It's All About The Experience
Archive for May, 2008
Charity: Rural Service: Chapter 4
May 15th
Chapter 4: Day Two
Okay… We survived the first day in Liman Kati pretty well. None of us got bitten by stray dogs to say the least. None gone missing. All came back with all sorts of stories, even just for the first night. Awesome! I would say everyone woke up still with the burning desire to make a change and do our best. I guess everyone did more or less get closer to their respective foster family members. Some families had probably brought their new addition to a good dinner on the first night to start the week or perhaps out of courtesy. Of course there are many of us just stayed home eating home-cooked food and fostering better ties with families. For me I had rice with vege, chicken dish and a bowl of soup. Apparently there’s always soup for dinner because my two new siblings wouldn’t want to eat without soup. I slept near 12am on the first day and woke up 7am on Thursday (12/7/07). Today is mini science exhibition in the morning, followed by colouring competition in the evening and a talk on family by Mr. Tang (the funny man) at night.
Mini science exhibition was held in the very same primary school in a classroom next to our command center. Some education props were already set up the night before in that room and we gathered in the morning in our command center to start our service for day two. When we were ready, the kids were brought down groups by groups and facilitators involved took turns to do the explanations.
Some interesting facts. Again of course it’s good to know Chinese. I’ve probably missed out some interesting facts just because I can’t read =(
More exhibits laid in the room
Even more….Education department had done a very good job. Looked very interesting even for a 22-year old like me
Here’s Hooi Yee je je explaining some interesting facts. “Ahem..pay attention pleaseeeee!” Some kids really looked like Shaolin disciples. Can you spot one?
This is how the showroom looked like. Kids and teachers joined in too. Heck, I even bet the teachers actually enjoyed what we’ve came out with
One station at a time. The cute Chee Huey je je doing explanation
Chee Huey and Lee Teng shaking up some explosive concoction. I think is to explain that the reaction of soda powder and vinegar can produce pressure enough to pop the bottle. Perhaps this might make them interested in becoming a chemical engineer.. hehehe..
View from another angle. The kids were pretty excited to see the white foam oozing out
See, this is a volcano (more like an anthill to me). If you remember, in chapter 2 I said I would explain how it works. But I won’t so I’ll pass this Jun Jia. Wait do you notice the boy smilling widely? I tagged him rabbit because he’s cute like a rabbit with his pronounce front teeth. I try to remember kids’ name but they are all in Chinese so I’ve no choice but to give them nicknames
Live in action!
Jun Jia said if you pour some soda powder and add some coke in it, you’ll get a live volcano. Ok I might have interpreted his explanation in Chinese wrongly but anyhow that was how they created the volcanic scene. Jun Jia of course expertly told them everything that is to know about volcano in the right way. What’s going on outside BTW? Hmmm….
Suet Yeng did the volcano experiment for the next group. But I pity her, because the dude across the table (see where she is looking?) is a GANGSTER! It was like a scene in Hong Kong mafia movie where, when you and your friends were enjoying steamboat by the street in Tsim Tsa Tsui, a gangster dude with his cohorts come and tou luin (make a mess with you). In this case, this dude also famously known as Mr. G to us, together with his cohorts (see the left and right to him? – at least is multiracial here to show M’sia boleh spirit) disturbed Suet Yeng’s presentation. I imagined the duel was like this:
Suet Yeng: Now, I’m going to pour the carbonated drink into the valcano to simulate a live volcano.
Mr. G: Oi!! Give me the Pepsi!
Suet Yeng: If I give it to you, I can’t show other students how a volcano behaves, can I?
calefe (extra casts): Hear hear….(applause to Suet Yeng)
Mr. G: I don’t care! Give me the Pepsi. I want to drink! I’m thirsty now! Besides you are wasting food. Do you know how many people do not have access to clean water?????
calefe (extra casts): Hear hear….(applause to Mr. G)
Suet Yeng: Ok I will give it to you….after I mix with the soda powder. Do you know that it tastes better after mixing soda powder? Think if you have a soda drink it tastes good. What do you think it tastes like when it contains 100x soda powder? Sure explosive!! I’m sure you’ll like it. Okay?
calefe (extra casts): Hear hear….(applause to Suet Yeng). She has a point there!
Mr. G: Hmmm…I guess so… Ok bring it on!
Now people this is how a university student uses her knowledge to get her out of a tight situation with a rowdy bastard. Don’t it just makes you wanna be like Suet Yeng? Go ahead kids, enroll yourself in a university or college, then you can be as smart as Suet Yeng je je. I bet Mr. G got his explosion in the toilet, or perhaps halfway there. Anyway let’s have a closer look at who this Mr. G is.
This is Mr. G. You know every gangster boss will have a bigger boss behind. Just like in this picture. Even the teacher was afraid when the two teamed up
Get back to education. Jia Lin was showing the wonder of UV light. I guess to the kids, it was like superman’s eyes instead of getting to understand light wavelength
Getting some electric and electronics knowledge
yea some kids needed better view. Boon How explaining how electrons work and the wonder of current! – of course in a much simpler sense -
Quiz time! Which ones are conductor and which ones insulator?
Tada! Whoa….lampu menyalala cikgu Teck Guan!
One last look at the science exhibition
Told you the science fair was interesting! Even big kids were enjoying. Do you see the boy with the mouth curved down? I’ll tell you why he kept his face like that in a while.
I took a break to speak in Cantonese to these people. It was draining my energy to speak in Mandarin! Geez. Anyway, most of my morning were spent tracing the mural painting on the wall. The wall is at the front of the school. Too bad I don’t have any pictures for this process.
Right, this was what was happening outside! Registration for the arts competition later this evening (or was it for sports competition this Saturday?) I forgot, Damn…=P Anyhow, whatever activities we have planned received very good response from these kids. Great!
So this boy here looked like that because he just had his front teeth removed. He wouldn’t want to open his mouth.
This was our command/operation center aka lepak place. We had most of our lunch there.
In the afternoon we had arts competition. In conjunction with the upcoming National Independence Day in August back then, hence the theme was that.
The drawings were provided. They just had to bring they colouring materials and work their magic!
Some were really good! I could never colour that well
Enthusiastic! Keep it up boys and girls! You guys rock! Winners will be announced much later though.
We tried our best to get to know each and every kids. They all are wonderful and have their own stories and ambitions.
This is my foster bro! He gets bullied sometimes. And one of the bullies are none other than….
Mr. G! Well, I’m not saying he’s a bad boy. I guess that’s what we all went through when we were at their age. Probably he has bad influences (see picture – this is another proof but lets give the big kid the benefit of the doubt)
We all went back after the evening sessions, spent some time with our families. And at night after dinner, we had the ‘Family’ talk. The talk started about 8pm if I remember correctly. Those who attended the talk include rural folks, mainly children. However children were noisy and were running about disturbing the talk. At about 8.30pm the side attractions such cartoon shows, dancing and board games were ready and facilitators ushered almost all the children upstairs to the side attractions. Speech area was then very much improved without the children. Although half the seats were unoccupied, it can be seen that the people enjoyed the talk. Still some children were uninterested in any of the side attractions. They become more restless towards the end of the night. Luckily facilitators managed to control them and released them when the talk ended at about 10.00pm.
The scene during the talk
These kids were so energetic. We had to ‘quarantine’ them while waiting for upstairs to get ready
Talk minus the kids. The kids were upstairs watching cartoon – Oggy and the Cockroaches. Board games like dam, chess and snake and ladders were there too
Some necessary things that we had to do
There were also kids involved in dancing! We managed to get some kids to participate in the closing act. You will see it in later chapters. We got them practicing early. So kids remember, plan ahead, don’t do last minute work and right practice makes perfect
Here are some random photos.
There’s a Chinese temple there. And there are a lot of bushes here and there too. This is kampung
Rubber trees if you haven’t seen one
Ok this is it! Third time these two have appeared together. Hypothesis confirmed!
Please understand that no kids were harmed during our service. We made sure that whatever we did, safety is always stressed. This was an isolated case. Actually Look is a good guy. Don’t be mistaken. This particular kid was camera shy…maybe
It was another successful day. The kids (and teachers) were cooperative. I hope they’ve learned a thing or two from the science exhibitions and appreciate our effort in making the props and organizing activities. Again at night we all spent time with our families. Some discussed homework; some played games; some watched TV together; some went yum cha; some simply just had a walk nearby before going to bed. Today was a tiring day – like all the days that followed after this but it was all worth it. BTW, it was durian season that time, so we had bountiful feast on durians also during our days in Liman Kati. Tell more about it next time. Tomorrow is another new day, new challenge, new things to learn – not only for the kids but for us too.
Coming up next:- Chapter 5: Day Three
Saving Our Habitat: Hell Future
May 14th
A Lil’ About Biofuel to Start With
About biofuel; well, I’ve not really done any research on biofuel until someone asked me to comment about it recently. I just have a very rough idea about it, but anyway I will summarize my findings that I’ve just done and my express views for the future.
So biofuel, like everyone knows is fuel derived from living things – animals or plants, mainly plants though. I think the hot topic now is to use plants especially grains like corns and sugar cane to produce fuel as petroleum reserves are depleting. The two popular biofuels are biodiesel and bioalcohol (as opposed to others such as biomass, biogas, and solid biofuel).
In biodiesel, vegetable oils and animal fats are turned into the type of fuel (by means of chemical reaction) that can be burned by most of todays combustion engines. Most use vegetable oils like corn oil, sunflower oil, rapeseed, algae, palm oil, coconut oil, peanut, and soy. Vegetable oils or animal fats contains triglycerides (fatty acids) – is like 3 long chains of C and H with some O elements bonded by a glycerine (heavy alcohol). In short this is a complex molecule (long chain) and cannot be combusted. A process called alcoholysis or better known as transesterification converts the fatty acids into alkyl esters (biodiesel) by means of a catalyst (strong alkali) and an alcohol reagent (usually methanol). In the end from a bulk of 3 chains group together, you now get 3 separate shorter chain that can be combusted. You can actually produce your own biodiesel at home using cooking oil. It’s not a very complicated process. The process involves some pouring, stirring, heating and filtering. So after filtering you can pretty much use biodiesel for your car, cooking and stuff like that. Most biodiesel however is not 100% biodiesel – they are actually mixed with petrodiesel (petroleum base) in some proportion ranging from 0% to 100% depending on the suitability of your engine. The purpose is to lower down the viscosity (thickness or ease of flow) of vegetable oil (and yes petrodiesel if more fluid). There are a lot of advantage and disadvantage of biodiesel (you can google them yourself) but the main point is that it’s renewable. Actually vegetable oil can be fuel without having to undergo transesterification but your combustion system needs to be modified. Again pros and cons are there.
In bioalcohol the idea is the same – use alcohol as fuel; just that this time the process is called fermentation which can be achieved by anaerobic process, or use microorganism, etc. The first four aliphatic alcohols (methanol, ethanol, propanol and butanol) – hope you still remember your Form 5 chemistry, are of interest because they can be synthesized biologically and have characteristics which allow them to be used in current engines. Natural sugars in plant (i.e: glucose, fructose, sucrose) are converted into alcohol (usually ethanol) through this process. Actually you drink this type of ethanol aka fuel. It’s safe provided it is derived from plants, not petroleum. BUT DON’T take my word for it, stick to H2O please – while you can. There are lots of advantages in using bioalcohol as fuel. Again you can read the pros and cons yourself if you are interested. Also bioalcohol is usually mixed with conventional petrol/gasoline in some proportion to achieve the desired result.
With the increase in oil price due to petroleum getting lesser and lesser (I guess this is the case where what goes down must come up), biofuel is no doubt the way forward. Brazil, US, France, Sweden and Germany are the world leaders in biofuel development and use. China is making biofuel blend mandatory to be used in the nation’s car. Similar trend coming in India. Thailand had mandated 10% ethanol mix in gasoline. Europe has set goal to achieve 5.75% biofuel usage by 2010 and 10% by 2020. France and German is increasing biofuel consumption. Sweden started to work to end oil dependency and aim oil phase-out by 2020. They are also introducing Swedish made hybrid car and buses. US wants to replace 75% imported oil by 2025 with alternative fuel.
Now with such bold aims and goals by world powerhouse, biofuel is BIG business! Crop plantations enjoy the attentions now. For one, oil palm industry is enjoying the rise in the market price. So do maize, corn, soy, coconut, sugarcane, jatropha, rice and many other plantations. Next time around I won’t be surprise to see lesser coconuts on the road in the next Thaipusam.
Bad Biofuel
However, in my opinion I don’t think biofuel is going to be very much renewable and it’s going to bring a lot of other implications.
- Food vs fuel. Yea that’s number ONE. Food price increase dramatically. In fact we are feeling the pinch right now. More famine, more poverty, more people without money and food =(
- Land. Well some may think it’s good to have more plants around but think about deforestation. These are not the plants as in lush green trees in the Amazon. Biofuel contains less energy than petroleum based fuel for a comparative amount. So they need a lot of source plants to extract small amount of oil.
- Global warming. On the contrary, some research found that burning biofuel is not cleaner but still contribute to global warming. The effect of deforestation adds to it. BTW, I want to recommend you all to watch the ‘Inconvenient Truth’ (wana see how polar bear can drown?).
- How sustainable or renewable it can be? The chemicals we used to produce them are still petroleum by-products. We blend it with petrodiesel and gasoline. We use fertilizers (petroleum by-product) for agriculture. Harvesting, processing (i.e: heating), marketing, transportation all needs energy and all that points back to petroleum. In the end the net of what we are getting out of biofuel is very little.
Biofuel might be able to reduce petroleum consumption for now, but I don’t think it is the ultimate solution.
Hell Future
Here’s what I imagine the future will be like:
- Oil price gets rediculously high. Mind you oil is not only for transportation but for so many other things. From buildings to tiny little end products like toys. So people will fight for petroleum until the last drop.
- Alternative energy source rise dramatically. Biofuel included. We will see wide plantations. We might even live on trees. High rise buildings with plants as tenants. Wind rotors in every windy place. Solar panels in buildings. We will live in the mercy of utilities providers.
- When the oil is depleted (maybe for another 100 years or get so expensive people can’t afford it) the world stops developing/progressing. It’s unimaginably hard to live without petroleum. So many products cannot be produced when it’s gone – for instance plastic products which we are all so dependable on, medical equipments and medicine itself. I’m afraid we might even plunge back to the dark age. Many people will be out of jobs. Although those in oil & gas business are enjoying the high price now, it won’t last long. Water will be scarce. Getting hydrogen from water is another possibility to turn it into another major source of alternative energy (though no major technology breakthrough now – I’m sure we will when we are desperate). Transportation’s a big problem. I don’t even know whether we will have aeroplanes flying anymore then.
- Looking for another habitable place in another planet. Mars is the place. One way or another, it is made habitable – I’m sure US can somehow find a way. They started digging for minerals and look for possible petroleum source. World war III (or maybe IV, or V) starts.
- Life is so hard that people wish to die. When you die your body will be taken as an energy source. Extract whatever minerals we have in our body. Burn our body (since we are carbon-based). No more graveyards – lands are too precious. Perhaps even dying is prohibited then. You’ll be kept alive just to extract energy from you. Your heat and your heart beat is somehow turned into a source of energy (like in the movie Matrix). It’s a nigthmare till you wish an alien would come and abduct you and take you away.
Okla enough. It’s a hell future I’m painting. I apologies but I’m only half joking though. Can someone please show me the light at the end of the tunnel. Too bad/lucky we won’t be here anymore to witness when the near future arrives. Anyway as for now, anyone inspired to start a plantation business?
Thanks for reading.
Of Gay Twinks, Nudists & Tiny Dick
May 13th
Oh no…….what happened to me last 3 days were weird. I wrote 2 articles about gay totaling 2000 words each and touched up one similar 1000-words article. So that explains why I was unable to continue my rural service story. Coming soon, coming soon. Anyway here are the links if you are interested to read about gay men stuff.
Please be forewarned that it may be disgusting because my immediate editor insist on making them informational and sexual as the audience will be gay men. Gasp! So here are my unedited copies if you so wish to look at them =P
1) Gay Twinks (this piece earned me RM 18)
2) Young Gay Men Nudists (this piece also earned me RM 18)
3) Tiny Dick Gays (this piece earned me RM 5)
For the record, I however did not turn gay after the ordeal. Imagine having to visit gay websites to get them done! Aiyeeeer…..Geli…..
