Friday, November 14, 2008

My first Singapore Flyer Outing

On Thursday, our elderly in LKCC finally went to Singapore Flyer. It was supposed to be a happy outing until something unpleasant happened.

Well, what happened was the driver who was picking us at LKCC was very unco-operative. When I met him to let him know that the elderly would be alighting the bus soon, he said in a very rude tone to quicken the pace as the place had a very narrow 2-way road. Then when all the elderly and volunteers went to the bus, he commented that there were so many people, if anything happened, insurance could not pay etc... While he was grumbling at us, we were discussing on whether our driver volunteer should drive some elderly instead. Finally, we decided to and I checked with my colleague about this. While she was choosing the elderly, the driver kept looking very impatiently. Then after the selected elderly had gone to the van to sit, my colleague was still doing a count. This was when the driver kept chasing us to be fast. Not only that, my colleague did not inform one of the group leader that there was a replacement. So, there were some confusion going. Finally, the situation got into me and I asked my colleague whether she would be taking the bus or the van and I kept chasing her to get on the bus after that. This was the first horrible thing that happened.

When we reached SF, another horrible thing happened. This had never happened in any of the outings I had with the elderly. There were some elderly still in the bus, waiting to be alighted and one elderly was just about to alight to the pavement when the driver suddenly drove. We shouted for him to stop and some of the volunteers who were in front overheard him saying that we were so slow. What did he expect? Elderly leh, not normal young gals. Thank God no one was injuried.

The third horrible thing that happened was when we were counting the group members, suddenly one volunteer told us that she had not registered or paid for this trip. I was so shocked how she could manage to join us in this trip when all moved according to their groups allocated. Thank God there were some elderly who did not turn up or else I would have to ask her to take taxi to go home.

Though there were hiccups in this trip, I was glad to hear that the elderly enjoyed it. I actually felt quite bad when I thought of how I mishandled the situation when the first horrible thing happened early in the morning. I let the situation control me instead of the other way round.

God, please help me to change. Don't let me be controlled by the situation around me anymore but let me learn to control the situation. I pray for Your strength and wisdom to be mine during such times. Let me know how to handle this kind of situation in the future. In Jesus' name, Amen.

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