgggghhhhh!!!!! what the hell!! so shack man. soooo shackk...

the whole thing took longer than i expected, the entire four hours from 2:30 to 6:30. i've never felt so drained before, but i've never danced until this standard before too so i guess it balances out.. went down for dinner by uncle vincent (friendly hall caterer), FOC. food was great, but i think i felt a bit sick already... haha... danced too much. made my way back to home about 8pm and fell asleep promptly.