Community work with the 8TV team :)

Less than a week after the Reading Bus project, I went on a mission to do some community work again! This time, it's with the 8TV people! :DDD In conjunction with 8TV's 8th anniversary, they organised a charity trip to the Selangor Handicapped & Mentally Retarded Children Centre in Ampang. They posted this event on Facebook, and chose 8 lucky people who are interested to join them :)

Going on a trip with 8TV will give me some media exposure, so I jumped at the chance. And I got selected! Which was so so amazing :) Also, visiting the centre would give me an experience to help out those children, as I've always been interested in mentally retarded children - namely autism.

Anyway, it was a Thursday and I have Moral Studies class but what the heck I'm skipping it! So my mom drove me to Sri Pentas in Bandar Utama and we left quite early in case of any jam at 10 something in the morning.



Was walking in when Juliana called me and asked to confirm whether I'm going or not, and I told her that I've already reached! She sounded very shocked XD Then she invited me up to the office to wait.

But first! I lepak-ed around the building.. taking pictures hehe! Okay so now I'll give you a virtual tour of Sri Pentas :)

This is OneFM's studio! Uhm so sorry lah I don't know who's that coz I don't listen to OneFM :p



After acting so mysteriously (coz I don't know if I can simply snap pictures in the lobby lol after one second you see guards running after me).. I took the lift to the 3rd floor where the 8TV office is. Excitedexcited! I'm in the 8TV officeeee!

I sort of got lost but luckily a kind guy directed me to the right place. It was at the far end of the corridor and yeah I didn't expect it to be at the far end...

Colourful posters/painting decorating the walls of the corridor :) So beautiful right! You know it's a fun place to work at already :p



The Big 8 Family! Some of my favourite hosts are inside :D But 99% of them I do not know who.



Go Travel! The host Xiao Yu is the one who inspired me to become a travel show host because it's the perfect job in the world! You get to travel and get paid for it! What's not to love?



More paintings.



More more paintings. Oh I love this place already.



I waited for quite long.. because I arrived so early :/ Anyway, I love the office so much! Yellow lights, orange walls and their cubicles look so cosy :3 Aww man I would love to work here someday! XD

When it's time, Juliana took me out via a secret hallway at the back of the office (ooooh) and at the moment Owen Yap was standing in the corridor looking all smart and handsome with his briefcase and talking on the phone! When I went out, he looked up and smiled at me ohgosh I'm swooning! (Okay so maybe he was smiling at Juliana and then saw me and kept his smile)

On the bus, I sat with Adrian who's graduating this year from university. He's quite nice to talk to! Sigh but he asked me to add him in Facebook (he gave me his email address to make things easier) but it turned out there weren't any results from his address. OMG. I feel so bad; he must have think that I've forgotten him :/

Arrived at the destination half an hour later!



Helped to carry (heavy) stuff from the bus. Really heavy! 8TV brought all of these including mattresses for the kids.



We helped them to lunch first. Lol KFC snack box! My first time tearing meat for people. They were all munching on happily :) So okay no they're not kids.. but I wonder what is the "children" word doing there in "Selangor Handicapped & Mentally Retarded Children Centre".



After their lunch, some guy was shooting Baki and whatz-his-name-but-he's-handsome with some of the "children". Did it went on air? Did it??



I dunno what is whatz-his-name doing but it sure is funny!



Bakiiiiiiiiiiii ! ;)





Getting ready to pose for the cameras.



Group photo #1 Can spot me? ;p



Group photo #2



Group photo #3



Inside the house. The volunteers helped to carry all the stuff in. I hoisted those mattressed until my arms ache :( Yeah I know what you're gonna say next so stop.. Don't say anything! XD



In another section of the house. Something like a playroom I guess.



Later, we were all separated into groups namely the Painting group, Gotong-Royong group, and Playing with the Kids group. I was in the Painting group and Gary, Mei Sim and Baki were in the same group as me! :D

Sketching for the drawing on the wall :)



Our materials! There were limited colours of paint so someone had to drive out to get more colours lol. I think there were only pink and orange here.



Unleashing their creative sides :p



...While the volunteers stood back and watch lol!



Working with them requires communication. They speak such fluent mandarin and sometimes I had no idea what they're talking about! Even Baki speaks mandarin more fluently than me, and even adding in some bombastic vocabulary @.@ #embarasssedmuch

And talking to them, made me speak mandarin in the Chinese slang (if you know what I mean) because they were all speaking in Chinese slang (except Baki). It sounded really weird coming out from my mouth coz all the time I speak mandarin in the Malaysian slang :p



They were painting halfway, then they went off to shoot a video LOL. I was wondering why the girls were wearing make-up and were dressed so nicely when they're out doing community work haha!

Baki is so cute :3



They talked so confidently in front of the camera! Years of experience.. wow. I wish I could be like them someday :) Words just flow out spontaneously from their mouth and they were just having fun joking around!



They looked so relax there.. :p



Picture with them! :D From left: Dennis, Baki, Gary, Mei Sim and Wind.



Continuing their work... in pink and orange :p



And then, it's time to shoot Megan and Prem from the 8TV Quickie!



I regretted not taking a picture with them :( I so wanted to! (Megan was standing right next to me and I wanted to ask but she seemed so cool lol) She's a hottie alright! :p



Some of the 8TV people playing with the "children".



Finally! After 3 hours of drawing and ruining and painting and restoring it, the blank wall is finally completed with bright colours of pink and orange (oh I think that's 8TV's theme colour lol) with Pow Pow (8TV mascot) in the center :)

Gary high-fived me btw! :p



The 8TV chinese group!



Add in the 8TV english group!



Facebook winners! (The guy in the center is from 8TV) We missed out the rest coz I think they were already in the bus.. Oh and we took the 8TV bus back! *proud*



Another shot!



Shooting again. LOL.



It was a fun time out with the 8TV team helping the less unfortunate people. Another badge of experience added to my sleeve!

(Ahhhhhh omg Owen Yap's smile.)

P.S. If anyone has seen any videos regarding this trip on TV or on the Internet, kindly give me the link thanks! :D

Reading Bus? Yes, the Reading Bus!

Have you ever heard of the Reading Bus project? Well if you have not - no, it’s not a moving library nor is it reading in a bus, literally. It is however, a community service whereby volunteers bring in books to the less fortunate children and educating them in fun ways.

A couple of weeks ago, a group of us A-Level students from Sunway University went to a small Indian community in Balakong, Selangor for the Reading Bus project, which is part of our Moral Studies assignment.

Our Moral Studies class which comprised of 3 A-Level classes (S1, S2 & A1) were separated into 2 groups for this project, namely Bubblegum and Mint. I'm in the Mint group, thank goodness XD According to our lecturer, Sunway University is by far the first university participating in this project.

In the bus, departing from Sunway.



My sampat friend Mel and I were (obviously) sampat-ing at the back of the bus. Only 2 of us at the back row so yeah :D Even small and stupid things can make us burst into laughter which was darn crazy. This photo very cacat though :(



We arrived at their flats a little after noon (after getting lost for awhile), and were greeted by curious children together with the intermittent ringing of the bell from the ice-cream man.



So this is where the Indian kids stay!



All of us were blur on what to do and just stood there outside while some of them got ice-creams. Even our lecturer got one! -.-



There were about sixty Indian children, their age ranging from pre-school to secondary school. They're not orphans so don't be mistaken! Although some may have lost either one parent..



Most of them were at a very young age which means hyper activeness, so imagine the chaos that ensued as we stepped into the community hall. These kids were running towards a small bookshelf and crowding around it, each grabbing a book that interests them.



Their enthusiasm struck me, because even though they are not enrolled in a proper school with good classroom environment and quality teachers, they cherish knowledge and are eager for it.



Those guys look like gangsters bullying the kids huh :p





As we were thrown in the middle of a bunch of excited kids, we felt like fish out of water at first and were unsure of what to do. But luckily for us, the person-in-charge managed to calm the children down and got them to sit in order.



We started with icebreakers, playing ‘Kumar Says’ (as in ‘Simon Says’). Some of the young kids did not understand simple English, so we pitched in to help by demonstrating the actions.



It was a fun time connecting with the children before we started the Reading Bus.



Basically, the aim of Reading Bus is to guide these underprivileged children in reading.



Heheh, the two shy-iest guys in my class :p


After each of the children settled down in groups with a book that was sponsored by Reading Bus, we made ourselves comfortable in between them.

Each of us had our own creative ways in teaching them how to read, and the children were eager to follow after us, pronouncing each word clearly.



Here's Jolene with the group of kids she was in-charged of. I assisted her :D Notice that boy?



He's the 5-year-old boy whom I “took under my care”. Unfortunately, he did not understand a single word of English but only Tamil, as I saw a hint of comprehension in his face when his elder sister spoke to him in Tamil. I kind of gave up reading to him halfway through since he was uninterested in the book, and also to prevent him from running away from this weird girl yakking away in gibberish.

In the end, I immersed myself in his world and started doing all sorts of actions while making animal sounds. Well you know, to keep him entertained. And he reciprocated by crawling over my lap, doing a spider-crawly thing with his fingers. I am truly touched!

Now is my turn with the kids :D See his blank face!



He became my favourite kid, and during break time where all the children munched on cupcakes provided by us, I made sure to keep an eye on him. Yes, I am biased like that. I found him a book about T-Rexes from the bookshelf (I got to know he likes dinosaurs), and I was pleased to see him get entranced by the colourful pictures as he flipped through the pages.

This photo is blur and I think I wasn't ready lol :/ He loves the T-Rex book so much! :p



Moving on, we played more games with them, sang nursery rhymes complete with actions and generally having a great time bonding with the kids. Later, we had a spelling competition and the words were extracted from the books we read to them. The kids were extremely enthusiastic as many hands shot up once a word was asked to spell out, so we did not know who to call first! They received colourful stickers as a reward for spelling the word correctly, which most of them did.

Since we had leftover stickers from the spelling competition, we decided to give them all to the kids but the catch was that they had to do whatever we asked of them, for example singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Stars. The kids did a great job, and the stickers were gone merely in minutes. For the last part, we handed out boxes of colour pencils to the children in hopes of colouring their lives - figuratively speaking of course.

My honest opinion and thoughts about the project:

All in all, it was my first community service (yes, after eighteen years of my life…) and I had a pretty good experience. It warms my heart to see the faces of the children light up, and to hear the sounds of their laughter while they were enjoying themselves during games time.

These children, they do not have much but they are easily contented. A little lesson that I have learnt from this project is that, sometimes we need to take a step back and truly appreciate what we have; not constantly demand for materialistic goods that we do not need. Besides that, these children are hungry for knowledge even though they are financially challenged. I know kids who are studying in expensive private schools but sadly, they do not fully grasp the importance of education and take their parents’ efforts for granted.

I know all these sound cliché, but really, after seeing those kids living in conditions which are lacking in basic necessities, I felt a sense of gratitude surging through me. I think all of us who are capable of helping should really humble ourselves and give back to the society with a willing heart. Only then will we realise the true meaning of lending a helping hand to those in need.