I've still got sands in my shoes.

I've got a tornado of emotions running through my mind now and i think i shan't bother to pen them down. I'm never good at that anyway.
Certain things are just better off locked up and tucked away somewhere dark and safe, since it doesn't make any difference whether or not it's given voice.

So the midterm holidays is GONE. noooooooooooooooo....

managed to settle some maths assignment, a bahasa indo essay, a teeny weeny bit of pathetic amino acid reading, one practice question of applied chemistry (does peeking at the answer count?) and that's all folks. pretty wasted as you can tell. But not too bad, honestly. at least i stayed off my bed considerably.

some interesting things have been happening in the period of me being MIA. I've gotten myself a new fish tank, complete with a log with some plants growing on it plus 8 pretty goldfishes, i've gone to batam and come back, and i think i just landed myself in a pot of hot soup by joining Sheares Hall JCRC, Director of Special Function. For those of you who dont know what's JCRC, good for you. i dont feel like elaborating.

The rally is next monday.

one of my goldfishes, the one who looks like it's wearing lipstick, died yesterday evening. and this morning i woke up dreaming that the rest of the goldfishes ate up the ornamental log in the aquarium. I am such a retard. and i dont even watch TV.

So while the rest of you were wasting your midterm break away sleeping or shopping or nua-ing on wednesday afternoon, yours truly were baking under Batam sun, scampering about visiting schools, classes, and interviewing indonesian kiddos. It was a field trip for the bahasa indonesia module i'm taking, and we gotta write a report out of it. But it was such a fulfilling trip, and i am glad that i decided to go for it instead of the Food Science trip to KL that was held on the same day, especially after i found out yesterday that Denyse and Keerling ended up not going since KeerLing got admitted to the hospital for her conjunctivitis plus she scratched her cornea or sth.. oh goodness.. can you pls get well soon..

so anyways, we visited this local high school and also a tiny dorm for the local financially-challenged primary school kids which was located further away from the city, on the outskirts of the island. The high school trip didnt leave me much impression, just the usual bunch of prepubescent kids in uniform. But the latter affected me quite a bit.

Here goes. the pictures say it all.

kids living at the dorm were 10-12 year olds and their parents were mostly fishermen, or labourers of some sorts who paid Rp. 180,000 (SGD$35 equivalent) a month for their kids to stay there, get some basic education, food and shelter.

It was evident that the living conditions were extremely minimal, and the most of the kids walked around barefooted, even on the grimy, dirty soils.



Shoes were somewhat a luxury and were kept on top of a cupboard tucked away elsewhere. The kids only wore them when they go home to their parents during the long holiday. Their weekends were also spent in the dorm.








The head of the dorm divided the 64 kids into a few groups of 6-8 kids each, to play "host" to us, the ignoramus city-kids. They were sitting quietly in their seats and the moment the headmaster gave them the cues to start entertaining their assigned "guests", the kids assigned to my group immediately sprung out of their seats like some happy puppies and started frolicking around Seaton, excitedly grabbing his hands and leading him out of the room, leaving me, rudy and the other girl tailing behind.
They've probably never seen a caucasian before, making Seaton a preferred exotic specimen. :D
The kids led us to a little river bank at the back of the dorm, their favourite hang-out place, while we talked to them and tried to get to know about their lives, which we needed for the report. It's just mind-blowing how blissful and carefree they are. While most of us fret over not being able to get the latest zara blouse/handphone/laptop/car/boyfriend/girlfriend or not being able to get a CAP 5.0 or not having enough moolah to spend, these kids are contented with simple pleasures like watching ants fight, setting traps for iguanas, playing badminton with worn-out racquets and catching crabs in the river.

Me thinks they're actually really really photogenic. They morphed into a thousand and one monkey poses the moment rudy picked up his impressive-looking SLR camera.

There are many more photos we took, but loading them up using blogger is such a chore, i think i'll just leave them where they are.

The kids sang us the Sayonara song (Indonesian version of Auld Lang Syne) when we were preparing to leave, and chased after our bus a little when we were leaving. I wanted to load the photo too.. but the loading page just timed out. grargh.

And another thing that warmed my heart was the fact that the doors and window panes of the dorm were painted mostly yellow and its effect was that the place had such a sunny and cheery feel! Since the dorm was a christian dorm and its headmaster is a pastor, each of the doors were painted with the words "Jesus loves".

It's during moments like these that i wish i have all the money in the world, that maybe, just maybe, i could make their lives a little better. maybe buy them new shoes.
Hope i have the chance to go back there some time.

Have you any idea how LONG it took me to blog this single entry? stupid blogger is super photos unfriendly.

but oh well, the crux of this entry is that, it had been an eventful week. I wont lie by saying that i'm in my best of moods and everything is nice and dandy. Many things are just wrong, and i'm in a jumbled, inarticulated emotional mess. Dont come asking, i may not answer.
i guess there are just many things i dont comprehend, why things turn out the way they do. why people just dont help themselves, i myself guilty as charged.

But oh well, life is a maze. you either love it or hate it.

and i suppose it's so much easier to love than to drain your brain juice thinking of creative ways of making the world a miserable place.