Hi guys, I am here back blogging now !! Well, haven't been blogging for the past one month plus. Quite a lot of things happened and I shall now post here.. Haha, should be quite a long post ...
First event: NTUC Used Textbooks Project 2007
I left off in my previous post that I had completed one week of work for the above project. Well, this project will continue for another two more weeks. The next two weeks were definitely slack when you compare this CIP with other CIP work that you have to do. Nevertheless, the amount of books which arrived increased significantly during the end of second week (if I did not remember wrongly). About 3 trucks came in the afternoon (around 1300-1400) consecutively. We could not finish the sorting and stopped when it was 1700 to pack and clean up. How tiring could it be...
Moreover, there are people (HCI ones) who are slacking around doing nothing. I can accept them slacking doing nothing when they were no books but not so when books arrived. And they simply leave their shit (7 eleven big gulps) around for people to wipe for them. What to do? Received a few complaints from the Montfort side that our guys are slacking. But what can i do? Shout at HCI volunteers? Shout at them like uniform groups? I can't, cause I am not in the position to do so. If I did shout, what would they think? What? Who is this guy in a position to lecture and scold me? I cannot do anything...
Well, I am glad that there are some who stand by me despite the heavy workload. They helped me when I asked them to do. These people are truly commendable. Well, I know most of them at the personal level. They are: Hwa Pheng, Jun Hui, Jun Hao, Raphael, Kah Loke, Jackie, Choon Chuan, Jonathan Heng, Yi Foong, Xiang Quan and Teck Seng. Of course, there are people whom I did not know at first ; like: Choon Hui, Wei Zeng, Darius, Rui Hao and Chen Rui. They all helped me. I thank them for their help. (I hope I did not left out anyone out).
Best thing was on Sunday (one day before the public collection day). No books were supposed to come on that day. So Montfort people left after they have finished their work. Only 5 HCI volunteers (Jun Hao, Teck Seng, Choon Hui, Chen Rui and me) were present after lunch (Kah loke left after lunch). We took a walk at the stalls set up. And suddenly, the truck came. That means 5 people have to sort a truck full of books. Oh man... But nevertheless, we still did it, after 4 hours.....
The last day of this CIP was on 3 Dec. The public arrived to collect the books. But there were pretty interesting things. Some old men came in, rummaged through the miscellanous section, taking any books they can find, and left. One of them went for the textbooks section and asked, "Can i have 4 copies of that textbook; can i have 5 copies of that ....?" Omg, these people are definitely not collecting what they need, they are merely just exploiting the loopholes of the system ! One of them left their collected books outside and went in to collect again. So our volunteers went out and take back the books... Haha, how interesting. Of course, the guy found it and scolded our volunteers but we argued and reasoned with him that what he was doing was wrong... But in the end, we still let it off...
Then just before the event ended, a guy came in. He was worst, taking plastic bags out, grabbing a few copies of the same book and put them into a plastic bag. We went up to confront him. At first, he claimed that he was a tuition teacher and needed these books. (Omg, why would a tuition teacher need so many of such books??). When we asked the second time, he replied that he was sending these books to Cambodia.... (=.=, Diao la...)
Ok fine, so we volunteers kept loading a lot of textbooks into that guy's mini van. Since he wants the books, we helped him load onto his mini van. LMAO, we loaded until the van was overloaded, the back tyres seem to be a little flattened. LOL... Then we were all saying around him, "More books, more luck !!!" That guy asked us to stop, we refused, keep on loading... So fun...
Yah, so after that, we have to clean up the hall and there was a short de-brief. Then no one want to take back the biscuits and I have to take home one box which contain nearly 20 packets of biscuits...
Nevertheless, the whole 3 weeks were very enjoyable... So much fun and of course hard work... Not sure if I will continue next year... But I hope I can...
Here are some pictures:
See how high I have stacked the books until...
Another one...
Ok, better take a picture before it collapses.
Before the miscellanous section was collected...
After a few rounds of collection by the public...
Ok, will end off here for this post, guess it is quite long. Will continue typing in a new post...
Wei Pin