The children and the elderly have a soft spot in our hearts, both Pres and I and if we could visit an orphanage or a nursing home every month, gladly we would!  But it is no easy to pull off any charity event here or outside of Singapore given the hardly sufficient skill sets that we have.

The impression would always be that those who are in the medical field have that edge when it comes to doing outreach and charity work.  While Pres may be a licensed First-Aider (is that how it’s called?), I could barely stop feeling fidgety when getting some jabs at the local clinic.  Imagine that.

So in 2013 when we first said YES to joining a group off to Myanmar for a mission trip, Pres and I had this conundrum – what value do we add to this group exactly that they would not regret giving us slots, which other volunteers with way useful skills that we so do not possess, would have gotten easily?

This made us decide to enroll ourselves in haircutting courses early 2013.  The mission trip was scheduled first week December so all Saturdays until December, we attended haircutting classes in Serangoon and Tampines community centres.  Pres was always the only thorn among the roses in all our classes but he didn’t mind!

Thankfully, we finished basic and intermediate haircutting courses in time for our mission trip to Myanmar.  We visited a Karen orphanage in South Shan State, home to 70+ kids, some 14 hours away from Yangon.  We miss the kids at the orphanage as well as the villagers there and we hope to visit them again soon!

Then in 2014, we started looking around for reflexology courses we could enroll in and only this one reflexology school replied and accepted to teach Pres and I.  We would go for our classes after office (8ish) twice in a week and for our make up classes, we would be there on weekends.  We have been eyeing nursing homes here in Singapore to visit next so we could spend some time with the elderly there.

Master Lai, who speaks very scant English was our reflexology instructor.  Lucky that another instructor, Ms Orifiel would always translate for us!  We would typically take turns on who was to give and to receive massage during class.

Pres somehow managed to find his way to teach (am using the term loosely!) me and our classmate Susie how to locate the pressure points!  Master Lai probably went for his tea!

Free neck and head massage, thank you very much!  I’d need to hold up our cheat sheet each time, though!

But the best part of taking reflexology classes, we got to practice on my Mom and my Dad at home!

“To make an elderly person happy is the noblest act a young person can ever do!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan