Sunday, September 27, 2009

Home Creation is over!

What a hectic day yesterday haha. Began at 8am, where we gathered at the badminton court next to Blk 61. When I arrived, there were enough people to play badminton; by 8.30am there was such a huge crowd of people I think we could have a full soccer competition complete with spectators! and more people kept coming throughout the day. Good? Bad? Depends.

Like the dust on the F1 track, the volunteers took a long time to settle down, so it was only 9am that I gave a short last minute briefing on refurb... some thanks must go to joel and hiok's den upgrading proposal, for the tips on painting (: And then we were off!

Total chaos at the beginning. People just swarmed the void deck of Blk 61, where all the logistics were. Reminds me of the Great Singapore Sale haha. Luckily, the 4Q people (francis, yuen hyung, edwin and jerry) managed to get them under control somewhat. Everyon had to start by cleaning the house, even those with paint jobs, so brooms, dustpans, mops and cloth went flying everywhere. Then, everyone headed for their units.

Ok, so at the admin point we had peace for about 5 minutes. Then at least 5 groups came down to complain that their resident weren't in / didn't want refurb. Thaaanks. And that was only for Blk 61 side: didnt want to imagine what 62 was facing. So we had to reassign people to other units. And apparently many people didn't realise I have 1 mouth and 1 phone, so had to keep many of them waiting while I made calls to unit I/Cs. Sorry!

Felt really guilty for some groups... such as Haozhi's group and Ren Jie's group. They had the bad luck of drawing the absent units, and then the next units that I assigned them to were also absent! However, have to really thank them for their patience... could see they were really annoyed at not doing stuff, but they put up with it.

I also felt sad that I couldn't go and refurbish some units for myself... it definitely is more fun to get your hands dirty and actually do something meaningful hands on. Sadly, couldn't leave the void deck for 1 minute, and didn't even get to see any units in progress :'(

And that was basically my job for the whole of Refurb. I guess some people might get the false impression that Admin Point = slack, but I think I did a lot of work okay! Handling all the people who came in with complaints, as well as taking attendance and moving people around... haha didn't put down my phone and unit profiles until 3pm, where Kailun forced me to eat lunch.

I had to leave for the Kolam Ayer CC with the rest of the dancers to rehearse, so at 4pm, I left Yu Da in charge of the remaining 3 units that were still working, as well as the hardworking 4Q ppl who were slogging over cleaning the equipments. Tough jobs! Really grateful for the extra effort, not forgetting Wei Lun's group who was handling a bed bug infested house (o.o heroic sia)




When we arrived at the CC, the preparations for the Block Party were just about done. We had time to go into our costumes and practice on stage, and then we had our dinner. When we returned, the block party begun!

All the performances were great! The first act was by a group of really small kids, and it was only later that I realise that one of them was actually from the group I was tutoring in Farrer Park Primary! Haha so coincidence! After that was followed by a song, a police presentation on scams (oh no! you got SCAMMED!), and then it was our turn!

I don't know why I signed up, but I'm glad I did, cos it really was fun dancing for the residents. Also, our batchmates were also very supportive ("martin! martin!"). After our dance Mr Law took to the stage and wowed us with his swing, and then for dramatic effect, broke his dancing stick by smashing it on his knee (accidentally). lol.

The rest of the show was equally as good, with musical performances by our talented musicians, especially a pretty darn good rendition of 'my heart will go on', as well as the Malay Cultural Club. There was also a lucky draw, which we pretended we won (although we didn't have any tickets at all). Oh wells.



As Refurb I/C, I felt that the Refurb section went quite well, despite the fact that a lot of units unfortunately went for a outing with the Lions Befrienders and weren't at home... haiz. Being I/C of such a big event is something really new to me, so I hope that I did a good job. From what I saw, the volunteers had lots of fun (and 'white' hair, pants etc)! To those who did not have a good experience... the situation was against us, so I'll just apologise for not being able to meet your demands, and hopefully, next time, we will do a better job together (:



Batch of '09: We did it! (:

Read Martin's (Overall I/C) note.