Hi all!

After some prodding from a friend, I'm now updating my blog, haha! Anyway, just for the benefit of anyone reading my blog, I'll let you know what I've been up to for the past 3 weeks.

I went for this volunteer community service project thing in Kuala Gula, Perak. It's about 40km away from Taiping, if I'm not mistaken. For more info, check out the website at www.raleighinternational.org.my. It's under Project AVYIL. AVYIL stands for Active Vibrant Youths Inspiring Lives. Most of our activities are listed in that section, so go ahead and read it there.

...oh alright, I'll tell you what we did there from my side of view. It's divided into 2 components, the hardware and the software. The software consisted of giving English and computer lessons to the locals there, as well as coming up with a marketing plan for eco-tourism. As for the hardware, we built a mini-jetty (boardwalk) going out to the river/sea, constructed signages for the nature trails that tourists would walk through, and set up a herbal garden in front of their community hall.

It was pretty cool overall, met interesting people and did interesting stuff. Almost 40 of us, including the facilitators stayed in an empty shop-lot, which was equipped with water heater for both the toilets! That's because the owner of it used to stay there.. Anyway the town's quite developed because it's already known as a bird sanctuary. So next to the shop-lot we were staying at, there were mini-marts and Chinese coffee-shops/karaoke centers, no kidding! But they only sang those old sort of Chinese songs, so not very 'ngam' for us, but whether we liked it or not, we were entertained! Till the wee hours of the morning!

The food - was prepared by the software/cooking team. We had lots of canned food like baked beans, sardines, curry chicken, and bee hoon. Since there was a market near by, we managed to get fresh food as well like veggies and chicken and tofu. Most of us were very tired of the canned food by the 3rd week already :)

Besides working, we managed to have some fun as well, like visiting the Taiping Zoo and a protected archaelogical site (Pulau Kelompang), where the early relics of civilization was discovered (meaning bones of dead people and broken vases). Actually all we saw were 2 big holes in the ground.. well, if you were an archaelogical buff, you'd have appreciated it, that's all I can say for P. Kelompang. But I liked the boat ride that we took to get there. Just sitting in the motorized 'sampan', with the wind in your face and the salty spray in the air, and all over the boat at times :)

i could go on about it.. but i'll leave it at that for now and post this one up :)