The Bubblegum and Lime: November 2008

COMPARE yourself with someone who lives in a small area and perhaps no means of information about the outside, no media, means no newspapers, television or radio. So, as a requirement as a preparation for National Regional LaSallian Convention in Ipoh, the seven of us went to this not-so-remote school, I'd say a very run down government school in the middle of the city. Who were the students? Little kids who's parents earn a total of average RM500 to RM700 a month. Tough isn't it. Even average incomed people can spend those amount in a week. Imagine these families who spend about half of their income on 5/6 kids in a month.

So we were there lightening up their sad little lives. And no, they weren't even sad. Kids being kids, they were even naughty. I'm not joking, most of them would already know what the middle finger was and probably a handful would understand what the word fuck means.

We begin our day with some ice-breaking, introducing ourselves to the kids and in turn getting to know them. Wasn't that hard because there were less than 24 in a class. Played one of the lamest games with them in my opinion, Simon Says. Okay but really, the kids were very amused. But one thing I noticed about these kids is that they were not willing to learn. Being marginalized in some sort of way and not having enough money most of the time, and they're not willing to learn?? So I noticed this when this little game was supposed to be in English and there was one girl who protested she couldn't understand English, forcing us to play the game using "Pak Cik Simon kata ..." HILARIOUS REALLY :)

Okay we continued with more games and at some point a colouring contest. These kids actually do have a creative mind. There was one kid named Brandon colouring his leaf with a great combination of colour and I think it was great art if it was vectorised or tradionally painted. The final event for them was a pinata. Inside the pinata were more candy and little do they know about that. So when they found out there was alot of candy in the pinata, they were rushing towards it, come to think that these kids perhaps never really had a taste of candy. And I think they looked like refugees. lining up to collect their sweets before they head home, haha!!