Cheshire Home Excursion

Singapore Cheshire Home is our adopted charity. There are 76 residents there suffering from chronic disabilities and thus wheel-chair bound. We volunteered to bring 15 of them out Wednesday evening to show them the Christmas light-up at Orchard Road, and dine at Pizza Hut in Lucky Plaza.

Initially, we were quite worried as to how to react to the residents. It was the fear of being over-exuberant, and to a lesser extent, being almost condescending. They were not kids nor mentally handicapped, but rather people who, in part of or all, suffered from diseases which rendered them unable to use their lower limbs. Some of them could not articulate their hands properly and had difficulty eating or drinking.

In spite of their obvious physical sufferings, they were amazingly cheerful, ecstatic even! It was a joy to dine with them, and i learned a tremendous amount in the brief hours we were together. Initially, I was carving out for each of them a pizza slice. Thoughtless me... didn't realise that they had trouble cutting the pizza until my colleague gently chided me... Spurred into action, i slowly sliced up the pizza into tiny bite-sized morsels for easy consumption. The kid i was seated in front of (the cheerful boy shown in the pic above) could not easily articulate his hands, and had to drink the mushroom soup using a straw. Once again, i failed to notice that the soup was too hot to drink with a straw. He took a big sip and his eyes bulged! A big grin was on his face and his eyes told me that it was HOT HOT HOT! Half-apologetic and half-laughing like the idiot that i was, i proceeded to spend the next 5 mins stirring the soup until it was just cool enough to drink with a straw. This time he sucked it dry. He really liked that mushroom soup!