We embarked on a Discover, Fun & Fellowship ‘voyage’ to Malacca last Friday (17 Apr).
It was Rotaract District Conference 2009 and we left after having a sumptuous breakfast at Delifrance Causeway Point. Zakir, our designated ‘Personal Transporter’, together with Benedict, Hui Ying and I got on to our PT’s vehicle left Singapore closed to half past eleven and started our 2 hour drive to Malacca.
We reached Malacca at 2.30pm and were wandering at the 2 largest shopping mall in town.
At 4.30pm, we decided to have a late lunch at Nando’s and we spilt up for massage and movie.
We joined the rest of the participants of RDC at the hotel at 7pm and went for dinner and fellowship at Newton Food centre beside Mahkota. It was ice cream and more chatting at Mahkota shopping mall after dinner on our dear Zakir’s tab! Of course we also had a good time talking to one of the rotaractor from Curtin University, Kwai Hong.
We return to Orkid hotel, which we will be staying, at 10pm and started some games to get to know more about each other. It was a good time for me as I had rarely participated in district event as much as the rest of the members who went to the event with me. I found it was an excellent opportunity for me to learn more about other rotaractors and their club culture. We were all regroup into different teams, Tuah, Lekir, Kasturi, Jebaat and Lekiu. the teams were named after the warriors in Malayan history.
After forming the teams, we started playing games. One of the games, ‘soul mates’, we had to write something about ourselves on a piece of paper and put into a box and get one piece of paper out of the box belonging to another person in the room. It was a great deal of fun to guess who the person who wrote on each piece of paper was and seeing the whole group of us getting all anxious to find the ‘soul mates’. The even greater fun was there were a lot of us who wrote outrages and weirdest things.
We ended the night closed to 1am and I had a good time chatting with Hui Ying too.
The next day, Hui Ying and I woke up at 5.45am and started to get ready for the joint opening of the 19th District 3310 Assembly of Rotary and RDC. We had our breakfast at the hotel before proceeding to the Renaissance Hotel for the event.
Outside the function hall, we saw a great number of people coming for the Assembly from District 3310. Before the start of the event, we managed to find our Rotarians in the crowd and have a short chat with them.
At the start of the event, there was the 3 flags of Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei which are the district coverage of 3310 and flags of Rotary, Rotaract and Interact. I personally felt particularly proud when the Singapore anthem was played during the ceremony.
We adjoined to the 2nd part of the RDC after the light tea break at the end of the opening ceremony. We began our session with Rotarian John we spoke to us on avoidable blindness. We had an interesting talk by Dr Yee who formerly worked in the psychiatric department at the national general hospital of Melaka. Dr Yee spoke to us about depression and what it led to. We gained the knowledge of assessing our own mental health. We also learnt that mental illnesses are often left neglected due to public stereotyping. Coincidentally our club is also doing a community service project with the Institute of Mental Health. Hence we found the information presented by Dr Yee familiar. Dr Yee also highlighted issues of general public had these days was the lack of courage to stand forth and seek medical treatments. Fortunately, people are more inclined to seek for medical attention now compared to a decade ago and we are hopeful that the situation would improve!
We continued our sessions after lunch with individual clubs' presentations on the eventful year since last RDC. We gained that the activities each club does and some activities given me inspirations and motivation to contribute more to my community in Singapore and mankind in every corner of the world.
RDC continued with the participants group into different teams and we were ask to play games. All of us had lots fun playing guessing game, 'pass a message & draw the answer' and cerograph a dance within 10mins.
Looking at representatives from each teams trying to crack their brains describing on each item that members of particular team has to guess was real entertaining. Some descriptions were hilarious and the anticipation of each team trying to guess the correct answers was exciting. The dances presented by the participants were equally interesting and some intriguing.
We ended the games and were brief on the next outdoor session at Jonker Walk. We were supposed to complete 20 tasks at Jonker Walk but 1st we took a boat ride at the river. We buckled our life jackets n embarked on the discovery trip at Melaka river. On the boat we had a boat guide who told about Melaka's history and the river's past and future developments. from houses restoration to new developments and from Melaka’s trading port activities to present's entertainment and heritage developments. I was enticed by Melaka's heritage and many current and future developments. We ended the boat ride with the boat ride guide greeting 100 languages of goodbye in different countries.
At Jonker Walk, all participants split into respective teams in the shortest possible time and proceeded to our 'Jonker Walk hunt'. Along Jonker Walk we saw many handicrafts, toys, performances from magic to ge tai, pets on sales from hamsters to rabbits and possibly anything you can thought of could be found. Of course, we also didn't forget the glorious food. We tasted famous nogya laska, durian chendol, dodol, Char Kway Teow, pineapple tarts and many more. While streaming through t he busy Jonker Walk, we were all supposed to complete tasks and to take pictures as proof of completion. Hence we had 'killing scene', 'guitar lighter musician', 'male wearing clogs' and 17 other tasks. Once all participants completed the tasks, we split and started eating and drinking enjoying the night life of Jonker Walk before the agreed time to return to hotel I our chartered bus.
Upon reaching the hotel, we were told that the pictures we took earlier are to review and used to create a story. Therefore the group returned to designated rooms and began the discussion. We all only call it a night after fellowship with supper for some, drinks for some and long chats for many. The next day we all woke up feeling groggy.
The last day kicked start with the usual breakfast however the club had another agenda apart from the rest. We won the best district Rotaract club and hence we were asked by our proud Rotarians to take a picture with our District Governor to commemorate this day. I remembered being informed by our President of our club the night before I felt jubilant and ecstatic about winning the award.
After taking some photos with our District Governor and Rotarians, we return to our rotaractor’s program and the winning team of this RDC was announced. And the winners walked away with ‘exquisite’ gifts prepared by the organizing committee. Zakir’s team came in 1st and he got a Darlie tissue roll holder. RDC 2009 ended with 2 closing speech from Rotarian Jimmy ooi and Rotarian Leslie. The program with RDC has officially ended but some of us proceed for lunch at a Ngoya restaurant and the food was yummy! We didn’t return straight to Singapore after lunch, we went for a famous Durian chendol and some local products shopping.
Tired and satisfied, we headed back to Singapore and concluded this Discover, Fun & Fellowship event.
Rtr Jerlyn
