nasi le-MAK

Taiyang

As I had stated in the previous post, I have been accepted into project Taiyang despite Zhiying not making the cut. That idiot possibly messed up his interview due to nervousness or something. Anyways, I decided to continue despite not knowing anyone else in the CIP. Hence, the first activity we had was a 2D1N trip to pulau ubin.

That's right, pulau-freaking-ubin. I would have never imagined I would come to this island for the first time in forever for such a reason. But oh well, I will treat every bonding session as an occasion to meet new people and hopefully know more interesting stuff about SMU in general.

The faithful day came on Saturday and we arrived at the Changi ferry terminal. Everyone who saw me said I looked like a zombie since i was stoning. However, I did my best and introduced myself to everybody and said hi to as many people as possible. As I realised some of them already knew people inside the CIP. Rachel was the facilitator of Pin Yi while Jingci and Pinyi were FTB mates. Oh well, Singapore is a small island, there are always connections to be made.

What you see is what you get

So a short extract on information about Pulau Ubin

"Pulau Ubin is in essence, the last 'kampung' (village) in Singapore. A stroll through Ubin takes you back to Singapore in the 1960's with the simpler pleasures of life. The slow lane starts as soon as you join the queue for the bumboat at Changi. As you arrive, all cares are left behind."

Source: http://www.wildsingapore.com/ubin/activities.htm

Anyways this means one thing. This island is freaking LEPAK! And being late is the norm for our van that was supposed to drive us to our destination was late for about half an hour. We hurriedly scurried onto the van the moment the bus arrived as our dear seniors started hollering at us that we were behind schedule.

Beautiful view outside the house

When we first reached Ah Kok's house, I was truly shocked by his living condition. The place looked rundown with barely any sort of modern technology invested in his house. Furthermore, Weng Ge informed us that Ah Kok was mentally challenged due to high fever when he was young. He was a truly generous host for he allowed us to stay at a shed behind his house next to the sea.

Everyone hard at work

We started off the day with some icebreakers to know each others' name. Later on we were split into groups and filed off to do some discussions. When the food arrived there wasn't much choice since it was either fried rice or hor fan. Well, we make do with what we have and continued on.

All the participants!

The night was when i gained valuable insights on why we were truly doing CIP. It was not that we were better off than the chinese people so we are going there to help them out, nor was it to fulfill our 80 hours of compulsory CIP. It was something we are doing as a part of the community in lieu of the long-term guidelines provided by the Chinese government.

We were just playing small roles in a big picture, trying to help educate the kids in Dabu by improving their English language capabilities. We are there to provide a long term impact on them as we like them to foster an interest in the language for it is damn bloody useful to be trilingual in our current day and age (People from Dabu learn to speak Hakka when they are young, followed by Chinese and then English)

Just have to say, my image of being a quiet person could possibly be ruined for somehow Pinyi managed to find out that i was actually full of shit. So most of the time people were looking at me to continue the conversation and provide my insights and guailan people. I am trying my best to deviate from me being a mean guy like i was in JC but you know, old habit never dies!