I would like to thank everyone who attended the SAFRA Celebritalk in Facebook yesterday.

It was an interesting experience. My segment was held at SAFRA Yishun, my favourite SAFRA club because of the awesome rock climbing walls.

You can see the walls on the background of this photo (very faintly):

This was the spot where the chat was set up. I was logged in as the SAFRA Facebook fan page admin to chat with fans while the webcam was aimed at me to feed a “live” video stream.

A friend of mine said I looked irritated at some points. But I think he’d misread my look of intense concentration. I tend to get frowny when I’m concentrating on typing, especially when answering the “cheem” questions!

Or maybe he’s exaggerating. He tends to do that with me. Huh!

It’s really kind of weird having people watch you while you’re working. I know it doesn’t look like I was working, looking nice and relaxed wearing a dress and in full makeup.

It’s work lah.

But, well, okay, it’s fun work. I try to only do work that is fun. I’d rather starve if I have to be miserable at my job.

So, I had fun yesterday. The hour passed really fast. A few people asked some really interesting questions which made for fun discussions. I know this is going to sound strange but I’m really thankful that people want to chat with me! (Especially after seeing my sometimes frowny working face, lol.)

I wish I could have gone and climbed some rocks after this but then I had a few more appointments to go to right after the chat.

I decided to save $4 and walk to Yishun MRT Station. (Also because I was impatient and didn’t feel like waiting for a cab.)

Because I was wearing heels, I tried to walk slowly and as relaxedly as possible so that my feet wouldn’t die before the night was over. It took me 20 minutes to get to the station and I was perspiring like mad. Haha.

Well, okay, I saved $4. But my toes started hurting after my third appointment.

When you’re wearing heels, you need to be a guniang and avoid walking as much as possible and sit down whenever you can.

Okay, I think I’m beginning to talk rubbish.

I have many advertorials piled up waiting to be written. Feeling stressed!

Shall go work on them after my battle with the peanut butter sandwich. (To eat or not to eat.)

Thanks again for joining the chat yesterday. And thanks to SAFRA for always organising such cool events. Love you all!

<3

Wanna chat with me, people?

Come join me at the SAFRA Celebritalk on Facebook tomorrow at 2 pm!

I will be heading down to SAFRA Yishun where we will do a “live” video streaming of me chatting with fans on the SAFRA Facebook fan page.

Whenever I think of SAFRA Yishun, I think of rock climbing. Haha. So miss it. Nanny Wen and I haven’t gone climbing since we did our Level 1 certification cos it’s a bit hard for us to coordinate our timings, especially since we’ve both been travelling a lot recently, sometimes with each other, sometimes without.

Anyway, please come join in the chat tomorrow! :) You get to ask me all the questions you’ve been wanting to ask!

But be kind, okay? LOL.

People in Seoul are really warm, friendly and helpful. It’s no exaggeration to say that I’ve never met nicer people in my life.

In fact, the people are so nice I started to feel bad about it, like I was undeserving because I’ve never been so kind myself.

On two separate occasions, we asked locals for directions. Instead of just pointing the way, they actually took us there personally. That would not have been remarkable had our destinations been a short walk away.

It was remarkable because the first of our good Samaritans, two ladies, weren’t entirely sure of our destination. Yet, they beckoned us to follow them as they discussed animatedly in Korean how to get us there.

They even had to turn back and walk in the opposite direction from where they had come. As we followed them in a slow saunter, weaving through heavy human traffic on a busy shopping street, they occasionally turned around to make sure they hadn’t lost us.

The walk took about 15 minutes, during which time they tried checking the GPS on their phones and even calling up their friends to consult them.

We managed to find our location in the end. It would have been impossible without the Korean ladies’ help because the map we had was hopelessly off scale and inaccurate.

On the second occasion, we asked for directions to a famous cafe featured in the popular Korean drama, Coffee Prince.

We didn’t know it initially, but we were about 30 minutes’ walk away. Like in our first encounter, the two young girls we asked for directions from beckoned us to follow them as they took us right to our destination at a leisurely pace.

It’s, like, they didn’t even have to consider the amount of time and energy they would have to spend to help us. Helping people beyond the call of duty seems second nature to the Seoulites.

The 1st Shop of Coffee Prince (yes that’s the name of the cafe):

In both cases, our good Samaritans knew a bit of English, so they asked us a few polite questions about where we came from and things like that. Other than that, they chatted relaxedly between themselves.

My friends and I were unused to this treatment and we felt so bad about imposing on strangers, making them walk long distances with us in opposite directions from where they were headed, that we hesitated to ask for directions the next time.

We did, however, ask one more time at a tourist information booth in Insadong, an art and culture district. We didn’t expect the ladies in the booth to jump out and walk us to where we wanted to go, so we felt quite safe asking there.

Nevertheless, they were very helpful and did their best to make sure we got all the answers we wanted, and then happily posed for photos with us.

Right after we left the booth, we came upon a stall where an old man was selling traditional fans. You can pick a design and he’d write your name in Korean on it.

I picked this fan with a Korean phrase written on it and asked him what it meant. But he couldn’t really speak English, so he left his stall unmanned and walked to the tourist information booth to ask the girls for help in translating the phrase.

The girls had a bit of trouble finding the right words, so they started consulting their PC and debating among themselves.

Finally, they decided that the phrase said, “Every day first love”.

I thought that was nice so I bought it!

Then, there was this other time we were in a restaurant and decided to order some Korean alcohol that everyone else was drinking.

We observed how they shook the bottles, poured the contents into a kettle, then poured them into cups.

So, when we got our bottles, Nanny Wen and I started shaking them enthusiastically. She got a bit overly excited and started opening her bottle without waiting for the pressure to subside.

At that moment, the guy at the table beside us gave a soft cry of alarm and grabbed her bottle to prevent her from opening it further. In halting English, he managed to convey to us that we should wait a while. If not the drink will blow up in our faces.

He then proceeded to help us pour our bottles into our kettle.

I thought that was so cute! After helping us, he and his friend didn’t bother us for the rest of the meal, only once smiling at us amusedly and commenting that we had ordered so much food for just the three of us.

I really love how Seoulites are all so personable and approachable, and how they’d go out of their way to help strangers who can’t speak a word of their language.

When we first arrived in Seoul and needed a cab to take us to our guesthouse, we hired an authorised international taxi, which meant that the driver spoke English and would charge us an approved flat fee.

Our driver was a delightful middle-aged man who chatted with us amicably and offered us ginseng candy.

Towards the tail end of our journey, he started telling us about his son and joked about how he wanted to introduce his son to Wang Wang (photo above), whom he thought was very pretty.

“You meet my son. He’s nice boy. Handsome like his father,” he said with a twinkle in his eye.

His son is apparently a 19-year-old musician. Nanny Wen and I, in the backseat, were scandalised and roaring with laughter while Wang Wang blushed furiously in the front seat.

“You take him to Singapore,” the cabbie said to Wang Wang. “I give you son.”

It was too damned funny.

When we arrived at our guesthouse, we were a little unsure of the exact building because it wasn’t exactly a hotel. It was a commercial building with units turned to accommodations.

Repeatedly consulting the address and looking at the rough map we had, the cabbie pulled his car over at the side of the street, told me and Nanny Wen to wait there while he actually walked out of the car to find the right building.

Wang Wang followed him.

Later on, she told us that he’d taken her up the elevator all the way to the admin office of the guesthouse to speak to the owner to make sure that he’d found the right guesthouse for us.

They were away for about 10 or 15 minutes.

When they returned, the cabbie helped us get our luggages out of the boot, gave us his card and told us to call him if we needed anything.

He also reminded us that he wanted to arrange a meeting for us to meet his son.

“I give you son!” were his smiling parting words.

I’m so in love with Seoul.

It’s been a while since I linked to my Star Blog entries.

Thought I would do that today because this week’s entry touches on stuff I’ve been wanting to blog about but never got around to and never may because things that get pushed down often have a have a hard time resurfacing.

This week, we talk about our best and worst meal experiences. I recall a few memorable ones which I encountered overseas.

Guess where this photo was taken and whether it was a “best” or “worse” experience! ;)

Find out here.

[Read Part 1 and Part 2]

It was almost evening by the time we made our way to the last village of the day. It had been a hot and tiring day but we were in high spirits, buoyed by the optimism and warm hospitality that had greeted us in all the prior villages.

We walked through a deserted street, crawled under a fence and came to a muddy plot that looked like an abandoned housing project.

Nobody but our Goducate guides knew what was coming up next.

Negotiating our way through the muddied site, we arrived at a deforested area where construction vehicles were parked. Still no sign of any village.

It was then that our guides told us the story of Water World.

Village #5 – Water World

Not too long ago, a community of Filipino war refugees, just like the ones we had visited earlier in the day, lived in this swampy area that would get flooded often as the tide went up, hence the name Water World.

I suppose they were happy enough, compared to starving in their previously war-torn homes. Here, at least, they could find simple jobs as woodcutters or seamstresses to feed their children.

One day, civilisation happened. The area on which they were residing was picked for a housing development project. The refugees had to uproot their homes entirely and migrate just a little further up towards the coast.

It was not too far, in fact, only a hundred metres or so. But they had to tear down all their wooden huts and rebuild them from scratch.

Beyond this mangrove copse (picture below) we could see evidence of a recently uprooted settlement. The wooden stilts that used to serve as legs of the villagers’ old homes remain fixed in the ground.

Traversing a foul-smelling land muddied with what looked like toxic sludge, we finally came upon the new settlement.

A wave of sadness washed over the group as each of us silently took in the sight that greeted us. We could hardly have expected this.

It was perhaps fortunate that the tide was down when we visited, allowing us to avoid having to wade through the village in knee-high water. But the absence of water all the more highlighted the waste and pollution that contaminated the landscape.

This is the condition under which the villagers live.

And, yet, I couldn’t feel sad for long.

A little boy walked slowly towards us, eyeing us curiously as he tried to button his shirt. He took little steps with his bare feet, innocently oblivious to the slime and moss that squelched under them.

As we waved at him and said “hello”, he gave us a shy, impish smile even as he walked past us, still buttoning his shirt.

Water World was my biggest lesson in hope. We were greeted with such warmth and sincerity that we couldn’t help feeling touched by the villagers’ happiness, optimism and generosity of spirit.

Despite the village being affectionately named Water World, they do not get enough sanitised water, relying on a few small plastic water tanks that catch the rainfall to supply the whole village.

And, yet, they bought cartons of bottled water for us and cheerfully handed those out to us as we sat on plastic chairs to enjoy the performances that their children had prepared for us.

More than anything else, I felt touched by their love and acceptance of us, total strangers to them.

As we stood up to bid them farewell, the children swarmed around us to take our hands and touch them to their foreheads. I’m told this is their way of receiving our blessings.

Also extremely touching was the way the villagers appeared to be so thankful for their lives and whatever little blessings they received.

An abundance of hope and innocence shone in the faces of the children as they took in their English lessons.

As we started leaving the compound, these two precious kids lingered around us, gazing at us shyly. One of them was the boy we first encountered.

They quickly overcame their shyness as they enthusiastically posed for photos, by themselves and with us.

With that, we concluded our tour for the day, each of us with different thoughts flitting through our heads and emotions raging in our hearts.

But even as we thought different things, maybe reflecting on our lives, maybe thinking about the children, maybe happy, maybe sad, I’m quite sure that not a single one of us didn’t feel deeply touched by what we had experienced.

Credits

ieatishootipost – Dr Leslie Tay and his community raised a sum of S$22,000 through fundraising efforts to finance a van for the Sandakan refugee community. This trip was made for the purpose of presenting the cheque to the people.

Goducate – Through the selfless work of this organisation, many underprivileged children in Asia now have the chance to receive an education and to dream of a better future.

Nuffnang – Ever supportive of charitable works, Nuffnang sent a small team to this trip to support the mission. I was one of the representatives.

ieat Sandakan Makan mission group – Shout out to the people with whom I shared a fulfilling four days with: Leslie, Lisa, Wee Kiat, Shirley, Ryan, Jimmy, Irene, Nicholas, Huiwen, Estee, Gregory, Kay, Amylia, Veronica, Pastor Victor, Dr Paul Choo.

Read the ieatishootipost Sandakan report here.