finally i'm here to blog again. haha. anyway, watched WARLORDS with ru and wei on friday! whoo it rocks man. takeshi's so cute in it XD the movie ended quite late and we had to rush over to vj for the band concert. but instead of taking 36, we took 16 which goes a whole big round and it took like almost an hour to reach. so we reached the pt late and missed the first two songs. haha. and i want to apologise to all my jnrs and squadmates who played in the concert for not buying flowers! =X it was really very rushed.. i'm so sorry! :/ i think you can see me trying to hide my face all the time. HAHA. the concert was okay, just that i was super irritated by the few people sitting beside us. they kept shouting and giving unnecessary comments. very very distracting. oh yes. and i was scolded by the bus driver when i boarded the bus. i was the last one in the queue. i guess the bus driver didnt see me. so just as i stepped on the bus, he started closing the door and the bus was already moving. then he saw me and quickly stopped and opened the door again. at the same time saying "xiao jie ah, ni zhe yang zhuo hen wei xian de leh.. blah blah blah" i didnt care to listen loh. please lah, he has the responsibility to check if there are anymore passengers boarding before driving off okay. don't know why is he so impatient. zzz. whatever.

hai. have been going in and out of the hospital many times these few days. stayed overnight twice to accompany my mum. thought she could discharge today but instead she left KK and was warded in CGH. the doctor says he needs to monitor her rashes. it's really very bad. red spots all over the body. i see myself i don't dare to eat after that also. hai. hope she'll be well soon! but you know i was quite shocked when i went to CGH with her earlier today. when she stepped into the clinic, her friends were like crowding around her, asking her what happened. she even told me to help her cover her face so that more people will not know. LOL. and abit she cut people's queue. she got to see the doctor immediately when she went in. then the other patients' appointments are pushed back because of her. i like the doctor she saw just now! haha. she looks very sweet and nice. she asked me if i'm interested in getting any jobs in the healthcare sector in future and i replied "thinking of". and she said it's fun and i should try. haha. she shall be my inspiration then. but it's not easy lah. i don't like to study for so many years also. LOL. shall take one step at a time and see how ba. haha random me again. school's starting in like less than two weeks time!! omg i'm dreading it.

FINALLY I BLOGGED!

There is a total of 4381 words below. It's much longer than a written report. So, READ AT YOUR OWN RISK ;)

BACK :) Okay there are many things on my mind now. I don’t know where exactly should I begin with. This OCIP trip to Baan Nam Pee (which means Nam Pee Village) in Khao Lak, Thailand has been a really good experience for me. Good is the only adjective I can think of at the moment. I have learnt a lot of things which I cannot learn here in Singapore. After interacting with the kids over there, they made me feel as if I am transported to another world from reality. Looking at their pure, innocent and ever happy faces, I really do have the urge to stay there and live that kind of life forever. I can say that the standard of living there is not even half of ours, but yet they are satisfied with what they have. This trip is very short, but I can already feel the warmth, the love from the villagers on the very first day. There was no stress felt, none at all. Everything I had in mind back in Singapore was sort of taken away and put at the back of my mind when I was there. Simple yet happy is what I can use to describe the lives of the people there. We went there together as a LIFE 5 project group. I don’t know many people, in fact almost all who are going. Silent and awkward we were when we went, but noisy and chatty we were when we came back. Rotarian Jimmy and Uncle Leslie told us: We only know Khao Lak as a place before the trip, but now we know Khao Lak as a face after the trip. And I think this really made sense. I'm going to miss Khao Lak a lot, a lot.

Okay enough of formal writing.. haha. I don’t wish to continue writing like this cos my language sucks. HMM I shall begin with the very moment I stepped into BUDGET TERMINAL. (Ehh I predict that you will fall asleep or change windows after reading the first two paragraphs. Hahaha. This shall be a test for endurance. And anyway I’m just trying to share my experience lah haha)

Haha the caps don’t mean anything lah. It's just that I was totally stunned and taken aback when I saw what the terminal is like. It's no more than just a huge container block with aircon. The exterior and interior designs are very simple. Met up with the rest of the group and checked in our luggage. I was quite nervous before that cos the only people I know who are going for this trip are mieo, shijun and iris, plus another girl from S65 but i don't know her name yet :/ The rest are like I never see before at all kind. The others come from different schools, ranging from NTU to telok kurau sec, river valley high, nj and rj. Haha. And the funny part was that we actually have to literally walk to the plane, climb up the stairs and enter. The plane had about 180 seats I think. The space for each seat is actually quite okay lah. But when the person in front of you makes his chair all the way back, you are gonna be stuck in your seat forever. Haha. And the pathway is quite narrow too. Once you stand on the pathway, you will be blocking everyone behind you. Haha. But otherwise everything else is about the same as the other non-budget airplanes. The plane ride is only one and a half hours and Thai time is one hour behind Singapore time.

At Phuket Airport, we waited quite long for our bus to come. Many of us thought that our bus will be like some tour bus with comfortable seats and nice aircon. But almost all exclaimed when we saw a lao kok kok bus stopping beside us. The bus only has fans on the ceiling and the windows are all wide open. When the bus is moving, your hair will fly all over the place and the wind will be beating hard on your face, sometimes until you cannot even open your eyes properly. But the feeling was damn SHIOK. Everytime the bus comes to a stop, I will take my comb out and tidy my hair. Hahaha.

Reached the school in like almost an hour and went to set up our beds first. I was surprised they provided us with mattresses! I thought we will only be sleeping in our own sleeping bags. Heh. Then we expanded our creativity and came out with all sorts of ways to tie the mosquito nets. Too bad I forgot to take a picture of the room. Its damn cool lah haha. The only problem was that there are a lot of insects there! particularly BEETLES. omg i hate them!! they're hard, and big somemore =X Ate dinner and had briefing. The food is comparable to Singapore food. Maybe its because they requested them to cook food with similar taste to Singapore’s one. Haha. Bathed and went to sleep after that. That day was short lah, or rather I already forgot what else happened. Oh the toilets are quite okay too. The water which we used to bathe there was all cold. I had to jump up and down whenever I first poured the water on my body. Haha. And one of the toilet bowls got choked and it was so gross. Imagine shit mixed with toilet paper plus water all soaked together =X

First day of teaching: We were spilt into four groups. My group consisted of Shu Hui, Kai Leng (from NTU), Audrey, Louisa (from TKSS), Amanda (from RVHS), Nicole (I only know she's Uncle Leslie's daughter haha), Shijun, Mieo and me! (all from VJ) Haha I'm so glad I was not separated from mieo :) Ours was the first group and we happened to be taking the P1 and P2 kids. And it was not known to us at that time that they are actually the worst to handle. Anyhow, we did plan our lesson schedules and logistics beforehand properly. But little did we know that we actually underestimated the kids. For the first hour, the kids were still well-behaved and paid attention to us, even repeating after us when we introduced our names and read out the various English words to them. After that, when the ‘big boss’ (haha you will find out who he is in the photo album) started standing up and walking around, most of the boys followed. And slowly the girls followed too -_- then the classroom turned into a marketplace in less than half an hour. Despite us saying “MAIDAI” (cannot in Thai) or “MAICHAI” (no in Thai) or “NANG LONG” (sit down in Thai) many times, they just looked at us with their innocent faces and laughed and walked away -___- Then we have to resort to pulling them back to their places. After that the situation became worse- the boys started fighting with each other. Like WTH. One of the boys called Nu played too much until he accidentally hit his forehead against the window grill. Then blood starting flowing out like water. The other guys surrounded him and I guess they were all in shock too. Rotarian Jimmy came and brought him down to put a bandage. When he was back, he sat in a corner and cried for awhile, but after that he was back to normal, running about again. LOL kids ah, never learn their lesson one. So basically the whole classroom was in a chaos and in the end we gave up trying to pull them back. It was damn tiring can. you have to like exert a lot of strength cos they will keep running away when you pull them. So its like playing tug-of-war like that -_- then instead of teaching them English, we ended up taking pictures and played along with them. LOL what failure AH CHANS (teacher in Thai) we are. The day ended with us being half-dead and I bet the kids must be laughing at us lo. At night, Rotarian Jimmy feedback-ed to us that the teachers are actually not happy with our performance with the kids today and they even requested that the following group who are coming here after us can only take the kids for half a day. So Uncle Leslie made each of the groups do a presentation based on the “kaizen concept”, which requires us to continuously think of the causes and solutions of our problems today so that we can seek for improvements. Okay some chimology here. Haha I heard we will be able to learn this in accountancy. HMM. Heh. But anyway it certainly helped us a great deal. And guess what, our group had the highest number of 10 problems encountered. But I think that the most major problem is actually language barrier. The reason why they don’t listen to us is because they don’t even understand us in the first place. Its like we’re talking to some wall and they’re listening to some aliens talking. Haha. So we stayed up quite late to prepare the teaching stuff for tomorrow. We even went to the library to search for pictures for the words and i even had to copy down the words in Thai characters. It was damn hard to write okay. You know the word “Bus” in Thai characters is like damn long can. A simple three-letter word in English can actually be so difficult to write in Thai characters. Lol funny sia.

Second day of teaching: Both Rotarian Jimmy and Uncle Leslie had warned us that we better perform well today cos its also the last day of teaching. So short hor, I wish it could be longer =X Anyway, we told ourselves beforehand that we are not to laugh and joke with them anymore. We even went to find out more words like “quiet, don’t talk, etc” in Thai from the teachers. As a result, we were much more successful than yesterday. Haha. We managed to keep the kids in the classroom for a longer period of time. And we accomplished our task of teaching them numbers and animals together with the spelling in the morning! :D Most of them paid attention to us although there was a minority group of students who refused to listen to us no matter what. But after lunch, the kids were starting to go out of hand again :/ I don’t know who started it but the students were tearing off pages from people’s notebooks and asking all of us for autographs. Then they also started playing with the door and the windows. There were a few naughty boys who climbed out of the window when we locked the door can. So walao loh. I was so qi geik with them. Louisa lost her temper and slammed the cane on the table, scaring them off…… FOR AWHILE -__- hahah. But overall we still performed better than yesterday lah. Mieo fell sick that day and had to rest early. Haha but she sick alr still want to eat Pringles -_- aiyoo. At night we stayed up late again to choreograph our dance steps for the cultural exchange celebration the following night. I almost couldn’t tahan cos its like 1am in the morning and you have to keep dancing and dancing. I didn’t brush my teeth that night and immediately plopped flat on my bed. Hahaha.

The third day was the most tiring day of all. We were supposed to visit the villages in the morning. There was not supposed to be school cos it’s the King’s Birthday and it’s a public holiday. But some of the kids still came back in the morning. So we had no choice but to stay with them until after lunchtime. In the afternoon we walked a super long way from school to another village to carry out the tree-planting activity. This is because the King’s wish for this year is to conserve the environment. I didn’t get to plant any trees though. Haha. We were brought to a mangrove swamp after that. Made a tough decision to take off my shoes and walk in the water which was knee-deep. Left my socks on and stepped into the water. The feeling underneath my feet was damn gross cos the mud was so soft that my feet kept sinking in. and also there were a lot of tiny, hard and round stuff on the mud. Everywhere I go, sure will step on some one. Better don’t tell me what those stuff are, if not I will freak out man =X Louisa was damn funny. She saw a tree branch floating on the water and shouted SNAKE! Making the others around her scream and run away. LOL. After that we came back to school to prepare for the celebration at night. There was a TV set up in front of us so we could view the real celebration. It was almost similar to our national day loh. The Thai people really respect their King a lot. They sang all the songs loudly with pride. It will be quite embarrassing if you were to compare them with us. Haha. Performances after that. Heng we didn’t really screw up our performance, instead people commented that we did quite well. Haha yeah XD Rotarian Jimmy and Uncle Leslie bought fireworks and set them off at the basketball court. And they bought each of us a fireworks popper (? I don’t know what you call that) too. It’s a long rod-like thingy where it will shoot up balls of sparks some distance up into the air before bursting into small fireworks. Very nice :D The kids were all so amazed. Haha.

FAREWELL to the kids on Thursday morning. I thought I wouldn’t cry but I ended up tearing when we assembled below the IT Centre. The kids were so nice to help me carry my luggage bags down. “Tren” hugged me a lot of times. When she saw me tearing, I think she got afraid and stayed away from me for awhile.. haha. Anyway I really wish for the best for all the students, teachers, and people living there. May God bless them and may they continue to stay happy and cheerful always! :D I'll miss them definitely. After saying byebye to them, we went around to visit the tsunami affected areas. It was quite an eye-opener. The part which touched my heart most was when we listened to Monte The Tailor telling us about his experience during the tsunami. He said he was in his room when the tsunami hit. When he finally knew what happened, he started running uphill with his wife, but he forgot about his brother who was next door. After the tsunami subsided, he went back praying that his brother is still alive.. and true enough, his prayers worked. His brother had a close shave with death. I can really imagine myself in that scene when he was telling us his story. His business was destroyed during the tsunami but he got back on his feet again and today a few hundred people work under him :) The Singaporean couple who set up a CDC in one of the villages was very admirable too. They came over to help after the tsunami and said that they will not go back to Singapore forever but instead they will remain here and help others till they retire. I don’t think I can ever be like them, sacrificing everything you have here and live over there. Dinner was at a restaurant, for the first time. Haha. It was very sumptuous as compared to what we have been eating for the past few days. We had an eight-course meal. LOL whenever a plate of food was being served, we were like 'walao how to finish'. I think we had quite a lot of leftovers.. haha oops. After eating, we automatically took our plates and wanted to wash them. But they told us to leave it there. LOL seems like we’re too used to washing our own plates after eating already. Then, THE HOTEL. Omg it was far from what I’ve expected it to be. Now you shall listen to all my complaints. Haha. The paint on the building had peeled off and it was black & dirty. And there wasn’t even a lobby in the ‘hotel’. Some of the corridors and stairs do not have lights. The lift was so small and it can't stop on the second floor. So we had to climb up the stairs with our luggage. The room was worse. Some of the switches to the lights are not working and the entire switch was black and stained. There were a lot of moss and black stuff between the tiles on the toilet floor and on the walls. Three-quarters of the silver coating of the mirror in the toilet had peeled off. The remaining one-quarter was so blurred that you can hardly see your face. I was so afraid whenever I look into the mirror cos who knows a face may appear behind me =X there wasn’t any hook in the toilet to hang your clothes. There was only a raffia string tied from the shower head to a protruding thing on the wall. And below the string is like the toilet bowl? And my clothes kept dropping into it can. Kept screaming and was so grossed out. And I heard one of the other rooms had mudwater from the showerhead :/ The beds had many kakas. Dead and alive ones also have. We didn’t dare to sleep on the bed itself and use the pillows and blankets provided. Instead we opened our sleeping bags and slept in it on the bed. Haha. And we left the lights on for the whole night. Haha. I wanted to charge my camera using the plug beside the bed. When I plugged in the wire, there was even a spark can. And the worse thing was, we saw two uncles walking into the room directly opposite us. We were so afraid that we locked the door after that. Then suddenly one of our friends opened the door and came in. We were so shocked as to why the door can be opened even if we had locked it. But later we realised that mieo did not turn the lock fully. Haha phew man. If not we would have demanded a change of room. Anyway, we bunked in with Audrey and she kept saying all the ‘choy’ stuff. Cos she was combing her hair in front of the mirror and she dropped the comb.. then she said that something will happen later, freaking both of us out. Haha. Eh but really something did happen. I was deleting some of the pictures in my camera and I ACCIDENTALLY DELETED THE VIDEO OF OUR DANCE DURING THE CELEBRATION!!!!!! It’s like the one and only video that was taken can. It’s the most regretful thing I did for this entire trip. Cos we practised so hard but I didn’t get to see even a tiny bit of our hard work. I wanted to press PLAY but I forgot to exit from the delete part first. Then I just stupidly press the DELETE button and everything’s gone!!! So idiot right. I almost wanted to kill myself loh. Then I can't see how stupid I look in that dance also.. HAI. And I wanted to show my mum too and she said I’m so stupid also. Yah stupid is just the word to describe me. Till now I’m still regretting for what I’ve done =X Anyway, all in all, the whole place was no more than a place which people use to film horror movies. The toilet especially was so suitable. I didn’t dare to bathe too long in it. Too bad I didn’t take any pictures of the place cos I was afraid that ‘something might happen later’ hahaha. So much for the ‘only hotel in town’ =X haha. So sorry for complaining cos I’ve never seen a hotel like this before. It's not rated any stars by the way. So I assume it's a negative-star hotel? LOL. But I’m glad that at least we do not have to share toilets and at least there’s some privacy. Please don’t xiang wai when I say privacy.. its privacy for myself okay thanks :)

We woke up early on the last day cos Rotarian Jimmy asked us to go and see the market which was just beside the hotel. The food was all very cheap. One pao costs only 10 baht which is less than fifty cents in SGD. And one packet of soymilk costs only 10 baht too. I was full already after spending less than one buck in SGD. Haha. Bought some dried stuff back for my family. They recommended the tau sa piah but I tried it just now and it doesn’t taste very nice leh. Lol. Oh and I bargained for the price of a shirt and I bought it for 90 baht instead of 99! Wanted to try 80 baht at first but I got rejected a few times before, so I decided not to be so cheapskate. Haha. Even though it almost means nothing if you convert 9 baht to SGD, at least there’s still a sense of satisfaction cos it's actually the first time I’m bargaining for the price of stuff myself. Normally I just depend on my mum. Haha. And I added a lot of ‘please’ words but I doubt they understand me. Then when the shop vendors say ‘MAIDAI’, I will repeat after them and say ‘DAI’. Haha. But it’s quite fun to bargain lah. At least it’s fun for a first-timer like me. Haha. Then we went to the tsunami victim cemetery. The atmosphere there is really, you know, you can feel it when you get off the bus. Previously we were all chatting and laughing on the bus, but when we all got off, everyone was silent and became serious. There were a lot of dogs guarding when we entered. I counted like around 9 I think. The place looks quite barren. It's like you walk straight, both sides of you are tombstones. And under these tombstones are actually dead bodies which are not collected by family members yet. They are put in a body bag and kept in a capsule and buried underground till their family or relatives come to collect them. But Rotarian Jimmy said the family or relatives of these people either had no money or were having some conflict with the government, so they’re unable to collect the bodies. And some of them might be Burmese people, who entered the country illegally. Then we walked down further and saw the photos of the dead victims. Most of the photos are foreigners who came here for a holiday but perished in the tsunami unfortunately. Then we formed a circle and held hands with each other, observing a one-minute silence and at the same time, offering our prayers for these dead victims. I hope that the family members of these victims will be able to put this very remorseful incident behind their minds and get on with life, but I know no words can describe how hurtful and regretful they felt when this happened. After that we proceeded to the forensic identification unit. We were not allowed to stand close to the building because it was deemed as a ‘dirty area’. Our last stop for this trip is shopping at Central Festival! It’s a shopping mall similar to one in Singapore. The stuff were all getting expensive, as in the prices are similar to those in Singapore already. I only bought a pair of shoes which costs 200 baht and some biscuits and chewing gums back. Lol. And the time they give us for each shopping period is like only one hour at most? So we were all like practically chionging into the place like some auntie like that. I’m sure you can imagine me chionging cos I always make sure I’m the first few in front. HAHAHAHAHA mieoteng will know :) I’m just trying to fa hui some auntie spirit okay XDDD But I didn’t spend all my money though. Gave away the coins as tips to the bus driver and gave the remaining notes back to my dad to exchange back to SGD. I think I left about 700 baht with me, which is around 30 bucks in SGD. In total, I bought an incredible number of 5 shirts. Haha it’s the most common thing to buy everywhere. Other stuff which I bought were a belt, name chain, food and some other stuff. Cannot remember already. But it's nothing much really. Anyway shopping is not the main motive for this trip lah. Haha so I’m quite contented that I can grab as much stuff as possible already :)

And finally we checked in and boarded the plane. The plane ride back was very shaky. And it hasn’t been raining for the past few days when we were in Thailand. So when we heard that it’s raining over in Singapore, we were all like ‘huh raining ah, so not used to it’. Haha.

HOME SWEET HOME at last :) I dumped all my soiled clothes and bags to my maid. Haha I’m so surprised she didn’t complain at all. Anyway, congratulations to whoever who managed to read till this line! Now some dessert for you.. some photos to see below! Or you can view all my photos at this web: http://s269.photobucket.com/albums/jj53/yizhEn-/Khao%20Lak%20Thailand%20OCIP%20trip/?action=view&current=woonice.jpg and you will know more about the kids, the people in this entire LIFE 5 project group and the tsunami sites there :D enjoy!

p.s. I took more than 2 hours writing everything. I typed in Word first before transferring here. Haha cos I scared the internet window will suddenly close down by itself again -__- And the time needed to upload all the photos is a lot too. Haha yay finally I’m done :D off to maple and watch romantic princess now!

the boy who hurt his forehead. he's like holding my hand and waving it. haha.

the boy beside me is umm! mieo's favourite kid. haha. he's damn guai.


me and shijun!

us at phuket airport! the three from left are from RVHS, while the rest are from VJ. haha.

yeah! going off to thailand tomorrow. i'm feeling quite excited + anxious now. tried packing my bag yesterday and took quite a long time to decide on which size of luggage should i use. heh heh. i hope it'll be quite an experience there. and who knows i might see ru there too! i miss her alot ;( audition without her is boring. i wonder how she's doing there. haha.

my grandparents and uncle have flown over here from taiwan today! my mum's off to fetch them alr. haha i cant wait to eat the pineapple tarts! whoo i love the pineapple tarts from taiwan, even though i hate the pineapple fruit itself. haha.

alright, off to double-check my luggage and play WORMS on the PSP. i'm improving after each game.. LOL. at least my worms dont kill themselves now, cos i always press the wrong button. stupid dumb hor.

and my blog will be stagnant from now till i come back. so take care guys! enjoy your holidays :D