Friday, October 22, 2004

Mood: Elated, sorta accomplished...
Song: Stefanie Sun - Wo De Ai (New song! She's back!!! Yay!)

Yay, just came back from MINDS (Movement for the Intellectually Disabled) Jurong Gardens School earlier after finally executing my community project required for one of my modules, Singapore Society. Well, it was quite heartwarming to see those special kids, and they actually will smile and interact with you. Totally changed my initial perception of such people. Not that I'm discriminating or whatsoever, but sometimes I feel that society does not really give much attention to the intellectually disabled. I mean, yes, everyone knows about NKF patients and their dialysis treatments and pain, etc, but how many people actually know about the intellectually disabled? Some will even shun away from them when they are in public or call them retarded behind their backs. I know I am not the most altruistic or saintly person in the world (read: me=bitch) but sometimes I feel that more attention and awareness need to be showered upon them. Was so totally surprised when all of them came to shake our hands and thank us after the event.

Anyway, really felt accomplished when we left the MINDS school gates with my group members and the volunteers from Tanglin Secondary School. Phew! Like today felt so surreal cuz we weren't really anticipating this event to really take off. We faced so many countless limitations during the planning and liaising stages that we were almost oblivious to even the harshest of the bad news, should any come our way. Oh my, loads came our way, and they were actually not our fault. First of all, we couldn't find any suitable secondary schools initially to accept our project proposal. At long last, we settled on Tanglin Secondary. We were like soooo elated. Anyway, some MINDS students came down with scabies shortly after (a contagious skin disease), and we had to almost call off the event, cuz the school was under quarantine by the Ministry of Health. And during this period of time, it was basically a lull cuz there was nothing we could so. Soooo helpless. And there were more pieces of bad news to come, which I don't feel like elaborating. It came to the point where my whole tutorial group was concerned about our project. Everyone was like perpetually asking, "Hey, how's your 111 going?" And we'll just laugh it off cuz we had no freaking idea what was to be done, since everything was out of our control. It was not even our fault! At least if it was, we could have done something to rectify it. But too bad... it wasn't. Haha... But at least, after all this crap that we endured, we emerged more experienced in dealing with organizations, and also am more aware of the intellectually disabled, which I felt was really enriching. Now the only hurdle left is the 40-page report to be submitted next week. Oh well, after having fun, some (or actually, a lot) of work has to be done.

Exams are in like a week's time! Argh! Haven't really prepared much since I was busy doing stuff for the MINDS project during most of this week, and also my other research project on idol-chasing and MTV. I felt so disadvantaged when we were analysing our survey results on that research that day since I didn't do maths in JC, and have no freaking clue about statistics. Then Charis and Irwin were like trying to explain to me what is null hypothesis, chi-square, etc... and I really tuned out. Ewww.. so hate maths and this stats thing has re-lighted my long forgotten grudge against the revolting subject. Hmm.... But I will survive... Or at least struggle cuz I have to do my part of the research report! LOL. I will so not be nullified by null hypothesis!

Suddenly I am looking forward to Christmas. I so need the holidays, the actual no-school-at-all holidays. But in the meantime, I will and must get over the dreaded exams first. It's time to revive the mugging spirit!

Gv complained @ 8:05 PM

{xoxo}