Serving Milo at the Memory Walk

Under the the MOE's Community Involvement Programme (CIP), all secondary school kids have to do at least six hours of community service or service learning a year. Personally I think this number is too token and should be raised. You can hardly develop a spirit for volunteerism with just 6 hours a year.

Lesley-Anne' school imposes a more rigorous requirement, namely 100 hours of CIP over four years. Since the school regularly organises CIP events for the students, the requirement is not as daunting to complete as it appears.

That is, until Lesley-Anne brought home a form just before school closed for the holidays. It stated that kids from the SBGE classes had the additional requirement of completing 30 hours of self-initiated CIP (ie not organised by the school) before June 2011.

Lesley-Anne was a little miffed that this requirement was only applicable to SBGE students ("you mean only gifted kids have to do community service?") but she accepted it with grace since she is all for giving back to society anyway. At first, we thought nothing of it, maybe she could hook on to some organisation and volunteer her time during the holidays to complete the hours.

However, when she began to check online, she realised that the task was much more challenging than it appeared. First of all, you apparently can't just volunteer your time, you may only sign up for available opportunities that organisations post online, and these have to be organisations recognised for CIP. Since she was given the form so late, many opportunities during the holidays have been fully booked (I'm guessing by more clued in students desperate to clear their CIP hours!) To add to the complication, we discovered that most organisations don't accept volunteers under the age of 15.

Faced with this dilemma, there was a mad scrambling at home - Kenneth and I scouring the web for opportunities while Lesley-Anne was on the phone with her friends in the same predicament, asking if they had any lobang. Come on, I'm all for community service but when you impose a requirement that has so many administrative hurdles, it's slightly ridiculous.

Anyway, one of the opportunities we managed to find was the Memory Walk in aid of Alzheimer's patients. It was especially meaningful for Lesley-Anne since her late grandfather suffered from Alzheimer's.

So Lesley-Anne and two of her other friends signed up for the event, sacrificing their sleep-in time to make it down to the Marina Barrage by 6.30am on a Sunday morning. Kenneth too, had to wake up early to drive the girls down. When the child does CIP, so does the parent!

Initially, the girls were assigned to hand out surveys and coupons but later, they were tasked with manning the Milo van. Oooh... much more fun, methinks!

Here are the three friends, raring to serve Milo!

The walk attracted a huge turnout. There were some 5,000 registered participants, in fact when Kenneth tried to sign up for the walk, he was turned away as it was full. There were many booths and activities at the Marina Barrage for the post-walk session, including mahjong tables, puzzles etc. I think the biggest draw was the goodie bag though - typically Singaporean!

Meanwhile back at the Milo van, the volunteers were busily dishing out cups of Milo to snaking queues (not in picture, this was taken before the event started). And here's where you see ugly Singaporeans emerge from the woodwork. These are some of the stories Lesley-Anne shared after the event.

10 mins after walk started, an elderly lady zipped by to ask for Milo. Lesley-Anne's friend told her, "Auntie, you go for walk first", to which she replied, "walk already". Wah, 3.4km in 10mins - she must be a super sprinter. Or maybe she meant walking from the starting line to Milo van.

As expected, there was a high demand for Milo and it didn't help that there were the expected kiasu ones who aggravated the crowd situation by repeatedly queuing and asking for multiple cups for imaginary friends.

This particular friend of Lesley-Anne I thought was very garang - she would remember their faces and had no qualms about questioning them, "Three cups? One for you, one for your friend, who's the other one for?" or "Next time bring your friend!" One lady didn't like being interrogated over her repeated requests for multiple cups and muttered something about "the education system nowadays, students so yaya."

One person even brought his own water bottle and asked to fill it with Milo. Aiyoh, I know the Milo from Milo van is very nice lah, but still... Worse, I heard some of the volunteers were called "idiots" and "so slow" by impatient queuers. It didn't happen to Lesley-Anne but it upsets me to hear volunteers being verbally abused. I know it happens a lot with people like social workers and nurses. It's just wrong, when those who are trying to help others have to put up with this sort of mean spiritedness.

Anyway, I think this was a good experience and hopefully, through CIP, Lesley-Anne will be exposed to different forms of community service which can enrich her character.

Random shots at the National Museum

This was our first time to the National Museum since it was refurbished and I must say, I like it very much. The architecture is stately and classic, fittingly so, but it has little interesting highlights that removes the typical stuffiness of a museum.

Like this eerie row of blood red chandeliers swinging from the ceiling, pendulum style.

And a special wall where your image is projected onto the screen.

The high ceilings and use of glass give the whole place a very airy feel.

Pompeii - Life in a Roman town 79CE

We took the opportunity of the Hari Raya Haji holiday to visit the Pompeii exhibition at the National Museum of Singapore. Pompeii holds special interest for us because Kenneth and I visited the actual site when we were touring Italy as part of the Europe student tour back when we were undergraduates. For Lesley-Anne, she studied Pompeii under history in sec 1.

For those not in the know, Pompeii was a bustling roman town with a population of about 20,000 until Mount Vesuvius erupted and completely buried the city in 4m of volcanic ash and pumice in 79 CE. It was then forgotten until the mid-18th century when archaeologists restored it.

Because it was completely covered, much of the infrastructure and objects were well preserved, giving us a rare glimpse into life back then. They even found complete casts of humans and animals in their exact positions when they died. Can you imagine the terror they must have felt?




Pompeii revealed that many of the modern amenities and conveniences we enjoy today already existed back then, the Pompeiians were very advanced in their day. They had a monetary system (left) and scales (right).




They had medicine with intricate medical implements (left) and an aqueduct system which supplied running water directly via lead pipes to fountains and public baths, which the Romans loved. This pic on the right shows a faucet. The Pompeiians even had a heated swimming pool!




Dice was a popular game and we were so amused to learn that even back then, they had loaded dice! Looks like cheating is as old as time.

Roman art and pottery was as refined and exquisite as they come. Here's a glass cremation urn and a fountain from a rich man's house with an elaborate mosaic fresco (wall painting).









And you thought the "Beware of Dog" sign was a modern invention! (Kenneth and I saw the actual one - it's made of mosaic and at the doorstep of a rich man's house. Hysterical!)


The Romans of course, are famous for their military might. This is a pic of their armour - shoulder and shin guards, and a small shield.

On the streets of Pompeii.


The exhibition is on until 23 Jan 2011. Tickets for adults are $12 each and local students get free entry. It's a super deal, visitors can take home a free activity pack and near the exit, loads of kids were crafting a paper gladiator helmet provided freely. That's what I call a child-friendly exhibition.