SBC Graduation and Global Day of Prayer 2008

Exam is finally over, and graduation has come!!! Yes... although not for me yet.. but it definitely is a moment of joy for many of the students in SBC who have finished their studies and ready to venture into the real world and practice what they have learned so far.

I received a request from a fellow student, whether I can help him as usher at Boonlay MRT, to help guide the guests to the location where a shuttle bus is ready to pick the people up to NTU Auditorium. And so, after lunch, me and Lambie went to Boon Lay to get ready.

My lambie reminded me to give a call to mom. Hey, it's mother's day remember? I updated mom on the end of school and what I intend to do. Glad to hear that everything is fine at home. My second brother maybe coming over to singapore, I hope that it will be during the time when I am available, and not away doing my mission trip in Kalimantan jungle.

Ok, after that, I met with a staff from SBC who was supposed to be there. I was handed a sign, pointing in the general direction of the bus shelter. And there I was, standing, accompanied by lambie for the next one hour.

I was glad to be there as well. My class mate is a Naga, and he can only speak english. I can speak 3 languages and manage to guide quite a number of people to the location.

And now, the unexpected thing happened. You see, I was supposed to help, without knowing how the school did the coordination for the bus. Only at 15 minutes before 4 pm (the time when the graduation ceremony starts) I was shocked. Firstly, I was shocked to see that there were about 80 peoples queuing for the bus. Secondly, there is only one more trip to make. Thirdly, the bus' capacity is only for 15 people.

To be honest, I was rather annoyed. Why don't ask the people to go and get their own transportation, when you know that there are not enough seats available? Why let them come late to the ceremony? It seems that they did not foresee that there will be so many guests coming over.

After appeasing the crowd and encouraging them to take taxi and bus to the school, we finally managed to get to Nanyang Auditorium through the last bus. Squeezing more than 20 people in a 15-seaters is certainly not so enjoyable.

When we reached, we realized that there were no seats left. So, I offered myself as the tour guide and led lambie from North Spine to South Spine. It was nice to wait outside too, 1. we get to move around when things get bored, 2. we get to eat the food first when the ceremony finished.

6.45 pm, and we were ready to board the bus leaving for Singapore Indoor Stadium, for the Global Day of Prayer. and hey.. surprise.. only Mr.Zhang is in the bus, which Zhang? the Zhang over at the factory haha.... and so we waited, ... and waited... and waited...

This is another mess done by the school. Just as they were unprepared for the number of incoming guests, they did not even put the PIC of the bus to be on site. The bus driver are confused as to when to go. No body knows who can decide. And the clock keep ticking. It was only at 7.05 I told one of the student who seems to be helping out. I said, look, it is already 7.05, if we don't leave now, we are going to be late. the timing is set to leave at 6.45, we have waited for 20 minutes. If someone wants to go after we left, he/she has no right to complain, because they should know that the bus is scheduled to leave at 6.45. He agreed, and I commanded (in my suit) to the bus driver to go....

We arrived at Indoor Stadium at around 7.45, 15 minutes late. The crowds filled up most of the seats and we get to seat at the balcony level. We sit through the first two section of the programmes, heard the sermon by Edmund Chan and David Lim, and prayed for Myanmar and Bangladesh. We decided to leave at around 9.30 pm.

On our way out, we were offered a bag, with a flag of another country for momento and to pray for it. Mine was 'singapore'. I said, can I change this with another flag? the usher said, sure, which country I was looking for? there are the boxes containing all the flags on the floor, I can collect as many as I wanted. and so I grabbed more than 20 flags from different countries.

We took bus no.16 and stopped at CityHall. Lambie took the train up to Sembawang and I took the train west to BuonaVista. It was a long and tiring day for both of us, but we enjoyed it. We are together for more than 12 hours... and isn't that awesome? I hope that the time will come when we are with one another for 24 hours everyday :) love you lambie...