A better tmr

Sunday, May 13, 2007

Firstly, it wasn't even an old folks home. The old people stayed in their own flats and came down if they felt like it to chat. More of a senior citizens' corner. But they were really poor. They stayed in one-room flats - shared a bathroom with a bedroom. If I heard correctly. I really think I'm kind of deaf. Anyway. So it wasn't really what we expected. We had expected to be, like, inside some sort of house. But it turned out everyone was sitting in a circle - in this 亭子. It looked scary. Somehow. Duno why. Anyway we were all huddling outside the circle. I mean - what'll you do in the circle anyway. It'll be really paiseh. We finally started giving out little goodies to everyone. Or rather we took some of Peiwei's little cakes and gave them out to everyone :) I only had this small pathetic packet of chrysanthemum tea to give out. I thought the old uncles looked rather lonely so I gave it to one of them.
Then a confused babble of voices broke out behind us. We turned around and saw this really old lady being helped up by two elderly women. I went over to help her too, cuz I felt really paiseh to be standing by and watching like that. Her arm was really thin. That was all I noticed at that time. I looked at her later and found out her skin was really white and wrinkly, like paper, like it would tear apart any minute. The horrors of old age. Everyone crowded around her, asking if she was okay. The two aged women told us kindly to go off and that she would be okay. So everyone (including me) left. I didn't really give much thought to it as she looked all right, like she wasn't bleeding anyway or anything.
We had to find out as many old people's names as possible in 5 minutes. The commentator commented, "Uncle, Aunty, 不可以给她们假的名字哦! 她们要赢比赛的!" Haha. I found out only one in the end. Chen Hui Bin. But who cares, 'cause they didn't call me anyway. After that we had to perform for them. Haiix. We did Nanzhong Quan (wushu) for them. Very lame, ya? Then we sang The Prayer. We were horribly out of tune but at least we remembered the lyrics. And we managed to sing two parts. The old folks got bored towards the end anyway. *haiix* they really were like little children. But ones who knew how to talk.
Anyway, Adelle called me and pointed somewhere. I looked in that direction and I saw the old lady who had fallen down just now. Sheena did too. And we saw that she was bleeding from her left arm. "It looks like the blood cannot stop flowing leh," Adelle said, disturbed. It did. It looked really weird. It was like gel. We stared for a while. Then I recalled that I had grasped her bleeding arm just now when I was helping her up. I did not recall any blood then. Had I been the one who caused her wound instead? Thinking I was helping when I wasn't? I looked down on my hand. For some reason Adelle and Sheena did too. There was blood on my hand. Nono, don't misunderstand me. It was really quite a small splash of blood at the part where the skin joins the thumb to the side of the hand - the one that looks a bit like the flap of a chicken wing. But somehow it freaked us, or maybe only me out. Like the idiot I was I didn't quite dare to go over to the toilet and wash it off. Instead I tried to run away from the problem by simply clenching my hand, pretending it wasn't there. Damn! I act like the world's most idiotic idiot when it comes to all sorts of strange situations. Like I had nose discharge on my Math paper once last year (presumably from my Math teacher) and I just stuffed it inside my bag. It's really little wonder I keep getting dreams of getting chased, by assassins, weird gooey octopus monsters with spotty skin and sharks and skeleton fish and whatever.
Anyway, she was bandaged up quite nicely and I didn't look at my hand again in that place. So I forgot all about it and simply had a nice game of Poison Ball. It was about the most fun game that day. The old folk had to throw four balls at us, from different directions. It was very fun. Jumping around, dodging it, skipping away, barely missing. I was really quite glad that I was one of the last half of the class remaining on the 'battlefield'. But a tennis ball sneaked up and prodded my shoe. Anyway, the last person remaining was Steffi. She was looking in the other direction when a miniature basketball rolled amiably towards her and nudged her on the ankle. So I do not know if the old folks really won or did some of us pretend to lose. Anyway we had this lottery thing and it was the end of the trip. I bought some roses that were made by the old folk. They were priced at $1 each. Since Mother's Day was just two days away, I thought it would make a pretty present for her and also give some money to the SCC. We said a merry good bye and left on a pink school bus... lame.
Conclusion: I do not want to get old even more than ever!