I know I had not been updating this for donkey months...Haha. I apologize.

My term break just went by and I hardly noticed it when my mum casually reminded me yesterday "Tak skolah ke besok?", Meaning, "Aren't you schooling tomorrow" and I sadly replied, Yeah, back to the neverending battle with school projects and nonsense.

During the term break, I had to divide my time very cautiously and use every seconds wisely. I had to finish my stats homework which I can predict a disastrous results, academic writing assignment 3 with APA style and of course, IS101 which my prof threatens that my grades would be affected if I didn't do anything to the wiki.

Yup, we have our own SMU wiki ala Wikipedia.org. Generally, it contains the subject topics and assume that all students will be actively participate which I doubt so. I know it may be one of the source to do your assignment or case presentation but not the best.

Hari Raya I have to put aside. I don't have the festive mood after the 3rd day already. I was bombarded by the prospective assignments and projects plus meetings after meetings.

Side track a bit. I was involved I Leadership and Team Building project which identified Cheshire Home as our beneficiary. During the term break, our team went down to get the residents involved with our Project Piece-It-Up.

Initially, when I see them paint, I imagined the disastrous effect that we could have achieved but in fact, it turn out to be an abstract art which I think it is impressive. Other than the mosaic, we also chatted with a few of the residents like Vivian, Zainal and others. They are very friendly and did their very best to prove to us that they are also an equal.

Yeah, I think volunteers have this pre-mind set that they have to lower themselves to communicate with them. In actual fact, the residents did not want to be treated that way. They want to communicate to our level. This is evident when we told our aim and objectives, they present it in different perspective, their perspective which is even better.

The lack of awareness is also another thing for them. But our stand is that, would they want to be acknowledged as part of the society? I think they would but how? Their handicrafts are very well made, they know how to surf the net, they read newspapers and aware what we do. The only challenge is to emulate and integrate with the general public.

Hrm....I don't know what to say.

Their art work on the mosaic is very impressive and I agree that we shouldn't underestimate their art skills. I acknowledged that they wanted to be treated as an equal not a secondary class citizens. Another important aspect is also to how to be more approachable to encourage them to talk more. They may have difficulty in talking but they know what we meant. There is a resident who can't talk well but he wrote what he wanted to say, albeit almost illegible.

That's for my term break happenings.