Various Updates

I have managed to get a few options for Aman (refer my previous posting). A few calls and emails from concerned organisations and individuals came in, providing me with some options. However, to date, Aman has yet to call me although he was supposed to leave his aunt's house by last weekend. I hope no news is good news. Hopefully Aman has found a place to stay... or his aunt decided not to chase him out. Whatever it is, probably I will have to check with SN if Aman comes for follow-ups at the HIV clinic. Usually those who don't show up for follow-up appointments are those who have given up hope. Hopefully that's not the case with Aman.

I am still holding my NGO's hotline phone. The phone rang a few times for the past few days and each time it rang I thought it may be from Aman. But no, Aman didn't call. The calls lately came from the management of a Company, wanting us to conduct a talk on HIV/AIDS for their factory workers - mostly foreign workers ie Indonesian and Vietnamese. Yesterday, 2 of the staff came over to the our center to discuss the matter further. The talk will be held this coming Saturday morning. The workers are not fluent in English, so the talk will have to be held in Malay. Besides, none of our volunteers are able to converse in Vietnamese language! The management will try to get one of the Vietnamese workers who are more conversant in Malay to translate for the Vietnamese workers. The Indonesians shouldn't have any problems understanding Malay... I hope! For all I know I may end up using the Indonesian accent!! (that may help for my Bali trip in August though...)

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Shila sent me another SMS telling me about her health problems again. She kept asking me why she was having such problems... whether the problems were due to the medication she was taking etc. Sigh... why lah these people prefer to ask non-medical people about their medical problems. Apparently when she felt unwell last week, I wasn't the only one she SMS-ed. Another colleague of mine also got her SMS but to that colleague Shila said she didn't have enough money to go to the clinic. To me she never complains about not having enough money for her medical needs. BUT she's always giving me all sorts of excuses not to see the doctor.

This time when she sent me the SMS, again I replied telling her to go to a clinic or hospital. In addition to that I also told her not to assume things and not to wait for her condition to worsen before she decides to see a doctor. Shila came up with yet another excuse...

"Saya takut kalau pergi hospital nanti doktor cakap ada sakit lain pulak, nanti kena tahan kat wad. Tak nak susahkan mak kalau saya masuk wad nanti."

Haiya, this woman! Memang cari pasal nak kena bebel! She thinks she won't susahkan mak if she gets sick at home? But lucky her I was too lazy to membebel that day, so I just told her to go to the klinik kesihatan near her place. Well, she promised she'd go the next morning. I hope she did.

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We had our AGM last night. Oh, just the usual AGM stuff... adoption of reports etc. And as usual, the election of office bearers too went on like previous years - I propose so and so, I second, I propose nomination closed, I second. That actually went on for every single post where there was no need to vote for anyone. Having just enough quorum for the meeting, we didn't really have many volunteers to choose from, so other than one or two changes here and there, year in year out we'd usually end up with the same faces in the Board. Yeah, so guess who's still stuck as the Chair? :(

After the meeting we decided to take a group photo. OK, ready Buddies... SMILE!!

The lady wearing the tudung had 10 seconds to catwalk to her chair after setting the camera on self-timer.

Out of the above, 10 were elected to the Board. See what I meant when I said we have a shortage of volunteers??