Service.

I generally love helping out in the community. Hold up...

Let me start over again.

I often help out at the community centre (CC) and the residents committee (RC). My sisters and my mother are active volunteers there. I don't mean serving at old folks homes and orphanages to earn CIP hours when I refer to "community work", contrary to popular belief. The activities that I'm constantly exposed to involve special events such as Children's Day celebrations, CNY celebrations, Emergency Preparedness Exercises, smaller weekly affairs like bread distribution to needy residents, being in charge of the BBQ pit booking booth, so on and so forth. I've been involved in many of these, going from putting together video montages and being an emcee for events to packing goodie bags and escorting the elderly. Granted, I enjoy serving especially when the activities are lot of fun, such as the Family Day Sandcastle Building event at East Coast and 5km kayaking expeditions to the Marina Barrage. My mother is even planning to start arts and craft interest groups and a tea appreciation interest group, so an added bonus there! Furthermore, you meet wonderful people that in turn help you out. It's the sense that one good turn that deserves the other, which I am eternally grateful for.

However, I've had to face annoying adults that gave me bad attitude for being new and inexperienced (so much for being helpful right?), encountered potentially harmful deranged people, and done physically taxing work, so it's not all rainbows and sunshine for me either.

If anybody knows about me and my relationship with volunteer work, it's got to be Valerie who has been with me through many of these. And if there's anything that anybody should know about me and my relationship with volunteer work, is that I hate people who play around excessively while working. You have these people that judge you as you work because they underestimate your ability to serve and they wait for opportunities to pounce when you screw up, even if it's a tiny mistake. I've learnt from experience that if you're going to work with adults, you better work like one and earn your own respect. Would you honestly like to work with your playful and skiving self? I sure hope not.

But today, I won't be discussing about other people. I've noticed changes in my own attitude towards volunteer work and well

It's volunteer work.

Let's dig a little deeper into the fact that I'm not exactly an official volunteer. You'd have to be a certain age to be an official member in any of the committees, even the youth group. I'm actually not obliged to do all these. It's just that it kinda has been bred into my bones to serve, so I have. In addition, the intensity with which my mother helps out is like it's her day job (which I suppose it might as well be since she's usually not at home but outside doing these). Her phone rings off the hook and she's usually in and out of the house about three times a day, either at the RC, CC, or her Community Garden. If we're lucky, she sometimes gets a road trip to Malaysia, but that's besides the point. Naturally, my entire family gets tied to the idea of volunteerism. I'm still schooling, and I basically am not the right age, bearing insufficient competency to carry out my tasks. I'd like to think I am competent, but regardless, you can say I'm not obliged to serve.

Truth: even official members fail to dedicate their utmost. Some are in it just to pass time or to get it's perks, which I will not discuss here. Typical teenager mindset: I'll only do the things that I want to do, freely, which is most of the time, unless I feel uncomfortable. So y -- at this precise moment I am on my way down to the RC, because they are short handed and need packing to be done.

Currently wrestling cardboard boxes.

Now bagging raincoats.

As I was saying, I'm not the most horrible person on Earth, but over time, it's grown to be like asking for a favour from me. I have my own things to be concerned about, hence it earns me the option of not helping. Yet, when time calls for it, both mother and sister leave me to pick up the pieces left from their commitment once they have their various committee meetings to attend to. It irks me more than it should because

1) They always tell me about it at the very last moment. I don't have to go on about how frustrating gets.

2) I don't have a complete grasp of whatever is happening. That's horrible when you have to answer to the public when they question you on xx event that is going on two Friday from now or who to call in case of horrible weather even though the RC has not installed a telephone.

Other than those two major faults that I can point out right now, I'm simply upset that their selfless selfish dedication affects more than just them. It leaves me to sweep up the dust when I've only got my hands to use. I need a damned vacuum cleaner. At the end of the day, I get frustrated because I feel horrible about myself. I don't mind that they leave to attend to the overwhelming amount things they have on their plate, I just wonder where everybody else who can help out went, and why they couldn't have told me in advance.

Other than that I'm pretty cool, because I like to organise and order people around so yes I hardly have a problem and the frustration was more of an attempt to keep myself in check. I have realised that I might be a weremonster except I don't just change on a full moon. I have the tendency to be in a permanent foul mood once the sun sets. It is just about then that I realise I need to have a workshop full of stupid chainsaws for stupid people and their stupidity that I want to saw their bodies into halves.

Last night I almost stabbed myself in the office during BBQ booking duty because of kids. Damned kids. Several members were there making plastic flowers for a giant art work and shit that place was worse than a bloody kindergarten. Boy about the age of 12 almost earned pencils through the skull because I DIDN'T LIKE HIS FACE. Well I almost went berserk being in there for 10 minutes. Barbaric behaviour I swear I don't even know whether I can be within a 100m radius of kids between the ages of 5-12. I'm quite worried for my kid because I'll make sure he doesn't grow up to piss people off.

Yes, where was I? Ah yes yes, I just need to get a check on my sun-down sulk. I don't want to stunt the facial expression growth.

That is all.