sgb
Tuesday, December 2
well here i am in melbourne now, 3 hours ahead of most of you all. so it's time for one of my rare holiday posts! how fun!
so the annual bb sgb just kicked off. it gets quite an amount of attention from the media, but honestly if i werent in bb, i wouldnt know of its existence. and since my december is like almost totally filled with other agenda, i had to clear 2 of my 5 required dates of service before i left for aussie. the prospective of having to do work in 2 out of 3 consecutive days, especially in full-u, definitely wasnt a pleasant thought. but as it turns out, they both turned out to be pretty slack hehe XD
28th nov was the opening ceremony, and as always, it was slack! but compared to last year, the area was really poor in comparison. we were standing outside ngee ann city out in the hot afternoon sun, while last year we were in the wonderful air-con basement of ang mo kio hub. perhaps its because of the different guest of honours... last year was our beloved pm lee, while this year was prez nathan, so maybe its a clear show of the great difference in care they give to these 2 different posts :P or maybe its just cos theres lack of funding this year.
well anyway, the ceremony itself was extremely short this year, we just formed 2 flanks for el presidante to walk through, while we saluted him as he walked pass. then during the ceremony we had to form a human wall to block the public from entering the area. of course there was a special task force of people blocking public from entering the area the whole time, called the bouncers! haha. was quite silly also, cos the officers said they have to stand on the pavement and bump people, and cant stand on the tiles of ngee ann city, otherwise they'd sue us for shooing people off their land haha. okay, whatever man. then the ceremony itself was rather lame, just the person in charge of sgb giving a speech (spich!), then presenting of mementos to the sponsors, and then fairprice ntuc pushing 10 trolleys of goods out from the gift box and back inside. talk about a complete waste of time and energy... lol.
what's more, we had to rehearse for it quite a number of times, such that they made us come down like 3 hours before the actual thing was supposed to start! and what did we have for lunch? typical bbhq food: rice, some old hard veges, some tofu, and some s&s chicken. and we had to sit on the walkways of orchard road to eat... lol then we were all talking about how privileged we were to have this once in a lifetime opportunity XD
then after lunch we walked around stoning, finding places to sit out of the sun's reach, and it sure wasn't easy... oh btw, this year's orchard road christmas decor looks quite sucky. ok back to the point, the band was practising their playing, and suddenly we became a tourist attraction. so many tourists came to take pictures and videos lor! then even when we were rehearsing again, they took picture of our wonderful flank, and some people even walked through haha XD
so finally mr prezzie was about to arrive, and we all got in line. the car was like surrounded by dunno how many police cars lor. tsk tsk tsk, disrupting orchard road traffic all for one man, how inconsiderate XD
then finally the ceremony was over and the reception began, of which we weren't allowed to take anything till everyone had left... so those of us who formed the flank went into the gift box to chill and fight for the aircon, assuming that mr prezzie would eat quite a bit and talk to many people too. but little did we know he left fairly quickly, and we weren't there to flank! hohoho! so in the end the bouncers had to form a 1-sided flank for him. oh well, that's his problem.
so after he left, we just had to organise the goods from the ntuc trolleys onto shelves. its quite stupid really, they just had to split up everything and put them in every single trolley... and in the end, it just creates more work for us, having to take all the different stuff out of all the trolleys, and walk all over the place to put the stuff on the shelves. why couldnt they just have grouped the items together and put them in single trolleys? would have made things so much easier for us and for them. totally no thinking one! at least it still was an easy task. so we got off early and completed a nice short date of sgb :D
the next date i thought i was down for a day of back-breaking work doing warehousing at the bbhq, especially since most of the gift boxing jobs were being given to the founders men. but by some stroke of luck, or maybe eugene's desperateness to get gift box duty, eugene managed to get a spot for both of us at jurong east :P
ok before i go on i'd better explain a bit more... when we're assigned to go down to the headquarters for duty, we can be given 3 different jobs. the most common one is warehousing, followed by deliveries, and finally gift boxing, and the amount of work you do at each one varies quite a lot. warehousing is the most dreaded one of all, as its just shifting goods around the hq, arranging them in supposedly nice neat piles. of course, its the one that requires most energy.
deliveries are rather fun, and all you have to do is dump 10 to 12 bags into a car, and be driven around singapore to deliver the bags of goods to the needy people we're helping. but mind you, the bags can be really heavy... and sometimes if the driver you get is really mean and lazy, you end up having to do the work all by yourself, and thats especially bad if you're the only one in the car, and you have to carry like 1 bag with each arm, since each receipent gets 2 bags each. and also if you're alone you have no one to talk to the whole time. of course last time that happened to me, i spent my time smsing people here and there, hehe XD.
and finally, the most coveted duty of them all, gift boxing. its really extremely slack, as all you have to do is sit or stand around and smile, and help people place their donations in the box, and take care of the money tins where some people give cash donations. and whats make it even more slack is that we're not allowed to walk up to people to ask for donations, so in other words you're only allowed to sit there and wait for people to approach you. haha, well i dont mind them making our job much slacker :P
so back to the day itself. they gave us 10 bucks each as allowance for our meals, which eugene called our pay :P heh, then since eugene lives in that area, i just let him lead how to get there. they actually told us to take an mrt there, but to cut costs we took an extremely long bus ride which took us all the way to the bus interchange at jurong, while we slept for the entire journey. haha, thank goodness we only needed to be there by 11am, cos the bus ride was unbelievably long, and we only arrived at 10:50am, when we left the hq at i think 9.30am++. but of course you have to add in the fact that the bus is highly irregular and we just missed the bus when we got to the bus stop, so we had to wait the total interval to get on the next bus. but at least its cheaper than taking bus to mrt, taking mrt and then taking bus to the location, and after all, we got there in good time :D
so when we got to the ntuc at jurong, lo and behold! what do we see right next to the gift box? a group of girl guides selling their cookies! tsk tsk tsk, totally invading our area. apparently they thought our gift box was an ice box hahaha XD but i cant blame them, cos it does look like a huge one, apart from the huge words saying 'BOYS' BRIGADE SHARITY GIFT BOX' on the cover. so we ended up having to use another table, and waited for people to come and donate stuff.
sitting there was very very very boring. what's more, since its like the first year the sgb has a gift box in jurong, quite few people knew of its existence, especially since it was only the 3rd day of its opening there. so naturally there were few donations, and most of our time was spent sitting at the table. so what else to do but to spend some 'quality time' with eugene :P but eugene's a cool guy, so spending time with him is totally easy. thank goodness its not like i was stuck with a stranger or anything.
so we did whatever we could with the resources available. eugene created his homemade drumset with all sorts of stuff, like the tin cans for donations, the boxes that the girl guides were selling their cookies in, and empty drink bottles from which we had hydrated ourselves with drinks from ntuc, and used pencils as drum sticks. then we played songs on my handphone till the battery was dying and we had to stop, then we also took turns at napping, so that at least one of us was awake to tend to the gift box and money tins. he also wanted to read his Bible, and before he did that he insisted on buying a highlighter, which he spent half an hour just finding one, cos there weren't any stationary stores nearby. all in all he almost finished the book of matthew while we were there.
there were of course some incidents that were particularly funny XD cos you know when people wanna donate stuff to the gift box they usually stop their trolleys next to it and unload the stuff in, then we'd go and help them. so this man pushed out his trolley and stopped in front of the gift box. then an old man started taking out the items, and we seriously thought they wanted to donate those stuff, so we started to take the bags out of the trolley too, then the man stared us angrily and said, "why? why?" wah so pai seh man! stupid man, wanna do your unloading do it somewhere else la, not in front of the box!
and the other funny incident was when i saw a typical lao po po walking with a small toddler who was making a lot of noise. then the old woman was trying to get him to shut up, and like our typical hdb aunties, she pointed at us and said in chinese, "you better keep quiet ah, if not i bring you to the policeman over there!" then the boy actually looked at me and kept quiet XD hahaha, i cant believe they thought we were policemen :P hilarious man! i couldnt stop laughing after they left XD hehe
for lunch and dinner i da baoed chicken rice from the hawker centre, but since his aunt lives so near by, his aunt later took him out for dinner once we were let off, and so it was the first time i saw one of eugene's relatives! never before have i laid eyes on any family member of eugene's, and i usually see at least 1 of every of my close friends' family members, whether in person or in picture, so it was rather cool :D apparently he mentions me quite a bit to them lol. but in any case, they're very nice people, just like him (:
well i can safely say that the company sgb dates for me this year were pretty fun all in all, and they were easily completed. so i just have to gear myself up for the next round on 28th to 30th dec where i'll be going again as part of some award requirement... haiz. oh well, hopefully it'll be as easy XD
P.S. Australia is cool! And i'm talking about both the country and the upcoming movie :D haha. do watch it when it comes out in singapore on 26th december :P nicole and hugh carry the movie very well (:
AMEN;
3:49 pm
