Where dreams go......: 09/01/2007

Soaked up "Fashion Babylon" by Imogen Edwards-Jones that Marky loaned me... and I finished up "The Glass Castle" by Jeanette Walls.

"Fashion Babylon" was rather light reading. It provided an insight to the fashion industry from a young and budding designer's point of view. In a way, it gave the readers a good feel of the complexity of the industry behind the scenes. And it was interesting... 'nuff said.

"The Glass Castle" on the other hand, had a more serious note to it. It was nonetheless, very delightful reading. Jeanette Walls' writing was simple, yet powerful. The book depicts a factual narration of her life, with her siblings and parents and I just couldn't bring myself to put the book down. All that I felt after reading her story, was admiration.

A must read!

Moving on to my next book, "The Touch" by Liu Hong.

I had a most meaningful weekend in a long time. Under an initiative of the Yayasan foundation by Pak Kris Wiluan, my boss and I helped coordinated a charity project where a group of Singaporean doctors and nurses volunteered to provide free health check-ups for the under priviledged children in Batam. It was a project jointly done with Red-Cross Indonesia (PMI).

We arrived Batam on Friday afternoon, to have a final meeting and to ensure that logistics and arrangements are made. The 4 doctors and 3 nurses from Singapore (who requested to remain anonymous), together with a number of Indonedsian doctors and nurses, had a mission to provide healthy check-ups for a good 1760 kids from ONE kampong in Batam.

It was definitely not a small deal. I was personally involved in the works for Sat and parents & kids came and went. It was no joke that the doctors saw kids one after another non-stop. It turned out that the doctors couldn't even take the planned 1 hour lunch break, and they had to take turns to have lunch, or to run quickly to the toilets and back. The passion and drive that I saw in the volunteer doctors and nurses from Singapore for this project, touched me no end this weekend.

The role I played, was to run around outside, directing Ibus (mothers) and their anaks (kids) in my very broken Malay (which I picked up from my peranakan nanny 'Aunty Jane' long long time back) to proceed to the next available doctor's room to tengok doktor (see the doctor), or to the Apotek (Pharmacy) to collect their Obat (Medication).

Some of the kids were really so adorable but most of them have a problem of being malnutrition. The Singaporean doctors and nurses tried their best to source for packets of children milk and cereal from various vendors and suppliers but there was only so much that they could bring. And moreover, we budgeted for 1000 kids to come to this health screening, but little did we know that the numbers escalated to 1760 on the day before we were to start.

Although the project was to be over 2 days, Sat & Sun, I had to leave on late Sat as my boss had to come back to take a flight to Qatar. I regretted not being brave enough to say that I would like to stay there on my own (without my boss) as I had to tear myself away from what I was doing. I was really enjoying myself to a certain extent and as exhausting as it was, I could see the good cause in it. Finished up 3/4 of a day and I was physically exhausted. I couldn't imagine that the doctors and nurses have to go through these 2 full days of this exercise. I felt all admiration when I recall the zest when the doctors prompted me to bring in the next kid for them to examine once they were done with the one that they were seeing. It was thoroughly heartwarming in and out.

Perk: Pak Kris hosted us over at his Batam Turi Resort and old as it may be, it was a pretty nice place and I could see how nice and pretty it literally is when it was in its more glorious days.

Check out the photos below.....

Planning out the administrative flow of the registration, pre-screening (taking of height and weight) as well as triaging of the 1760 kids, before seeing the doctors...

The entrance of the medical centre which we used for this project...

The tentage that was built to carry out the phase 1 activities...

On the actual day, under the tentage where phase 1 is carried out...

Notice the huge tentage at the back? Many Many Many Ibus and Anaks were being entertained by people hired by Pak Kris, while waiting to be registered...