¬ If Feels Belonged in CAS, This Would Be It ¬

There's a term that people, as writers, as fangirl amd fanboys use quite often. The term I'm referring to is called 'feels'. Feels are basically what the word implies; feelings. But not just feeling, but feeling that are worthy of writing about, feelings that can make you laugh or cry or sit there in silence and just think. Feels are things that we find in everyday situtaions but amplified, or sometimes, you find feels in not so ordinary situations. Most of my CAS life has consisted of services and programs that bring me many, many feels. I'm glad to say that here, in OSC, I've found my service feels.

I have, in the short time I've been here, had the honour and absolute priviledge to visit the Alzheimers association with the rest of the Alzheimers group members. This activity gave me so many feels, enough that when went home after the day I did all of the following:

I ranted
    and raved
        and laughed
                and nearly cried
                        and just about exhausted myself with feels.

I cannot, I cannot, cannot, cannot explain the immensity of what I felt after the Alzheimers visit. It was something that etched itself into my core and made me want to go back to do more. Let me explain the happening of that day and maybe you can get a glimpse of what I felt.

Here. We. Go:

I'm going to start off by saying that I didn't really know my group that well when I started off, so, I simply went ahead and sat in the bus and thought about what my experience would be like. I thought, I'm ashamed to admit, that it would be bad. That I wouldn't know how to speak to the people or I wouldn't have anything to say. I thought it'll be like manual labour, something I have to do. I thought I'd screw it up royally and I really didn't want to go.

I did however, step off the bus with a smile on my face. I was nervous and stupid. I was stupid because as soon as we walked into the sitting area of the association, I knew that my gut was wrong. I was, for once, truly happy to have been proved wrong. All I saw was smiling old ladies and gentlemen and I felt with them what I feel with my grand-family. I felt... I felt... quiet belonging.
I've always found that I'm better with kids smaller than myself and with rather old people and this was no different. After a few minutes of awkward loitering around and getting my bearing, I approached the Sinhala speaking patients (I was the only one that spoke Sinhalese) and began, well, speaking. It was so natural and it touched something inside me.

This one old lady, I have now designated her as my favourite, her name was Francesca and she was the one that I stuck to like glue. She was small and sweet and talked with a lisp and she was, from what I got from her interactions, terribly happy that we were all here. Several times she mentioned how nice it was to see all these people coming to visit and several times over, I agreed. I agred because of the quiet desperation in her eyes to not let us go, in the way she held my hand whenever she said it and in the way when we were leaving she stroked my hands again and told me to come back.

Somewhere in me, the shrivelled black thing I call a heart, became gold. It became gold in the way the old ladies and gentleman clapped and danced and sung their songs. Gold in the way they never forgot the rythm and words despite forgetting everything else. Gold the way when they smiled you knew it was genuine and you knew that you'd do so much to keep them smiling. Gold in the way I wanted to come back.

It was so very hard to leave. Francesca didn't want me to go and neither did I.  I saw in her the same thing I see in my grand-uncle. Beyond the smile there's a longing to to hang onto a fast moving, fleeing world and in our leaving, they just lose hold of and forget more.

I should probably talk about how I interacted with the rest of my group now but that's very basic. I talked, they talked, we danced, we sang and I made new friends but it was the other stuff that mattered to me. As a rule I don't like humans, we're not a very nice species, and I hardly like people my age unless they're special in one way or the other, but the oldies I loved and that was what I got out of the Alzheimers visit. I got:

Humanity
    and quiet sadness
                the desire to help
                            a need to do something beyond myself

And a reason to keep helping the association regardless of whether I was in the group or not.
I, ummm, I don't know. It's just the need to do something that'll help people that can't help themselves and the sadness but pride in knowing you did something worthwhile even if they won't remember it,
I know now. I know to talk without wanting anything out of the conversation, to speak the same words over and over again with patience, to sometimes just smile and nod because that's how the world works, and how to feel pity, but beyond that reverence, for the people that manage their lives even like that.
I know and that's enough.

I'm not entirely sure exactly what all that rambling was but I got so much out of the experience that I can't put into words. I can tell you the new skills I learnt when dealing with the patients and how I'm improving my language by speaking it more but I really don't care about that. I care about the human experience and that's what I tried to write about. The feels are immense, an entire novel could be written out of it, I'm probably going to fail CAS because of these reflections, but seriously, screw that. That doesn't matter.

I'm here to feel and grow as a person on the inside and I'm doing that. Service is not a job anymore like I thought it'd be, it's something that's a part of me. I've found my passion in CAS, found what makes it beyond a chore and I love it. I feel so much and I lear, grow so much and that's all I ever wanted.

This is perfect.

This is, in a way, mine.

<3

~ Picture Post: CAS in Pics ~

Okay, so, this is the picture post as promised. There's actually going to be a major, actual, CAS post put up in a little while with my new activities but for now,  here goes:

PICTURE TIME ~!

So this was our entire dance group. The people in blue are Indian dancers and everyone else performed the UV Dance :)

 Our hands were painted to glow int he dark, for the affect. As usual, I'm the one with the coolection of bands on my arms :P

 This was just the UV group :)

And this beautiful picture is what we looked like on stage. We basically glowed against the black background and all that could be seen were our shirts, around our eyes and socks and palms.

Coolio~! 

 

 This was backstage at Cinderella, or Cinders as we called it. Don't ask me why we're on the ground and don't ask about the pedo face in the background. And yes, we actually got work done, just not in that session...

 SAP Peace day prep. This was the hand painting group that I took part in :)

 Amnesty candle sale :)

 More backstage at Cinders. We were lucky cus our same group did both UN Day and Cinders.

This is our badminton team on our way to Delhi for our tournament. We're in the airport I think... I'm somewhere in the middle in a pink scarf. This was basically my family for all of season three and I love them to bits <3 Teamwork ftw ~!

 All of our SAP group on Peace Day :)

 More badminton.

 More SAP.

More UV dance ^^

And that's about it.

~ The Deep CAS Stuff (in which my CAS soul is bared) ~

I think that's it's about time I actually got started on my real reflections rather than just posting pictures so I'll start my writing now.

                                                                Or like now…

                                                                                                Okay, I’ll actually write now -__-

So, long story short, let’s get to the actual CAS of things. I reckon I’ll split this up into the different activities I’ve done so it’s more organized that way and I can collect my thoughts individually. It’s probably going to be a long spiel though so make yourself comfortable.

Here goes…

S.A.P (students against prejudice)

 I’m not quite sure how to describe SAP. I’m pretty sure I mentioned it in one of my earlier posts so you know the general drift but there’s no way that I can explain to you what I feel is the immensity of SAP. SAP was really a unique opportunity to get to know ourselves better whilst engaging with issues on a much larger, more global scale. It was, I think, the first place I realized how far my actions stretch and how a little can go a long way.

I remember my first SAP meeting; I was hyped for it because I’d heard all these great things from my brother who did it before me. I was excited even before I began (in grade 9) and that excitement carried itself through the years. The thrill of the excitement turned itself into a passion that reflected SAP’s mission, visions and values. Through SAP, I gained for myself the knowledge, the skills and the understanding to deal with issues of prejudice in any form. 

I think the first thing I learned was how to stop using the word ‘gay’ with a negative connotation as in ‘those shoes are so gay’. Even now, when I hear anyone, even an adult, make a statement like that I’m willing to step up and ask them politely to stop. If you were to ask a lot of the people in school, especially those in my grade, all the SAP members, myself included have repeated our mantra: << I would greatly appreciate it if you used the word gay in a negative connotation as that implies that being gay is a negative trait which it is not. >> 

It may seem like a small thing but the effect of this, believe it or not, was substantial. Through SAP we managed to get a majority of the school not using the word gay as they normally would, at least not in the presence of SAP members and that in itself was a win regardless of what anyone else would say. No-one in my family now, nor in my circle of friends, uses the word gay and we as a whole are proud of that.

Beyond this, we focused on classism and how people treat their domestic help or drivers or houseboys as less than human. For this we hosted several lunch sessions for the OIG’s (the school cleaner) and took the time to talk to them, play cricket with them and helped them raise money to send money back to their families. WE smiled at the workers in passing when no-one else would, a gesture that they returned with more honesty that I’ve seen some of my friends show. One of the most profound things I heard in SAP was when one girl raised her hand and said for everyone to hear << The most beautiful thing about them is that they have the same hopes and dreams and aspirations that we have for ourselves >> in reference to the OIG’s. I suppose, I hate to admit it, but I hadn’t seen it quite like that till that moment but I’m glad I do now. That statement opened my eyes and I’m glad to say that I haven’t really closed them since.

I strongly believe that with SAP I have gotten rid of personal prejudices and have learnt to accept everyone for who they are. No-one is too weird or nerdy or stupid and no-one ever will be in my eyes. These values and ideals I still carry with me now and I intend to carry them with me for a long time to come.

Amnesty

Amnesty was another opportunity that I am truly glad to have been in given the amount of personal gain I got out of it. Admittedly I was dragged along to it in the beginning, missing my lunch period to go to this service but later no it became natural. I found myself in school on weekends, on optional days, from 8 in the morning till past lunch with the sparse members that decided to turn up. Out of my own free will I went and didn’t stop. Why? Because it was the right thing to do.

It was the right thing to ask governments to stop taking land away from people who farmed and made their living off the land simply to give way for urbanization. It was right to speak up for the people that were politically or socially oppressed. It was right to exercise and extend our basic human rights to others in the world that couldn’t afford to do it for themselves.

One of the most hilarious and exhilarating moments in all of Amnesty was World Toilet Day. Don’t laugh, actually, no, go ahead, I did too initially. I mean, at first we played the toilet song to raise awareness about sanitation after which we thanked our toilet as a class. But then it became more serious. We built toilets out of recycled materials and asked people to ‘flush’ money down the handmade loo’s. We put up posters for the cause and had bake sales. We collected just over 100 rials (300 dollars) just from the ‘flushing’ money project and even more with the bake sales profit. All that money went to build toilets for a school and community in Tanzania (a partner project that help out Dorobo).

It was frankly quite amazing because if we could raise awareness and do so much for such a strange sounding and comical cause, then we could do so much more for a more serious one. What we learned that year was when a situation is approached from the right angle, with the right drive, and with a little bit of man power, we really can change a small part of the world for the better. 

Next time, it won’t matter how silly the project sounds, even if its toilets again, I know to give my hundred percent for the benefit of others because after all, what are we without one another? And what are we if we can’t help out each other?

U.N Day

I’m actually really sad that I don’t have the video of our UV dance to put up yet, I’ll have to go look for it (ie: beg/borrow/nick it off a friend) but for now the reflection will have to do.

At first, the dance was just our way of being cool. My friends were nice enough, as I was leaving, to make this the big thing that I got to end with and be remembered for so we signed up. We wanted to be the first in the school to do an ultra violet, glow in the dark dance and we did that. There was immense satisfaction in choreographing, mixing the music and performing it all on our own but what stunned me was our change from wanting to be the next big thing to this. 

This is the passage I wrote on behalf of our group to explain why we were doing our dance. I’m surprised at how our team managed to think beyond just the theme of water conservation and turned it into something bigger. The write-up should explain it better than I could right now.

<< Hi Mrs. Malik,

Here's that write-up you wanted to introduce our dance. Our apologies for taking so long but it's here now so better late than never I suppose :) Hope you like it and we hope it explains what we're trying to do with our piece.

***

Water, although perceived as a peaceful, soothing element, is often one of great power and awe inspiring beauty. As much as the soft pitter-patter of rain against a window pane makes you sigh, watching the cresting and breaking of waves on a sandy shore can take your breath away.

With this dance, we hope to bring to the audience the many faces of water as it goes from soft and flowing to hard and pounding. We want to lull them into a false sense of security and then startle them awake the same way summer showers turn into unpredictable thunderstorms. We want to show them that despite a calm and collected facade, water can be angered and easily stirred.

Our group hopes to showcase water in all its majesty, regardless of whether it is good or bad. Consider it a political dance. The more we waste water, the more it fights back. Hopefully, through this dance, we can bring about awareness to this issue; we need water, as scarce a resource as it is, but we are destroying and this destruction has to stop.

In showing both sides of water we want to show not only its beauty but its power and hold over us as well.

***

As you can see, the write-up refers to some of the movements we use in the dance such as the soft beginning which goes into a more popping/locking middle. There's an incorporation of a pot and shimmering blue to give the effect of waves and the unity of the water as it carries the vessel on it's waves. There are speed shift to represent unpredictability and such like.

Hopefully by the end of this dance the audience will go away with a feeling quite unlike anything they've had before. The entire performance should be something they haven't seen before and hopefully the surprise in it will allow the audience to pay attention to the message we're trying to convey.
Like I mentioned, with the dance being so hard and fast allows it to be more political and therefore the message we will raise at the end will tie in to the conservation of water.

I do understand that our write-up is slightly vague but we want to keep the plan hidden so that it's fresh and new in the performance. Shock value. We'd be glad to explain more if you'd like, just let us know :)

Thank you for this opportunity Mrs. Malik, it really means a lot because we want to be different and yet true to the nature of water. Hopefully this fits what you wanted. Any edits are welcome.

Thanks again. >>

That was our entire explanation and I really hope that reading it you can see why we ended up doing what we did. I think we finally grew up beyond ourselves, beyond our egos, and realized that even in our showcasing we could bring about awareness and a message.

We did have fun with the dance though as you can see from the pictures. It wasn’t all work and no play, that was the great thing, and we had an amazing time working with each other. There were tears and fights and so much drama but it undeniably brought us closer to each other as a group. With Sam and me acting as the police and middle-women we got it all done. We discovered our unknown, surprising, strengths in dance. Who knew we could all pop and lock? Funzies :D

Cinderella (backstage)

I’m not going to say that there was anything profound behind this because there wasn’t. Like no way, at all, but, it was the most fun (I was about to say ‘funnest’ there :P ) and definitely the most creative project we did. This Cinderella play was a chance to let our creative juices flow. We ended up making a giant pumpkin (and yes, it was about half the size of a person so it was giant) and a movable limousine (it literally could be pulled along) and all the backdrops. The coolest part was when we were painting tress on a white cloth for the forest scene and the paint leaked through onto the floor. Strangely enough, the leaked painting looked better than what we originally put up.

And that’s about it.

I’m getting pretty tired of writing now ‘cus I’ve been at it for a while and my mind’s going fuzzy with memories. I kinda wanna hole up and cry because I’ve really had some of the best times in my life doing this as sappy as that sounds. I just really, really, really, pretty please with a cherry on top, want my CAS here at OSC to be just as productive and meaningful because I’d die if it became a chore. I want to do this for myself not because I have to. So yeah, hoping for the best.

 So yeah, this was the deep reflection stuff, hope ya’ll don’t mind reading all that. It’s a bit much, I know, but I’ll put up more pictures in the next post as I get them off my friends. I already sent a mail out so it should be here in a couple of days, just hang tight till then. I’m planning on doing an entire picture post so that should be fun :)

Right, I’m off to bed so goodnight to all the lovelies that read this. Thanks for bearing with all this :P I’ll see you (metaphorically) in the morning maybe…

Cheers

Saj

~ Memories of a CAS Long Gone... ~

Memories of a CAS long gone...

So yes, this is what I used to get up to back in the day. The photos simply serve to show how much fun we had while doing CAS. They were all really great learning experiencesand we got to share them with the best people :)

 Dressing up backstage at the Cinderella play. 

That dress was fit for a princess ;)

 Lots of fun masquerading and playing pretend.

 Because we were so kawai with our creativity.

 Helping out with props. Painting the scenery and getting flowers ready was our life.

We left the lights to the technicians.

But costume changes and scene shifts were all ours :D

 And goofing around in the costumes after a hard days work.

 UN Day Fashion Show - me and my model. We were photobombed.

We put it so much hard work that we needed another picture. 

The jacket was something I designed but the model's beauty is all his own :P

Back then when I threw for Tack and Field. It wasn't so much the joy of winning or being good at something but the sense of community and power that it gave.

I did both shot-put and discus as you can see...

And this was our entire team which really was more of a family than anything. I've had some of the best times in my life with them even despite the rigorous early morning training regimes and the horrible up-hill running :P

This is, really, what I expect out of my CAS here. Get to know my strengths and weaknesses, play well with others, and have fun doing it.

~ Of my Musing on Past CAS and Suchlike ~

~ Of my musings on past CAS and suchlike ~

SO…

This.

This is CAS apparently…

Or better said, this is CAS the new way….

I’m going to be honest and say that I’ve never quite done it like this before. I’ve done CAS, of course I have, but I’ve never blogged about it. I’ve always been more of an old school, pencil and paper type person (ie: technologically defunct) but it’s a learning process and hopefully I’ll learn quickly.

But yes, other than my lack of tech smarts, CAS at OSC is fairly new to me because no-one counts hours. I’ve counted hours all this time. 150 hours to meet the requirements with 50 hours from each category and that was it. Just count your hours.

But now there’s this long term thing. I don’t mind it, it’s just a little… different.

Back then though, I did CAS activities that I liked, ones that I had a passion for. I did Students Against Prejudice (SAP) and Amnesty since grade 9 to cover my service, both activities that I’ve followed all year long. I had done backstage and props for drama productions to get my creative hours, as many productions as they put on, and joined school teams (mainly footy and badminton) for active. They weren’t all permanent and not all long term but they were things I loved to be a part of.

SAP was like family. We were, within school, the people that cared about the minorities and cared about helping the OIG workers on campus. We were the ones that spread awareness about prejudices and actively tried to do something about it. Hell, we even boycotted the word ‘gay’ when used in a negative connotation. This was something we were proud of, being able to make a difference. We even had a day of silence, 24 hours in which we didn’t speak, to send a message and echo deliberately the silence that minorities are forced to face every day. SAP also had this Bangladesh Project inspired by ONE HEN where the students would fly over and help out in a village, building infrastructure and helping the villagers. We did food drives and stationary drives and tried to make it better for a small group of people and we were captured by the idea of fighting prejudices of all sorts (racism, sexism, ageism, ableism, etc), one school at a time. SAP was the one thing service that I passionately fell in love even before I joined having seen my brother be a part of it before me. That spirit still hasn’t died.

Amnesty, however, was something I was coerced into. My friends, the same few that did SAP, convinced me. It turned out to be the best forced commitment I had ever made. Amnesty was all about awareness and actively pursuing global issues. Everything from Peace Day to Human Rights letters were done by Amnesty and we reveled in it. We weren’t as much a family as a fighting force and we knew that we were doing something good, something great. There was power in the way we used our words and resources to better the world, or so we thought. It may have been naïve but we really were fighting the good fight.

Sports were also a major contribution to my CAS. I began initially with footy (soccer) and basketball which were two sports I had always liked, basketball more so because my family played it too. I liked the high of the adrenalin and the feeling of being the best I could be. But I don’t think I pursued sports fully until Grade 10. That was when I fully realized my potential and went for footy as a serious game. I ditched basketball in favour of Track and Field for which I did discus and shot put but I soon dropped that too. I decided to stick to footy and pursue a game I had always been in love with: badminton. It was a whole new ball game, literally, and I loved it. I’ve stuck to both footy and badminton, alternating seasons, as I went along and playing on a team, playing with people, for people, for our pride and for ourselves as a whole gave me a new kind of buzz. I haven’t quite let go of that buzz yet and I’m glad that I get to pursue these sports here too. Not Vipers this time, but, GO GECKOS!

My biggest passion other than sports was the same one I’d carried through childhood. Art. Art in all its shapes and forms enthralled and captured me and in CAS I pursued it as much as I could. I did every single backstage event for UN Days and school plays. I even took part in UN day with UV (ultra violet) dances and so on. I painted scenery and made props and made castles out of cardboard. I designed the Prince’s jacket for Cinderella and got it stitched, watched it being paraded around the stage. It was nice to see my work out there for everyone. Pride was something that came with CAS. Pride in my work, my teams work, our work. Those were some of the best times I’ve ever had, especially with my motley crew of friends that worked together to make fairytales a reality. It was, as far as CAS went, the most creative and imaginative experience I’ve ever had and that was all I needed to make me go for it again and again.

Wow, I’ve uhhh, looking back up, written a lot more than I expected...

Anyway, that’s really all I can think of for now. I just hope that in OSC, with this CAS program, I can get as many useful outcomes and I can pursue my activities with the same passion I had. Let’s see what my first Service, Action and Creativity are~!