** Gosh, apparently I fell asleep while typing this for the first time and mistakes are all over. Here you go with the ammended one....
19th April 2009 - My first week of volunteering in East End Film Festival started with a very early train to Victoria. Although it had been tiring at work for the past few days, having the first breath of fresh air walking 30 mins to the town to catch the train was indeed a mind refreshing one. Train passed through a few calling stations before reaching London Victoria. The places around south england countryside had weird names such as Shoreham-by-sea, Durrington, Ford, Goring-by-sea, etc.
Some scenic view from the train....As for the film festival, I had been helping them with flyering and some office work for the first week. Also had delicious Belgium food with Siew which I had blogged before.
27th April 2009 - It's raining hard while rushing time to catch the train to London in town today. Being in UK, although raining here is only drizzling, but it's rapid and dried away fast due to the dry 'air'. This was the first day in UK under the rain that I had to use a raincoat. Reaching the train station, exhausted, then only I found out that the train was delayed due to some technical problem in one of the stations. While waiting, I got a chance to had a long chat with someone on the train who's from Sri Lanka and had been working in UK since 2002. I asked him about the places of interest around South of England and he recommended me some which I will try to make my holiday there. Later on also he told me about how beautiful Sri Lanka is but he can't be able to live there due to the political situation over there. He mentioned that there's one hotel in Sri Lanka that has a pool with water source directly from the waterfall, and you could imagine how cooling and refreshing the water could be. Also there's a place with 7 wells, each with different temperature, some is hot, some are cold, some with different color etc, and best thing is they are not man-made. There's also a mountain that you could climb up to the top and sometimes you can see rain pouring from your feet down to the earth while it's dry up there at the summit. Sounds interesting and makes me want to visit there some day. I was surprised myself that I can actually talk to strangers. I remembered a few years back while I was in Singapore, a friend asked me whether do I talk to stranger when I'm on flight or on the bus. I remembered very clearly that my answer to her was 'NO' at that time. This time, my travelmate asked me again when I mentioned on my chat topic in the train to her. Thinking back, I'm shocked too. I actually did change. But I find it quite nice to chat with someone you do not know without having any commitment putting on each other. I guess I'm also like what rainstorm said, I put trust on someone until someone betrayed the trust, as long as no harm is done during at the point of conversation, why not?
Going into the Film Festival Office for the 2nd time, I got the chance to meet some real Britons and see how they work. I had been helping them in the office for 3 days consecutively with the designing of layout for their closing night brochures. Being in the office environment, see how they solve problems, it's indeed very different. Some of the 'colleagues' seems like knowing the whole festival in and out for the fact that they are also volunteers like me, and they only got into the office 3 weeks ago. It's amazing the speed that they pick up at work. And when problems arise, seldom blames are put on, but instead worked together to solve the problems. It's quite fulfilling also when I was stationed at different cinema around East London each day for different screening which enables me to see different part of the city where I hadn't been before, as those are not tourist attraction places. And isn't that what my main purpose is - to see the cultures and places that is not the main tourist attraction but instead the real Britain. One of the screening put up documentaries of the old London in Rio Cinema, Kingsland, London. The screening is free for all over 50s year old people and the whole cinema was having full house in that afternoon. Most of the 50s were accompanied by a carer/ several carer in groups. There's quite a lot of job opportunities of carer over here in UK in fact, taking care of the old, and some even on disabled people. Even guys in mid 30s become carer. One of the difference between London Cinema with Malaysia's is each cinema is equipped with a nice bar/ lounge for the customer to linger around before they go into the cinema for their movies. During the festival, I managed to catch some documentaries which some are quite good with mind boggling on the question/ issue/ message that was conveyed. I haven't got a chance to snap any pictures as I'm on shift and not able to bring such a big SLR around. Maybe I should start thinking of investing on a small digital camera...
There goes my 2 non-stop busy weeks; work, volunteer, work, volunteer.....tiring but fulfilling one. I'm glad I realized some improvement in me after all these years; I'm glad that I'm able to volunteer at my own expense, which means that I still have the ability to earn =)
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