Reflection Session 2

Reflection Session 2

This is the second in a series of reflection sessions. The following takes place on the 31th of March.

____________________

Today was my second visit to HCA hospice care. When we went down to the hospice today, we went into a room to discuss our project further with Valiant. A group of students from Saint Gabriel’s secondary school were there too, singing songs to please the patients. It was a very good effort on their part I must say. The project proposal was discussed in greater detail during this meeting with Valiant than any of the other meetings our group has had with him. This discussion took up about an hour and at around 3:20 we were all done – Jue Fei with his questions and I with the minutes. So after that we proceeded inside to interact with the patients. I felt that this interaction between the patients and us have taken a closer level, meaning that I have found it easier to talk to them than I had before, perhaps due to the friendship bond we have forged with them over the weeks. As I was interacting with the patients, I remembered what Valiant had emphasized during our discussion: “Be real and genuine to the patients and have fun!” With that statement in mind, talking to the patients became a much more enjoyable and easier process. I would say that this interaction has been fruitful, I now know where a patient stays, her family, and her likes and dislikes, well… more or less. Due to the long discussion, soon it was time for our patients to leave the hospice and return back to their home. I helped my patient onto her bus and waved goodbye to her as well as the other patients. Just before the bus left an old lady sitting in the front seat of the mini bus opened the glass window and thanked us for what we have done that day. It was a brief thanks and some well-wishes, such as asking us to study hard and to work harder in school, but the sincerity was there, and all of us felt it. As the bus left the hospice, I turned and looked at my group mates, Andrew and Joseph, with Jue Fei having gone with the bus, helping out a step further with the patients. We all smiled and proceeded to walk to the Novena MRT station together. On the way, we discussed our feelings about the day, and I believe this has benefited our friendship as well. It was indeed a fruitful day.

- Samuel Chan

____________________

Axis of Self Revolution

Today, we decided that after 3 sessions of interacting with the elderly at HCA, we were going to discuss with Valiant how we want our project to move on. We outlined a few ideas to him, and he responded in kind with a few suggestions of his own. The result was not important; suffice to say that we already have our project road map planned out. What was more significant was the considerations raised up during the meeting. I realised that till this point I am not 100% genuine towards the patients, there is always a small part of me worrying and fretting over how the project should proceed next, thinking about the future and about how we would meet deadlines and produce a satisfactory end result. This is a big step back for me. In doing this project, we have to abandon all selfish motivations and aspirations; in thinking about the end product while being with the patients, this has become a form of hypocritical behaviour- while seeming caring for others, actually a part of you is still selfishly motivated. I am disappointed at myself. I hope I can do better in my future encounters with them, and work towards a cessation of selfish intents while being with them.

Anyway, on a side note, things have been working out fine with my group mates, they are willing to work towards a common goal, and Andrew is picking things up and reminding people to do this and that as well. However, I feel that there is no need to change my first reflection, as it is an accurate representation of how I felt at that time. There is no need to be embarrassed and edit it to make it politically correct.

The pace is picking up, more stuff needs to be done, and more things need to be settled. I will complete the task set to me.

- Juefei

____________________

Mr. Chandru finally was able to come with us to HCA. He had been overseas for the first two weeks, and Mrs. Cheryl Yap had stood in for him. Today, he was finally able to come with us, so that he could understand what our project was about better. We turned up at HCA after two straight weeks of perfectly justified absence. During the holidays, all of us had many CCA and academic commitments, which made it very difficult for us to go down to HCA, so we dropped the idea. The week after, HCA had an excursion organized for that day; hence going on that Thursday would have been quite pointless. Anyway, we finally showed up this week, with the exception of Leon (Leon couldn’t come this week, as he had some compulsory English remedial, or something) but we didn’t begin with the interaction with the patients immediately. We had to discuss quite a few issues with Valiant first. For one, the main thing we discussed was the biography thing. Valiant felt that the patients (through experience) would be quite uncomfortable with being formally interviewed for their life story. Also, it would be difficult to take the individuals aside, and if we continued with the interview anyway, the other patients may feel jealous, or that we were favoring some patients over the others. Not to mention, we had a limited time each week, and we felt that it would be unlikely that the patients would be comfortable with sharing their life stories outright, and we probably would not have enough time to talk to them as long as we wished. Basically, we decided to forgo the detailed biography, albeit unhappily, and decided to simply try to create activities related to what we were trying to find out about the patients, and subsequently strike up conversations with them during their tea or in between activities. Ultimately, our main objective was to learn from the patients, spend time with them and add joy to their lives, which would take precedence to our planned biographies. Essentially, we scrapped the idea of an in depth biography and decided to write about them from memory while leaving their identities as anonymous as possible.

We also discussed our basic project proposal, this time more formally written. Nothing new there, really, since we covered most of what we intended to do within the first two sessions. This was more of a final confirmation of how we intended to go about doing things, such as when we would visit and when we would not be able to make it. Also, we talked about e materials that we might need and Valiant mentioned that he could get funding to print our final product if it was something that HCA felt was a good piece of work and if they thought that it would somehow help dispel stereotypes of Hospice patients and give comfort to the families of those whom we wrote about. Juefei brought up our idea of making a sort of e-book, which would basically be a compilation of the biographies online, such as a blog, and suggested that it be linked to the HCA website. Valiant was quite agreeable, but we all agreed that we would need to finish our work first before we decided whether to print our work or link it to the HCA website.

Juefei also talked about some of the things that we were planning to do, and one of the major ideas that he had come up with (but had never mentioned to us) was the E-travel concept. Apparently, the idea was inspired by the patient who talked about wanting to go to Australia the first time we visited HCA. We were all quite approving of the idea, but were cautioned again about being too overly ambitious. Not surprising, since we have seriously changed our plans from writing in depth for all the HCA patients to a simple peek in to their lives via conversation. However, I personally feel that it will be quite easy to make a very good presentation for the HCA patients, but I personally think that we will need more time to do a really good job compared to a rapidly cobbled together presentation. Some of the ideas mentioned for this were to do up a PowerPoint presentation for the HCA patients, purchase some food samples of the special food from each place, and have tour guides presenting the different places to a decently in depth level. The food idea was the only thing that seriously worried me. Personally, I thought that the food idea was the best way to get the patients interested in the presentation, but I was also worried for a few reasons. For one, I felt that it may be a little difficult to get our hands on food samples, and another issue would be keeping the food fresh until our presentation. Also, a fair amount of the patients had diabetes, high blood pressure or some other medical condition that may prevent them from eating the food, which would make them feel left out. Finally, some of the food was bound to be meat; hence I was quite worried about the patients who were also vegetarians. I guess I will bring up this issue during the next presentation, and we’ll also have to discuss how to go about the e-travel thing in detail.

We finally finished our discussion, and we went to see the patients. The patients had been entertained by students from St Gabriel’s Secondary, and seemed to have enjoyed themselves very much, as I was expecting. The patients were so easy to please that I immediately felt determined to do a good job in the e-travel thing to give them something that all of them would truly enjoy. The St Gabriel’s students had been performing numerous song items for them, and from the sounds that we could hear during our discussion, I felt that they had really put in a lot of effort into preparing, although being the critic that I am, I wished that they had changed key to something that they could all sing without half killing themselves. Some of their singing was quite flat simply because the note that they were supposed tossing was too high for them to reach. Nonetheless, it was a better effort than I felt capable of marshaling, and I take my hat off to their spirit (and their guitarist).

The patients were quite glad to see us, I think, although the St Gabriel’s students were quite startled at our entrance. None of them asked us who we were, and none of us bothered explaining. We went straight into interacting with the charges again, and for those of us who had a favorite, they made a beeline for the appropriate patients. I spent most of the time while the St Gabriel’s students were there clearing cups and plates for the patients, since we showed up smack in the middle of their tea break. After the students left, I struck up a conversation with one of the patients, and as far as I could I tried to make myself heard. She had a slight hearing problem, and I often needed to repeat myself or speak really loudly to ensure that she had understood my questions. Apparently, she lived somewhere in Toa Payoh, quite near a hospital and a school. She was quite cheerful, and talked quite happily about how the HCA patients spent their time there. She apparently went to HCA every weekday, in stark contrast to the usual Tuesday-Thursday/Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule. She talked about playing mahjong in the mornings with the other patients, and mentioned that she had picked up mahjong at the age of 5 (I think). She also told me about how she had been living in her current home for over 30 years, and said that she had bought the flat for only $7000. Nowadays, her house would sell for over $100 000.

Subsequently, the patients began to leave for home according to where they stayed. The patient whom I had been talking to left for home, and I decided to talk to another woman sitting in front. The conversation didn’t last very long, and I didn’t really manage to say much to her before her turn came to return home. The last person I talked to was this old man who seemed quite ostracized. He seemed to have chosen to be on his own in his own corner of the room. I tried to talk to him but had no clue as to what he was talking about, since he only spoke dialect. I was guessing either Hokkien or Cantonese, but I was unable to maintain a conversation with him due to the language barrier. I eventually gave up and sat there with him until his turn to leave came. After which, it was about that time that all of us left HCA. I was somewhat demoralized about my last failed conversation, but I intend to do better next week.

-Andrew Yap

____________________

~END~