a sunday less ordinary

woke up real early in the morning and as i peered out of the window i'm thankful for the kind weather. the sun was just starting to peek, which translates to a rainless morning! woohoo. quickly changed into my gear and my mum very kindly sent me down to leng kee cc where our monthly brisk walking was held. when i reached there at 7.30 i got quite a shock! i was one of the earliest and the rest of the csc weren't here yet. so, i just sat down at the counter and started registration...the old folk each have this card with all the dates of our brisk walking this year and if they collect 5 stamps, they get to redeem a funky towel. so i started chatting with some of them and of course stamping on their cards. they are all treating me like a friend now! though i suck in dialect, i could still understand simple phrases like "have you had breakfast" and correspondingly answered in chinese. phew-ly, meng li and some of the others soon came as we need traffic controllers. headed the warm-up this time again! but i was already chucking inside when i told them to do breathing exercises, threatening to break out into a real laugh should they all say "huuuuu" when i told them to breath in again. and oh yeah, i just realized "hu" means to breathe out, so i should have said "xiiiii", "huuuu" instead. sounds weird huh? and so we started the brisk walking to leng kee park where i really jogged (haven't done so in AGES).


leng kee park has this very kampungish homely feel to it that just makes you wanna run round and round the track totally immersed in greenery. i didn't even feel a thing at all after 5 rounds but that may be cos i'm too fit la. righttt. after the jog, we gathered everyone and headed back to the cc where we did our cool down. heh arrowed meng li to do the cool down cos i am already very cool. haha so lame.

cool down + folk dance 
after cooldown, i rushed down to queenstown cc to help out in the education grant presentation. did registration (maybe i'll get promoted to registrar more quickly after i graduate with all the registration i do?) for the sec sch/jc/ite kids and you really get to see all the different sides of kids. there are some act cool ones, some that don't like to conform (tell them to paste sticker on their chest they will paste it ANYWHERE but there), shy ones (there was this girl called joie something zu er and i was commenting, wah you got same name as the singer joey rong zu er and she was like shyly saying no lah..different then hurried off). i wonder what kind i was? i think the hyperactive but shy in front of others kind. after registration, i helped out in ushering them up on stage and it was quite another mini nightmare. they will just cluster around and i really have to sort them out properly by name. thankfully there wasn't any cockup. we were also introduced to the new pap candidate who will be replacing mr chay as mp during the presentation. he's a nice young man, very friendly. [sensitive issue alert!]

education grant. hoardes of excited kids! 
after the presentation which ended late, we had to quickly pull plastic sheets over the tables, distribute water, put up signs and prepare the stage for the community lunch. all the subgroups of queenstown cc plus members of public came to enjoy a lunch of homecooked food together. it was quite heartwarming to see all the races in perfect harmony (except some of the chinese who were extremely kiasu, koping all the indian and malay food). part of the program also included snippets of marriages of the different races which certainly caught my attention. indian weddings are exquisite for the number of symbolic items that are used throughout the procession whereas the malay wedding looked totally colourful and fun.

mp mr chay and new pap candidate mr bay 

community lunch...yum! 

the indian wedding..cool!

the malay counterpart! 
after lunch, there was of course the usual clearing up to do since yec is in charge of logistics. chair stacking, table top rolling, rubbish chucking etc etc. yec meeting came next as we settled details and packed the donated food for next week's moral welfare home visit. we also tied up quite a few loose knots here and there and guess what?! i'll be like super busy for the rest of apr and may. visits, leadership camps and a whole of activities..not forgetting the mega project involving all 9 yecs in tpgrc. so exciting! we also brought up some membership issues which irked me a little. yec has many posts in the committee simply because the needs of young people are so diverse, but some of the people after filling up the posts during bgm (biennial general meeting) just disappear or worse, only appear at events in which they have something to gain e.g. lunches. as such, we (and i) have decided to suspend the membership of quite a few of the post-bearers and recruit new volunteers that genuinely wanna contribute. i've already asked kx and he's pretty keen on the idea..yah lah..i knows he also has big plans of wanting to serve the nation so he popped into me mind immediately.

oh yeah.

while jogging with meng li as she told me a bit more about yp and asked if i was interested. i seriously dunno, but after chatting with larina and tech chye now i dun think so. it's more than true that quite a few people join for the prestige cos it's glam, or maybe for thinking that they may one day land themselves in positions of power. i think that's an ulterior motive. to me, we're all there to serve, and personal interest should NEVER come first. if they do, we're serving for all the wrong reasons. sometimes it's quite disheartening when people say we're serving pap which we're not because yec and csc are totally not politically linked. and just now over dinner, my grandma actually joked that i was just sa-ka-ing (boot-licking) the people at the cc. sad. i don't get a single cent, nor a single privilege for everything i'm doing. oh well, i think time tell no lies. and i do think that even if someone does end up in politics, he or she should know the ground well and not just wanna go straight into power. power per se, is nothing if you don't have the support of the people and of course a leader has to learn to be a servant.

enough of political issues! they suck.
wongy was here on 9:30 PM