Monday, July 04, 2005

Crazy Care

I'm feeling the after effects of the camp...my eye lids are as heavy as a tonne of bricks and my legs can barely support my slouched back -.-" I woke up at 7.30, found that my left calf was extremely sore, actually, my entire body was aching. haha! I felt like Hitler after a shave.

My mum drove me to Arpad Hostel for my first day of Community Service. It was somewhat boring, tiresome, yet interesting. All the residents there were really friendly and hospitable. The only problem is that all of them are Hungarian, and only a handfull understand English. I started off with a game of chess with this old man named Laslo, who supposedly is an ex-champion of some prestigous competition. Yea, i'm seriously crap at chess, and i didn't want to make an old man lose :D Actually, the first reason is more valid XD. Well yea, pretty obviously, i lost both games.

I met another interesting dude. I can't remember his name, but i think it is "Les". haha! i'm pretty sure it's not his name, but i was calling him that anyway. He's REALLY REALLY old, he's even got great-grand children. Despite his old age, and the dreaded parkinson's disease that has plagued his body for over 15 years, he's still booming with energy! I was shocked when i heard that he didn't like to waste time; he thought that "Time is too precious to be wasted just sitting around". All the Hungarians there had outstandingly interesting accents, but i had to strain my ears to make sense of what they were saying.

I spent most of my time with Les. I don't really know what he used to do for a living, but he said something about deep freshwater diving and mechanism. loL! They don't mix at all, and i was really confused, but it didn't matter. I was told that most of the old folks there suffer from varying severities of dementia. Les told me about his "plan" to revamp his room; he wanted to shift this extremely heavy oak desk. haha! I looked at his frail body, and back at the intimidating desk. All i could do was to pray.

Despite his eccentrism, he's really smart. He even made some wheels so to help move the oak desk. The problem then was how to get the wheels under the heavy desk. He said to me," Ahh! I'm gonna tell you a secret...it's a secret...we're too smart for this.." and he yanks out this long plank of wood. lol! he used it as a lever, well, he's smart but not really. We got the wheels under the table using his "plank-lever technique" which was fully dependent on my "lift-desk-with-sheer-brute-force" philosophy.

Well, the next step was to "roll" the oak desk to his favoured position. But honestly, they didn't work although he thought they did. I mean, i could have moved the desk if i tried with all my might. Seriously...but i had to play along..we slotted the wheels under the desk and "moved" it. haha! In actual fact, I was using brute strength. At least he thought that his "wheels method" was working.

It was an experience i'll never forget, but i sure wouldn't want to be doing it any longer. Well, i've got 2 more six-hour days to endure. Hope that i'll find a greener patch of grass the next time around.

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