Day 2
Part 2: Sightseeing around Bago City

Date: 16 Jun 06, after lunch (1300 onwards)

after lunch (in the TLDC) we had to move to the Bago City College (BCC) for our first performance, as well as give out textbooks to the students over there.

yes, while i and brenda was having our great bago city sale in the market, the other not-so-fortunate members of bhbh2 have had to practice dance moves after they finish sorting out the stuff. our signature bhbh2 dance by zhaoyuan!

yep, though it wasn't very nicely done as it should be, nevertheless it was quite well executed, from the viewpoint of a person who has practised it only once.

louis had an idea and he wanted to bring out our chingay dance which him, i, jingwen and grace executed to the great appreciation of all those who saw it. ha. singaporeans and our phil hosts do know how to appreciate a branded dance. (not saying zy's dance is... well, nvm)

went to bago city college, got some speech, then we danced our bhbh2 dance, then followed by chingay dance, plus some nice performances the people there have for us. one such performance is what i call the "bench dance", i.e. a couple basically dances on a slender wooden bench (used for sitting people), and involves the guy lifting the gal and placing her on his other side at times (e.g. the gal is on the guy's left side, then he lifts her by the waist and puts her on his right side). all on the bench. marvellous.







Bago City College, with ernest tay and grace posing to someone.










Standard lecture theatre, we occupied the first row and waited for the other bago city college people to come in. on the extreme right was the teachers.


then there was this "fashion show" which we had to perform. rather lame, those type where u perform during cultural activities or Friendship Day, where nuanxin will read stuff showcasing the four different races, basically we got the city look, the army look, chinese, malay (that's me), indian, plus some other cultures like jap, viet, burmese, etc. not to slam u nuanxin.. but i think it's lame

after the performance and the giving of books we had a short interaction with the students. found out that, in fact, many crave for these books that we had previously.. discarded. they were of the same age group as us: early 20s, and most of them are plagued by bgrs. typical.

went to tour the college after that.. well the impression was that it looked like a secondary school here.. or a primary school as someone brought out. very run-down, without proper facilities. thank god that singapore's schools are much much better off than that. but other than the facilities, the spirit of the students are pretty much the same - what bothers them now, i.e. results, studies, girlfriends - are probably what bothers us. of course life is made easier for us when you don't have to worry about dropping out of sch (for most) and that you don't have to work in your dad's paddy fields after study (well, maybe in genki sushi).





find the red button for me.
don't worry, there's another alarm in the history section of the central library that says "dummy bell" in NUS...











computer lab that BHBH1 helped to set up. computers are courtesy of Crescent Girls School, Primary.


went to the Bago City Hospital (BCH) after that. the BCH is located along the main road and its quite a stone throw's away from the college. (fyi TLDC is located along the main road as well, we can occasionally hear ambulance sirens). They have two wings: one old, one new, not enough medical staff, and beds. Probably most of their diagnostic stuff is also not accurate (as winnie discovered at a later date).

The old wing is.. very old. Needs a makeover, probably the looks of Singapore's General Hospital. The old one. It is quite small, about slightly larger than a clinic of Singaporean standards. Reception room is not crowded - i think they see common ailments somewhere else. According to the nurse there there are only 5 doctors in BCH, and i don't see any of them around when we visit. probably very busy. There are only about one or two wards, with a maternity room, guess that's about it.

The new wing has just been complete, and it links to the old wing via some corridor. Some parts are still not done - workers can be seen drilling here and there in a room. Two storeys, mainly an extension of wards, enough to occupy 50 people as what the nurse said. So far, i only see one patient around though. Beds and everything are not put into place yet, i guess its still not very functional. There is a collection of OTs around, about 4, but obviously they are not used as we, a bunch of about 25, can trample upon the relative tranquility of the "sterile" area. Guess that's because of the lack of the proper operating facilities there and that there's only one surgeon around. In fact, all (non-life-threatening?) operations are directed to Bacalod's hospitals, about 20km drive away.

After visiting the hospital we were scheduled to go to the museum, but then i had an "aura" and so requested to stay in the vehicle. Afraid that it might be too hot, ms and andy bade me to rest in the TLDC, with andy accompanying me along.

The rest of them had better activities like a ride down the river... they returned at around 1800 hours, we had dinner. Meishan, louis and jingwen went especially to buy watermelons, and a special noodle soup (which looks deliciously like sharksfin) for my enacimated self. Owe them one for that. Yup the whole group was wondering what the hell happened to their logistics head and i was like showered with too many "how are you?"s. well. Nothing much to do after dinner, kept nuaing, people wanted to bathe, and we played jenga and "polar bear".







My dinner, 2nd day. Sharks fin soup (forgot the actual name).
Very salty.










Jenga challenge while waiting to go bathe.












Playing Polar Bear in the other room.


In retrospect...

Hmm... i guess that i'm really thankful for Singapore's excellent medical facilities... when i asked Joseph, the medic from phil that accompanied us, he said that there are epilepsy patients in phil.. but the epilepsy is often not controlled via proper medication. one thing is that medication here is expensive - one carbamazepine pill costs about S$1/S$2 and it comes in those large satchets - about twice or thrice the price of it here. economies of scale as you might cruelly put it. Also, the state of the hospital as compared to ours is very dismal, and i wonder if life-threatening cases like heart attacks or strokes come in, will the staff be able to cope? Or when any epidemic / major disaster strikes?

The schools, as seen by the college (which is equivalent to our university), thirst for education. Education in phil isn't very good - they have one of the highest student to teacher ratio: 45:1., which means the student's learning abilities will be diminished. And that is primary school, which is compulsory, i think it gets worse in secondary school, about 55:1. Basically due to a lack of schoolteachers. As for college, they do not have courses like chemistry or medicine or life sciences, but more practical stuff like law (for policeman) and nursing.

I guess well? are we lucky to be more exposed to more discliplinary areas then? or should something be done?