2024 Week 14: Three Iftars

Week 0

• THU: Jalan Bukit Merah Iftar @ Blk 112 market
• FRI: Henderson Heights Iftar @ RC

Week 1

• MON: 1st day in office (26 Jalan Klinik) - HR onboarding, lunch, HH relocation meeting
• TUE: lunch at Redhill market, community walk, meet Faridah from SCCFSC, Tabung
• WED: Journey Beyond (75 Whampoa Dr), Mt Alvernia renewals, CRM training
• THU: (day off)
• FRI: Mt Alvernia renewals (cont’d), meet NP students for art mural, Southern Kakis Iftar

Almost 3 years after talking to Gerard Ee on Google Hangouts, I’m finally an intern at Beyond Social Services! And what a ride it’s been. I’ve only been here for a little more than a week (counting the 2 Iftars I attended before officially starting) and already my world feels like it’s been dismantled and given a good shaking. 

My reflections so far can be grouped into 2 levels: (a) the work and (b) the community. Probably easier to start with the first. 

So my main goal with this internship was to assess it as a career. I wanted to see if I could really be a social worker (or rather, community worker, which is Beyond’s analogue) before I commited to the re-training process. My internal answer to the question went like this. On Day 1: NO, Day 2: NO, Day 3: NO, Day 4: IDK, Day 5: (very tentatively) uh… maybe yes?

I had a lot of knee-jerk, fight-or-flight responses in the first week. It was intense to going from working zero to 4 days a week, from talking to zero to 20 strangers a week, from solitude to all-day socialising marathons. I complained to another introvert friend and she said “gurl you did sign up for SOCIAL work.” Fair!

Another struggle was feeling plain incompetent at community building work. I think I have more or less the right mindset (assets rather than deficits) but I wondered if I’d ever have the skills to execute. 

I started with a lot of social anxiety, especially when prodded by Anne-Marie to talk to people. Connecting with kids was really awkward too because I don’t see myself as a “kid person” (e.g. I don’t know how to “goo goo gaa gaa” at babies). But in the past week I’ve had interactions with both adults and kids that went okay. Some were great, actually, which surprised me. 

Is it really so easy to start caring for people? I find myself doing so towards the end of the first week. There are some community members that I could not help but like and root for. I started thinking about what little things I might be able to contribute to make them a little happier. This feeling of warmth is surprising because I thought I was dead on the inside. 

Personally I found quite a lot of inspiration from the community. I don’t mean it in the “wow you’re so strong raising 6 kids as a single mum” way, but my eye is drawn to really prosaic things.

Like (community mum) Shelia’s simple but effective kitchen setup: tiny sink, chest freezer doubling up as a worktop, and portable stove. Her family lives on the ground floor and I like their “backyard”, which is rigged with a tarp roof, foldable tables and plastic chairs, and overlooks an empty concrete space where kids can play safely. S. personally cleans the area (and scolded Fizah for dropping cigarette ash on it) which speaks to me of ownership and value.

Or like how some people in the community have large-capacity food bins, trolleys, picnic mats, big coolers etc. and are happy to share them. The sheer fact that they own supersized party equipment is significant and tells you something about their way of life, that getting together and sharing food is important to them. That’s really nice; it’s something that I wish more Singaporeans would absorb.

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So that's "work". (The word feels strange. Hard to think of social relationships as work. Limitations arising from working in for-profit organisations for too long?)

On my day off, Thursday, my dad took me and Jon to Kovan hawker centre for lunch; it was nice chilling with dad. In the evening Jon and I went to an amateur filmmaker meetup, which sounds wanky but turned out to be really nice.

On Friday we celebrated my mum's birthday at Chin Lee restaurant. Then we collected Haybeon for her 2+ month stay...

Nothing much to report at pre-bonding camp. We trimmed Blueberry (we tend to call her Shai Hulud or Mao Mao Cong) but she doesn't look any less fluffy. She's looking pretty comfy but doesn't usually lie next to Eeyore so I guess we can't start playdates yet. Will try swapping their playpens next.