chit-chat with the elderly in the Moral Center

Today, the first Saturday in the June holiday, Xiaoyi, Yuhan and I went to the Moral Center again. This time, as many elderly were out of the Moral Center for a charity show, we intended to teach the elderly there neither English nor Chinese calligraphy, instead we just wanted to make it an informal chit-chat session so that a stronger bond can be forged between the senior citizens and us.
The chit-chatting turned out to be a fruitful, joyful and enjoyable one. When we arrived at the Moral Center, the elderly there were knitting blankets, just like the ones we sold on their behalf before the Chinese New Year together with the Chinese Lanterns. As they expressed their wish that they would like to have some more charity sales to sell all the blankets and the Chinese Lantern they made, we promised to help them to hold a charity sale during the Racial Harmony Day celebration in our school this year.
They looked rather happy to see us and invited us to sit with them. We chatted leisurely about everything, ranging from the school life to TV series, from life attitude to their children. We were happy to know that two grandsons of one senior citizen there happened to our seniors studying in Hwa Chong as well. They also recommended to us a TV series on Channel U named Xi You Ji, which is a basically a documentary of some Singaporeans’ life abroad. One grandpa, who went to China about three times each year, could tell us his experience in China without any stop. The atmosphere of the chatting is always casual and lively, just like a dinner chat between a grandma and her grandson. Not only did the elderly invite us to come to the Moral Center more, they even asked whether we would like to play Majiang with them during the weekdays. They even cooked dessert for us, Lian Zi Zhou which was really sweet, sweet to heart. This showed that we were on the right track to achieve our objectives.
Through chatting, I also developed an appreciation for the wisdom of the elderly. They knew that we must be aspiring to scale greater heights. They knew we always looked forward. They knew we never cared about our health much, because “young people never know what pain is until they are old”. They admonished that we should pay greater attention to our health as it is the foundation on which other great things in life such as family, love and career can be built. Indeed, their words were wise. Their spoke from their own journey in life and within the benefit of hindsight helped us to avoid some obstacles. Thank you, grandmas and grandpas! By trying to make your lives more colorful, we are also learning from your all.
The chatting today was indeed successful, but there was also room for improvement. At one instant, one of us said we could “accompany” (陪)them playing Majiang, a word some elderly seemed to be sensitive to as they felt it suggested we did not like to play with them full-heartedly. In the future, we would avoid such words and let the elderly feel as if we were their grandsons. We will also learn their dialect little by little (we learned some today) so that the communication may be a bit easier for some of them.