[Saturday, 15 January, 2011]

I was working hard on SEO for the tuition agency site when Sae Yeoh messaged me in MSN regarding my 2011 Singapore Calendar Planner. I sent her the original copy so that she could make amendments. I was glad that she told me she was going to help out at Sarah Home as well because I was lazy to find out more from Huiting and that Baoyu did not reply my last SMS. I went to bed at 5.30am.

I woke up before 8am and knowing that the team would be late, I took my own sweet time and left my house at around 8.30am. I managed to reach Sarah Home very soon and got myself a small bao at the coffee shop nearby. While waiting downstairs, a cat fell from the second storey by the side and screamed as it ran off immediately. Eventually I decided to go upstairs to wait for them.

As Huiting and her gang arrived, we proceeded to work very quickly. I was stunned when I was told that we would be doing painting and not moving things like Baoyu had told me. I regretted not wearing shabbier clothes along. Baoyu arrived later and joined my team, and we started our usual debating. It was a tough but enjoyable moment. When the old paint started to peel off when it was wetted with the new paint, we saw a greater challenge to scrub them off. The owner of the house was very afraid that we might drag on till very late and told us not to do the extra work.

Lunch was at around 1pm. We went down to the Sarah Home centre for the chicken rice, which was quite dry and plain taste. I was quite amazed that there was another big group of volunteers and I believed they were merely doing spring cleaning for the elderly residents. However, when the leader started his religious preaching, I was disgusted. I would love to do voluntary work in an environment where everyone, regardless of religion, was giving off his best to the needy without any other agenda.

The auntie of the house bought bubble tea for us because she overheard Baoyu mentioning about rewarding herself with it after we finished the painting. As the hardship dragged on, I threw out more craps in order to entertain them. In the end, Huiting and Baoyu took their revenge by making me the cameraman for the group photos. Sae Yeoh thought I was upset over it.

We left the place at around 5pm in the rain. We took bus to Tiong Bahru Plaza and then transit to train. After showering, I dozed off almost immediately and woke up near 8pm. I had fried rice for dinner.

I started doing SEO for the tuition agency site when Sae Yeoh chased me for the photos.

It seemed that nobody, except Mike, could see the hard work I had been putting in everyday, working non-stop to make my life dull and stressful. It took a lot for me to spend a day doing voluntary work instead of working on my own stuffs when I was still financially tight, because afterwards I would have to work even harder. I was of no difference to a robot, except that I could appreciate updates from friends in Facebook that would take a few minutes off my time to keep me away from working.

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