perspectives...

It has been a while since I had wrote something up here. No one will read it anyway. Perhaps not.

Many things happened for the past month or so. Starting off with the CSR trip to Thailand with a group of NP students, then I fractured my ankle during training, Leadership Symposium, MAS JC essay and throughout this time, Pre-U sem.

I really want to write tonnes about these events, but in short, from all these experiences, I've learnt things from a perspective.

The trip to Thailand was quite an eye-opener. My impression of Bangkok very much stops at the big shopping malls and the cheap stuff that I can buy in MBK or Cha-Tut-Chat. I know poverty exists and not to mention the infamous traffic jams. This trip showed me how poverty is REALLY like by going far away from the urban areas (we aren't even talking slumps here!) to rural places where there is semi-arid lands, some labour-intensive manufacturing plants, subsistence farming etc. Having opportunities to visit agencies such as the World Bank, UNESCO, UNICEF was good learning experience as we get to see things from a more macro point of view, though poverty was merely spelt out. But what struck me the most was the things that PDA did to ensure self-sustainability as an NGO while coming up with new ways to alleviate poverty. (microcredit is not their idea, but they did apply it very well) But what makes things possible and fun was all the people whom I went with. These people are really cool and smart. Leaders of their respective fields but yet exercising ability to socialise and mix around with other "strangers" like me.

Fracturing ankle wasn't nice at all. I trained 3 years for this year's nationals and now I'm out for 3 months. Most probably, I'll be missing the floorball one as well. Though this kept me at the sidelines, I began to see things differently as people treated me differently. Some of my friends had conscious attempts to provide assistance while some stopped at the level where they just asked about my condition. Fair enough, not all friends can be good friends. Neither would I want to have friends that stick with me just because they sympathise me.