I must admit that I have a very good tolerance towards certain things.
Being a broke guy who was out of job for more than half a year, I started using a very old Nokia phone after my Sony Ericsson phone G905 died on me ridiculously. A side note: I would never trust their products and service centre again.
It was hell for me during those few months when communication almost broke down between friends and I due to the fact that the phone was too old to support 3G sim cards. Half of my contacts list could not be read. I was unable to sort out who were "not in my contact list".
When I was catching up with Mike after more than a year, I realised I could not find his contact in my phone. It happened that he was holding my old number and that was one of the worst cases that almost drove me insane.
I had to skip my habit of forwarding greeting messages to my friends during festival seasons because sending sms to multiple contacts was a great challenge. In fact, I was trained to hate replying to sms.
After tolerating the life of "living in the mountain" for at least a quarter year, I finally bought my first smart phone, HTC Incredible S. It had helped me to become more productive, such that I was able to do simple web updating when travelling and also, update myself with current affairs in news websites.
However, there was one great problem that had reduced productivity greatly - the original plastic protection from HTC with some notes at the centre of the screen. The phone model was too new that mobile phone shops did not sell its screen protector and casing. I had to resolve to keep the plastic in place to avoid scratching my new baby's face. I often had to move the text on screen up or down in order not to be blocked by the plastic.
It was pathetic weeks of tolerance with the plastic starting to wrinkle day by day. Even though it did not hurt me as much as using the old Nokia phone, every friend found it hilarious.
I had lost track of the time I waited for my elder brother's online purchase of the protection gears to arrive. The casing reached last week while the screen protector came this Monday.
I don't like to fall sick and I can't afford to. I'm on my path to strive for my future and this is the route I have chosen, which differs from most people's.
I don't have medical leaves that others have. When I'm down, progress slow down and it will take longer for me to get away from poverty.
I know if I were to continue at the current pace, I will eventually do better than average people. I never want to give up not because I'm greedy but for my pride.
I may not be born in a silver spoon but I'm considered quite lucky to earn my experience. I have met worthy friends who have been showing me sincere concern - people who have been nagging at me to find a "proper" job. Though they don't know my real concerns about my future and they never know I can begin something like now, I'm glad they have filled my life with true friendship.
I'm lucky because I manage to find a mentor who has been guiding me without demanding for any reward, except for a greater breakthrough in my progress. Though sometimes he may not understand the problems I'm facing is more than what he has analysed due to my lack of knowledge, I'm glad that the little skill I manage to absord out of his immortal web knowledge has managed to help me to struggle on.
I'm fighting hard to get things done as a perfectionist when I know clearly I'm still far from my own expectation. I'm not trained as a designer for corporate site nor have I worked as a programmer. I'm not even good in my language to create great contents. There are also administrative stuffs to handle such that I cannot focus on any of the tasks.
This week has been really bad. Having to debug the system means a reverse of progress. It has taken away not only my time but also my brain cells.
Now, I'm at the worst of my health after the stressful days.
I went to bed at 4am but could not doze off. It was 6am when I got up to do my work. I went back to sleep at 10 and woke up at 1pm in the end.
The manager of Costa Sands Sentosa Resort called me and apologised for his staff’s misbehaviour. However, that Chinese old man had already tendered his resignation letter before the incident and he was already clearing his leave. That was really evil of this guy for sabotaging the resort’s reputation before he left.
I continued with my SEO work for the tuition agency. Mike had a new SEO weapon for me but we were not sure of the power yet.
I spent the morning trying a new method for SEO for the tuition agency website. I went to sleep at 7am and woke up at 11am.
At 1pm, I went to the office in the rain. It was the first time I carried a large umbrella and I felt quite impressed with the past experience of carrying small ones. I continued with my work until David arrived at around 3pm.
David taught me more than what I had intended to ask about business. There was too much information for me to take in but I was more than happy with his sharing. He was a rare friend cum teacher.
After David left, I continued with my work alone in the office until 8pm before I went home.
I started my day by working on Tze Khit’s website before moving on to my tuition agency website and my blog. After talking to David in Facebook to tell him about Mike’s need for an office space, I went to sleep at 9am.
I woke up a couple of times and eventually got up at 4pm. My elder brother had fixed up the new fitting keyboard protector for me. After a while, I did a random chat on my phone and realised there was a message from David to inform me of three office locations. I aliased with Mike and he was more than satisfied to view the one at Raeburn Park, which I supposed was the previous Gan Eng Seng School’s campus.
I had a chat with Mike to share our excitements and plans before I continued with my tuition agency site, adding new pages regarding the top four popular tuition subjects – Maths, Science, English and Chinese.
Kachua dated me out for roti prata and I had quite a long chat with him over the Indian shop.
I was quite exhausted when Yaozhong came online. I messaged him to ask him to review my new design for the tuition agency website and he asked giving suggestions. He even tried to help me to touch up the main topmask. I continued to work with the Home Tutor Singapore page and eventually went to sleep at 8am.
I woke up at 4pm and continued with my work. It was near 8pm when I was about to have my dinner, Tze Khit dropped me an SMS to go down to the gym to collect a present from Bobby. Since he told me to bring my laptop along, I thought it was just a hoax.
Anyway, I went down to the gym right after having my dinner and Bobby passed me a new set of Aztech N-wireless router with 300Mbps speed. I was stunned and my brain went numb. I supposed it was because I had been helping them with work and that was why I was worth the money. However, for as much as I was too awkward to demand for any fee for all the freelance work, the router made me feel uneasy. They were rich and successful people and I did not want to have anything to do with money when associating with them. If only I were a rich guy, I would return bigger presents to all my good friends but I could not afford anything at the moment.
Anyway, my laptop was useful for they indeed had some amendments to make for the flyer I did for them quite some time ago.
Bobby was busy for the entire night. He impressed me badly for he handled everything by himself. He certainly had the money to get professional helps to fix all the leakage of water, router and even lighting outside the gym. He knew everything. The led flashing lighting looked ugly though they did attract attentions. Anyway, when they were rejoining wires for the lighting, I recalled that during my national service days, I did learn about doing similar thing but I had forgotten the steps to do a proper one. Alas, I tried on one and realised it was more difficult since all the wires inside were very thin copper.
I started work on the home tutor Singapore page to list the tutors using Ajax. It was a stressful morning. Seeing that Lucky was bored and nobody seemed to have taken him down for a walk, I took him down alone after 3am. He refused to dump his waste downstairs but luckily the poo ended up on target at home. Clearing the newspapers was much easier than clearing the poo on the floor directly. I blogged and went to sleep near 9am.
I woke up at noon and started packing up. I went to Mount Faber Safra to join Peh and Gilbert for our post-birthday celebration. My stomach was causing problems. Anyway, Gilbert made a Doraemon cake by himself. After celebrating by the pool, just outside the gym, we started swimming. Gilbert and I were too lazy that we only went for four laps before we started chatting at the Jacuzzi.
We went to Lock Road for dinner. It was Indonesian food and the sauce for the chicken was quite nice. However, we wasted a plate of mango salad.
After Peh sent me home in his new car, I continued working on my tuition agency site.
I spent some time working on my tuition website and blog before I went to sleep at 2am. It was one of the earliest days I had gone to bed. I woke up at 5.30am and lazed around before setting off.
My breakfast was a black pepper chicken bun from the bread shop near Eunos MRT control station. Terry and I took the base ferry to the zone and we were quite stunned when the driver did not stop at the usual carpark.
I was present at the conference for the first time they had video camera meeting. It was quite interesting though I thought things could be easily settled with an email each. We stayed in the conference room throughout, unlike the previous time, we gathered inside a small room. It was weird to sleep and thus I stayed awake for the day. Richard kept us entertained at times. He was a very soft but crappy guy and most of all, he was very nice.
We took Lum’s car out at the end of the day but the regulars left slightly after 5.30pm and thus we did not get to the bus-stop as early as the previous week. We alighted earlier from bus 94 and walked to the MRT instead of waiting for the bus to make a big turn into the interchange.
My mum and I went down to the third storey to take our shower. We brought along Lucky as usual and we took turns to look after him. As usual, I spent my morning working on the tuition website. Eventually, I spent hours typing emails to get helps for the website. I continued with blogging and gave up after 7am. Lucky came into the room and my younger brother woke up just in time to halt me from dozing off. I fell asleep after 9am.
I saw light at around 2pm. One of the workers knocked the door to get permission to come in because he needed to change the electricity wires for the main switch and it was then I realised how the cabling worked.
A china man was working on the new main door, which was ahead of schedule. However, my mum and elder brother tried on it and realised there were difficulties closing the door without using strength. They went downstairs and my mum went to the office to complain about the door. I was totally turned off when I saw the guy, Bob Lim, one of the site supervisors.
As expected, he told me craps and lied that it was how the door should work and then he started telling me stories about the other units’ doors that were done improperly. I tried my neighbour’s door and it was smooth. Later on, another supervisor, Ricky Teo, came by and my mum told him about it. Immediately, he called the China man back and insisted that something must be done to the poor finishing. We confirmed that we were right about the problem and I saw through the hypocrite who tried to push problems away to save himself from trouble.
We went to Chinatown for dinner with Lucky. My younger brother brought his slippers along to fix it and we waited very long for him between Chinatown Complex and the flat at Sago Lane. After that, he told us that it was due to a China guy trying so hard to bargain price for a pair shoes with the shop owner that my younger brother had to wait for them to finish before he could talk to the owner.
We went to Food Street but half of the stalls were empty. We decided to go to the chicken rice shop further down towards the main street. After having our dinner, we walked towards Outram MRT along the main road and went to the Japan Home shop to see what we could get for the bathroom so that we could get the workers to fix up at the end of the renovation.
My elder brother carried Lucky and waited at the squeezy entrance of the shop and I took over him after a while since he had better ideas what to get. It was one of my luckiest days I had after months that while I was trying to make way for the passers-by to avoid Lucky from trying to sniff anyone, a very stylish and charming girl passed by with her mum, and we exchanged smiles. At the end of the shop’s entrance, they made a U-turn and we exchanged smiles the second time. I saw the luxuries of carrying a cute dog on the street.
My brothers and I went for shower at the third storey as early as 10pm without my mum since we knew she would return after midnight.
I began the day watching show with my elder brother, followed by the soccer match between Man Utd and Valencia. I thought I would doze off halfway but I did not. I went to sleep at 5am but it took me some time to knock out.
Waking up before 7am, I lazed around and decided to give up sleeping for another half an hour. Since it was early, I decided to meet Huiting and her friends at Tiong Bahru instead of taking direct buses over to Bukit Merah. It was warm inside the coffee shop as I waited for them to finish their breakfast before setting off. We took bus 195 over to block 105 and went for home visiting to distribute some of the buns bought by Huiting to the old residents. After that, we went to the Sarah home centre at level 2 of block 105 before we left to distribute the remaining of the food.
We had a short meeting at the centre before we left in four groups of two. I partnered with Dexuan and we faced some suspicious old people. We were supposed to help Sarah home to do some reregistering of their members and also to conduct a short survey. Starting off was difficult for we were not totally sure of the form. Halfway through, we changed partners due to language problem and I stayed inside an auntie’s house for around forty-five minutes to get the form filled while listening to her long stories.
Someone from the centre bought lunch for us and I was sure each packet cost more than three bucks for there were four or more dishes inside. The two volunteers, Yuqing and Hwee Ping, I engaged through Facebook arrived at around 2pm and 3pm, and brought a friend each. We continued the voluntary work till 5.30pm. My back was aching, my brain was exhausted and I could hardly speak anymore.
It was a good experience interacting with the kind and chatty old folks but it was quite sad to know about dark stories of Singapore through them. Apart from hearing from many old folks about bad things regarding the centre that stopped them from joining the activities, it was a good day.
It was actually a good chance to see Huiting home so that we could chat during the journey but I held back again in case of misunderstanding. It was such a waste since we had been communicating regarding charity work only.
After reaching home, I fed Lucky and later, had my dinner. Soon, I was too tired to keep myself conscious anymore. My brothers took Lucky down for a walk and I did not join in.
I tried to sleep as early as before 5am and I woke up before 9am. I did not go back to sleep for I remembered my younger brother told me that he could go for a swim before his school. My mum bought breakfast for us from the coffee shop at the second level on its last day of business.
I went to the toilet twice before setting off. The noodle seemed to be a curse. Then, we took bus 145 to Mount Faber Safra and the ticket selling machine failed on us again. I hesitated for a while before visiting the toilet again. I joined my brother in the swim soon but my left shoulder caused me enough pain to slow down but I eventually got used to it. After taking down ten laps using my zip-zap swimming style to avoid the crowd, I stopped for my stomach to digest properly for a while before my chest was choked. It certainly described how bad the problem with my stomach had become. Anyway, I swam another ten laps before the problem relapsed and that summed up my day.
We went up to the second storey to look around after taking our bath, into the E-Mart and then bowling alley. Then, my brother set off to school while I went home alone with my wet nose. I regretted badly not bringing along tissue paper.
The running nose worsened soon and I started sneezing as well. I tried to rest but could not doze off. I posted question in Facebook to discuss about how to solve the problem to smoking in public housing and a smoker posted an idiotic comment to piss me off.
I planned to set off early to for photography before meeting up my ex-colleagues but my weak body refused me. In the end, the bus 75 played trick on me and the bad traffic jam worsened the situation. I alighted a bus-stop earlier and finally reached Rail Mall half an hour late. My gang, consisting of Hirman, Christine, Joei and Eunice had finished their dinner and left a potato for me. I was surprisingly bloated after taking it. Since I was sick, they ordered a bowl of pumpkin soup for me. It was never a boring outing with Hirman around.
As they were calculating the bill of nearly $140, they excluded me for I took very little stuffs and that I was jobless. I felt like taking free lodging. Hirman dropped me at Keppel Road before he sent Joei for her next appointment at East Coast. I felt the urge to get my civilian driving license and car so that I could do friends favours as well.
After reaching home, my younger brother made a cup of tea for me upon knowing that I was having a bad flu.
I got to rest a while by having a Command and Conquer game with my elder brother. By then, my effort in managing my new Facebook Page had brought in more than five thousand fans. I knew the figure would increase more.
My mind could never stop working then. I knew I was able to reach out to many young Singaporeans and it also meant I could do something to help those in need, in term of mentality poverty. The first person I could think of to work with was Hirman, the greatest creative educator who would do beyond his limit to help the youngsters. It was the greatest goal I had in mind to change all the selfish and wrong thinking of human beings, which was far from possible, even though I had already started http://www.lifeissobeautiful.com.
Somehow, I blamed myself for I had not started looking for job and yet I was thinking of non-profit work again. It was 8am when I hit the bed.
I woke up at 2pm. I tried asking Hirman if he wanted to meet up. I contacted Joei but she had a concert to attend and could only meet us up after 11pm, which was quite late. In the end, the plan was cancelled and I would have to wait until Friday before I could meet the group of wonderful educators at Zaki’s house for the “movie night”.
While doing the contacting, I received an enquiry for web design and I took very long to think of an appropriate reply. I was never a sales person and I hated spoiling things. The focus of the day was on Facebook for the enormous progress.
I tried my best to sleep early at 2am since I wanted to get up early to get my certification at SIM in the early morning before going back to ITE for visiting. As usual, it took me quite some time to doze off. My brother and his girlfriend left for Thailand in the midst of my sleep.
Having a second thought I decided to go to ITE first since I wanted to get my ex-colleagues the famous muffin from the shop downstairs my place and it would be too heavy to carry all the way to SIM. I got twenty-four pieces of them to make the journey was tougher with the loads. My mum had also surprised me with breakfast.
I went to find Mr Peh but he was not around. I met Diana just when I got up to the third level to brighten up my day. Then, I went into the almost empty staff room. I had a chat with Joy and Hirman came back after some time. I was commented as weird since I had not gotten myself a job and yet I spent money to buy muffins for them – I somehow had the same question in my mind. After passing the muffins to them, I quickly went down to meet up with Evangeline but she had already finished her lunch. I got her to return my grass jelly drinks and I was so proud and showed it off to all the passers-by. It was not about it being free. I rejected Joy, Weitat and Afni’s lunch invitation while Hirman was already at the “duck place” waiting for us.
After Evangeline and all her classmates went for class, I went to the lab with Jonathan for a while before we went to the staff room. After some chitchatting around, I went to Hirman’s desk to get Iylia’s photos so that I could pass to Lijun. Then, I took quite very long to burn the old photos for Hirman while chatting with Diana. In the end, somehow the disc was spoiled.
I borrowed Joei’s external harddisk and transferred the photos into it. I went to the administration office with Joy to settle her student’s bursary stuff and before going to find Weitat. Then, I returned Joei the money for Magdalene’s birthday before joining Hirman at the iDelite Mastery room.
I was totally impressed with Hirman for he did recording impressively for his lessons for the next week as he was going for reservist. He was the most inspiring lecturer I had ever met and the greatest gain of my stay in ITE was to get to know him. If only I had gotten into close contact with him two years ago, I could have changed more students’ mindsets to inspire them more. Now that I would only hope that I could be inspired by his drive more with all interaction whenever available in all the meet-up.
He was almost ruined after preparing a few lessons and we knocked off. I took all the stuffs to his car as he went up to return the keys. Later, Grace, Cynthia and Joei came down together with Hirman and he sent them to the carpark near MRT station before going to SIM to collect my certificate.
Instead of making a U-turn, we took Bukit Timah Road and it was a regret for we made a wrong turn near Steven Road later to go to Orchard Road and passed by two ERPs in the jam. It was a good chance to chat with him and the companion was the main thing, not the convenience. He dropped me opposite Raffles City. Instead of taking bus 167 at the bus-stop nearby or train at Cityhall MRT, I walked over to take bus 145.
I finally had a more carefree day with most of the stuffs settled. After preparing the office laptop for handover, Andrew still did not want to take over my station together with the barcode scanner to think that I rushed to clear the system days ago.
I had lunch with Hirman, Kelvin Tan, Wee Lian, Eunice and Sharon at the “duck place” coffee shop. Hirman footed the drinks bill while Sharon settled the food. Luckily, I did not order expensive stuffs, otherwise, I would feel more embarrassed.
On the way back, Hirman suggested mobile teaching, which was an excellent initiative but seemed too far to work on. His drive towards enriching the youths was remarkable and commendable.
The afternoon was one of the best ever. It was the day for gaming, the first time in my life that I played in the campus. In the evening, Kevin sent David Chin and I to the MRT while David accompanied me till Outram Park MRT, thus my journey was almost fully occupied.
Upon reaching the office, I was plagued with the fact that the banking colleagues were leaving. I was numbed in my brain. Their shifting to the Bishan campus was nothing compared to my dad’s departure more than ten years ago, but soon, I was going to feel so indifference without their presence. One day, I would be hearing their noises out of nowhere.
This morning, the office was noisier than before for the SYOG teams were preparing for the afternoon’s training. I helped out a bit. Joy and Hirman were already at the battlefield bravely with the HCJC volunteers while Weitat was obviously luckier to be leading the Cedar girls in the afternoon. It would be a very good experience if only I had my language skill improved that I would be able to help out. Obviously, I felt left out due to my incapability.
All of them were gone and I thought I would really be alone until Mingfa called me out for lunch together in the rain. He came over to pick me up soon and we went to West Coast market. The chicken chop was overrated. I felt quite bad for Mingfa had to take the extra miles to specially fetch me and send me back when he could easily cross over from Clementi Wood Secondary School after his morning coaching.
The tidying up of my resume was beginning to turn into a nightmare. It seemed like never-ending. I was very amazed with Josephine’s knowledge and nothing could really show my gratitude for her assistance.
In the evening, Hirman gave me a ride. When we were at the gate, he managed to attract the attention of Sie Sie by banging the left mirror but he remained cool and cheerful. We got Sie Sie to hop onto the car and we happily left together since she was on the way to Capitol Tower, which was near my place. However, we met very heavy traffic jams at AYE and Hirman turned to Holland Village but we had too many fans on the road to slow us down badly. With the radio news reporting that ECP was filled with zombies, Hirman changed his mind and decided to take CTE instead. Alas, he dropped us at the Central, where we transited to the train.
I knew well the journey would be longer than taking train directly at Clementi but did not expect the jam to cling onto my legs. I was cool with it since my main purpose was to chat with Hirman but Sie Sie could no longer make it for her Yoga class and thus, she decided to go to her usual workout place - UOB tower - instead.
It was a different Wednesday, having two departments combining department lunch together at Mandarin Gallery. Weitat, Afni and Joy left the office earlier. I followed Bernard’s car and arrived at the place on time together with my department’s staffs. Their cold and repeated jokes on learning volleyball turned me off.
I had a big feast as the food was to my liking. There were at least two other cameras around and thus I did not take many shots. Towards the end of the lunch, I moved to the other end of the stretch of table to crap with my most usual gang. Then, I was teased for mispronouncing words again.
As I began to get sleepy with the heavily stuffed stomach in my irritated eyes, I was given gifts from the department as my farewell gifts. My heavy brain was too tired to react much. Josephine started with her farewell speech, followed by Kevin. I was totally lost at words after that with my brain frozen; the earlier cold jokes and teasing had already eaten up my words even though I was more than happy to present my feeling for the more than two years of stay with all the kind souls.
Immediately after the lunch, I was made to try out the three tops and a sweater outside the toilet. My great buddies had certainly put in great thoughts when choosing the items for me, trying to change my image. There was no mirror around for me to take a good view of myself but I trusted their taste.
We went on shopping for the banking staffs’ farewell gifts. I could feel that I could collapse anytime in my swinging head. I was intending to hitch bus 167 home to take a short nap during the journey but Afni changed her mind in the long queue in front of the taxi stand and I accompanied her to take train.
I finally got to dine together with my Shi Fu, Josephine. We went to IMM’s Fish and Co and she gave me very good guidance on my resume while waiting for the food. The meal was on me since she last treated me at New York New York the previous time at Jurong Point. I supposed we hit off well because both of us were very direct-to-point people.
The gathering of the MTRCs was never a smooth job; it was the last task I would be helping my boss with. I spent the afternoon updating my resume.
It was perhaps, one of the greatest mistakes I made, to join in the volleyball game at night. I knew there would not be many chances that I would play so often in future and thus, I gave up the dinner date with Irwin and Eugene.
The pain on my left shoulder was deadly. Even receiving a light ball would cause me cold sweat and I gave up soon knowing that the condition had worsened and that I would not be able to do well in the game.
Perhaps, the bad feeling was already back and the game was never as joyful as the previous week.
I started off my morning with the mosquito bites, waking up earlier than usual.
My dread started again. Early in the morning, I set up everything at Bukit Batok while Weitat was back in Clementi to monitor his students’ examination. It was a good morning somehow since the teachers from Hillgrove who brought their students over were doing their jobs extremely well. I had an enjoyable morning crapping around with the well mannered students.
We went to IMM to meet up with Mei Hoe, Dorothy and Magdalene for lunch at Red Ginger.
In the afternoon, I went to set up two courts for badminton but initially only Joy came down, followed by Mr Baey who had forgotten to bring his short. I had a long warming up with Joy before Mei Hoe arrived to play doubles. Joy left before Deon came in to continue the game. In the end, Mei Hoe stayed behind to accompany me since I had to wait for the volleyball game. We met Daniel on our way to the office to keep my racket and he joined us at the MPH.
Mingfa bought my dinner over. The small packet of chicken rice fitted perfectly into my stomach and the chocolate milkshake from Sweet Talk was another sweet thing Mingfa bought over for me. I forgot to return him the money. Finally, I got to chat with him while waiting for pretty girls to pass by at the canteen but we were both disappointed.
The volleyball game was nice in my struggle with my injured left shoulder. The joint gave me pain whenever I received or set the ball. Nevertheless, it was a good night. Weitat came down to the campus to join us after the game and he sent me home.
Yesterday, Hirman gave me a call at as early as 7.30am and he was somehow lucky that the line did not cut off halfway since the Starhub reception in my room was absurd. Anyway, he wanted me to help him to do a video out of the photos taken during the camp. I had to switch on my laptop to transfer the files over to my thumbdrive and it took me longer than usual for the gigantic file size.
It was my first team-up with Eunice to conduct EIP at Bukit Batok. I had problems walking for I seemed to have strained the vein on my left ankle during the jog the night before. The pain was mild before I went to bed and thus I did not really take note of it. Walking down the stairs was the killer.
The class was noisier than the previous day’s class and hence it took me more strength to speak and more effort to control. Eunice was sick but still tried to help out as much as possible. The kids were cute as well. I had a great lunch with Eunice somewhere near the bus-stop before going back to our campus.
My shirt was wet under the hot sun and the thought of Hirman’s video, which was needed by 4pm heated my body up more. I quickly went to get some photos from Ateh and proceeded to Lab 1 to focus on the job. The transferring of the photos from the two thumbdrives and two video cameras caused latency in the processor.
I was not confident of producing the video for I could never settle for a low quality job, which I was forced to do given such a short notice and I really hated to disgrace myself. I could have done more to enhance the video. Selecting the photos, as well as to tally them with the song robbed my time. I was so tired that I even dozed off for a minute or so.
Just before I could finish it, the lousy laptop died on me. It was supposed to be a fast system but somehow, I could feel that the manufacturing error had been eating up the resources. I was extremely annoyed by the continuous auto increasing of the volume, especially when Jonathan and his students came in to share the lab and I could not reduce the volume and had to do with muting. I could have simply stayed inside the office with all disturbances inclusive of the air-con servicing.
I stared widely at the lousy laptop, too lost for words. I was fortunate enough that most of the work was saved and thus, I needed not redo everything after the crash. Deep within me was filled with emptiness as I watched the system loading slowly and the video compilation followed suit. I delivered the product late but the actual event was delayed as well to allow sufficient time.
As the video was played, my heart raced. I could see more rooms for improvements, especially on the selection of photos. I wanted to visit each individual OGL’s facebook account to capture some of the photos taken by others, but time did not allow me to do it. Nevertheless, the laughers did cover up some of my regrets.
Hirman made a good speaker. The tiredness and hectic preparation failed to bring him down as he managed the appreciation ceremony with confident and charisma. Diana was a natural host as well and I stayed throughout the event to witness and support the sincere work of all the great people.
I regretted not recording down the speeches using my phone.
After going back to the office, Herman offered to send me to the city since he would be on his way there. I was more than happy to travel with him even though taking the train would be much faster. I got to chat with Dorothy while waiting for him.
Hirman poured out his tonnes of workload to me and I hoped by listening would reduce his stress somehow for there was nothing much I could do other than offering some tiny help. I alighted near KPO and strolled to Dhoby Ghaut MRT station.
After taking dinner, I dozed off for more than an hour.
It was the first ever known overnight camp for the students to my knowledge. I had not witnessed an event as exciting and enriching as this. Two days one night were too short for the fun, though ample for the bodies and minds to endure. Hirman, the great one, together with his team of lecturers and student leaders, made it all happen.
Most of the staffs of the Singapore Discovery Centre were over-accommodative, responding well to all needs and they even prepared coffee at night at their own good wills.
The schedule was packed and every moment was fruitfully spent. The orientation group leaders (OGL) were quick to react to fill the time in the middle of switching the game stations. They did their jobs well and responded to the lecturers.
The management made their ways down after work on both days to show their supports. I was much luckier than them since I could stay for the entire camp to interact with everyone, including their seeds – the students.
There was nothing much I could really do other than photo-taking, but I believed my fruits of labour would sharpen the fading memories in future; I hoped the sights of them would bring back true smiles on everyone’s face. Most importantly, I hoped I could help Hirman to sum up the entire event through the photos.
So much for my great photography experience and fun in disturbing the kids, everything came with a price. The greatest exchange I made was my two days of time to do my own work and probably longer time to sum up the event together with the aids of the photos. I went down in my sore throat, cough and flu. The sleepless night before that almost made me float and I managed to challenge my limit again by sleeping less than three hours throughout. I had gastric pain twice on the first day and once on the last evening. My feet were sore and my knees were stiff after two days’ walk.
Hirman had brought back confidence and enthusiasm to this five hundred-plus-strength future of our country. It was the first step, a magnificent thrust, to implant hopes into them by making them understand that there was a big pool of people who really cared for them. It was a great effort to bring out all the goodness within them.
There was no absolute measure for the success of any event. However, it was made obvious with the sight of sick and injured students refusing to leave the camp to rest at home. The reluctance of students to leave the place at the end of the camp proved it.
No event could be perfect; although with the strong support from managements, staffs and students, there were still a number of areas to be improved since it was the first attempt of such grand event. There were some ground rules, which were not lay, and thus, creating some political issues. Some students created big issues for the leaders at night.
If the camp goes on for future intakes of students, many great souls would be torn to bones; but a much awesome and impactful one would commence after all the reflections.
