25 Hours

After a frazzled late night Friday, I got up early on Saturday morning to get to Bukit Merah by 7.15 am to prepare for Operation Homeworks, a community project run by Habitat for Humanity Singapore to help clean and make safer the homes of some 40 elderly residents in the area.

I was appointed overall in-charge of the Command Post at the ground floor void deck, and one of my duties was to conduct a briefing for all the "specialist" volunteers at 8.30 am. It didn't help that about half of the "specialist" volunteers did not turn up at 8.30 am - some came later in the day, others simply didn't come at all in the end. But that's how things are, I've learnt, working with volunteers...not sure if it's a Singaporean thing, but volunteer commitment here can definitely be improved.

But as for those volunteers who were around, I must praise them for their excellent attitude. Very dedicated and tireless, they were. And good natured and understanding, despite the chaotic situation at Command Post. Very few complaints from them as they went from home to home, scrubbing floors on their hands and knees, re-painting doors, cleaning air-vents, clearing hazardous items from the corridors, getting rid of stubborn sewage stains, removing bed-bug infested mattresses, installing new Do-It-Yourself beds and cupboards...and dealing with the unexpected mood swings of some of the elderly residents.

At the Command Post, I was swamped by (a) a flood of manpower allocation issues, since quite a number of home-cleaning teams were understaffed, thanks to missing volunteers, and (b) a flood of last minute requests for home-cleaning and new furniture by other residents who had not registered with us. I am grateful for the help of a Central CDC lady, Lynette, who offered to assist me at the Command Post, and with her experience of managing such events, things were brought under control.

I had never seen first-hand how dirty or smelly or pest-infested the homes had been, prior to Operation Homeworks. But from the photos taken "before" and "after" the event, it was evident that major improvements had been achieved. There were heartfelt expressions of gratitude from the seniors, and it was encouraging for us to know they they would be living in a more hygienic and safer environment.

Operation Homeworks wrapped up at around 6.30 pm, after we did a final inspection of all the housing units which were covered under the programme. Then, I headed down to East Coast Park for the NUS Cyclohunt.

Met up with Roonz, Charlotte and Tiwazz at the East Coast Park MacDonalds at around 7.30 pm, and ate the chicken rice which they had helpfully tar-powed for me. Then we went to get ourselves registered for the overnight cycling competition...our team name was Makan Marathoners. :D We also collected our rented bikes and bike lights. (Thanks to Balasing for lending me his helmet!)

As it was still early, the four of us went for a short ride along East Coast, bumping into SportVenturer along the way (who later decided to accompany us throughout the whole Cyclohunt), and returning to the registration point by 9.15 pm for the final briefing before the event flag-off.

During the briefing, we were told that we had ten (+one bonus) check-points to go to, but we could choose to visit them in any order we liked. We were told to return by 5 am; late-comers would be penalised.

At 10 pm sharp, the organisers sounded the starting horn, and many teams zipped off on their bikes. But Makan Marathoners was still leisurely planning our route ;)

We only started to cycle off at around 10.15 pm. From East Coast Park, we went to the following check-points in this order: (a) Purvis Street - stopping to buy drinks; (b) Merlion Park; (c) Maxwell Food Centre; (d) Chinatown - stopping for makan there; (e) Labrador Park - stopping to enjoy the coastal breeze; (f) Gleneagles Hospital and then (g) Holland Village - stopping for makan there too.

Along Holland Road, on the way from Gleneagles Hospital to Holland Village, I had a bike accident. Maybe it was because I was tired from the whole day's exertions, or maybe it was because some unhappy thoughts came back to distract my mind as I cycled past my workplace. In any case, after the Holland Rd-Farrer Rd-Queensway intersection, my bike veered too much towards the curb, I lost balance, and Man+Bike slammed onto the road. I landed quite hard on my right side, and slid a couple of meters onto the middle of the leftmost lane. I got up as quickly as I could, and dragged my bike to the side. Roonz, Tiwazz, Charlotte and SV came up to me and checked if I was okay.

By the grace of God, I only suffered minor grazes on my right knee, shoulder, elbow and wrist and didn't break anything (I think). But the blood wouldn't coagulate, and my wounds remained moist for quite a while. Also by the grace of God, there were no vehicles travelling on that lane behind me, because where I was sprawled, I could be easily run over by an on-coming early-morning speedster.

We reached Holland Village at around 3.30 am. A number of us were already suffering from terrible butt-ache. After Tiwazz and SV had ther pratas, we re-evaluated our plans for the remaining four checkpoints. We wouldn't be able to cover all of them, so we decided to just go to one of them (Mustafa Centre), then head back to the start point. We would be late and therefore penalised, but we didn't really care. The whole point of taking part in the event was to enjoy ourselves :D

After my little mishap, I was cycling much slower. It was just very, very tiring to pedal, and my bike kept making squeaking noises. And it was still quite painful for my right wrist to grab hold of the handlehar.

When we reached Mustafa Centre, Charlotte bought some snacks. SV was nodding off. :D With whatever combined consciousness that we had, we planned our last leg of the route, and cycled without any further pit-stops back to East Coast Park.

I can't remember what time we reached the end-point, maybe 5.40 am. I just remembered feeling very tired, thirsty and aching all over. But it had been a fun and enjoyable experience. A quick plot on GoogleEarth showed that we had cycled about 50 km. Hmmm...we did take a rather long time to finish the event... ;D

We collected our goodie bags, returned our bikes, and went to sit down at MacDonalds. SV fell asleep; Tiwazz struggled with the Z monster; Charlotte plugged in her earphones and shut her eyes; I ate my Big Breakfast; and... Roonz took out her students' worksheets and started to mark them! *gasp*

Since there was no point sleeping at MacDonalds when there were more comfortable beds in our homes, we split and headed back at around 7.15 am.

I reached home at around 7.40 am. I showed my parents my grazes, which was still bright red and moist, and then had a shower, and went to bed. I didn't wake up until 5 pm, and realised that while I was asleep, my parents had applied antiseptic lotion to my grazes. Thanks Mum and Dad!