with ferina (3rd year mcm student, 5-mth intern on attachment there) and qiaolin (3rd year mcm student, 2nd IC of trip). at medan airport waiting for 2 hours (think: hot, humid, houseflies, no fans, heavy luggage) for the one of two daily flights to isolated island nias.

bored airell the photographer, playing with the colour function in his camera.

us being sua ku (im sure most of you have not sat in one loh), with the propeller plane that brought us to the island.

upon landing at the niasan airport, which was 29346452 times smaller than changi (was cutely more like a centre than an airport), we found another defender, probably cousins to ziggy soh's.
he ruiming HAD to take a picture with it.

the short road trip to the farmers' training centre, where we stayed pretty comfortably for 2 weeks.

one of many very-stable-looking bridges, already better than most, that peppers the island. most of them have collapsed and are in the midst of repair due to earthquake tremors.

on a sunday morning. one of the many churches over the island, with a large majority of christian niasians.

gunung sitoli, the orchard road of nias.

a boy standing by a vegetable cart stall.
a common sight at gunung sitoli, where roads have been better paved, with many areas that are still mud and sand.

a shophouse selling provisional items like baby bathing basins.
we also came to realise that the buildings never exceeded 1-2 storeys.

children that roam the streets, barefooted and happy.
unseen and unheard of in singapore

niasan children creating their childhood.

i think this is smoked/bbq-ed kampung chickens by one of the villagers, quite an innovative method i have to say.

some of the brilliant colours you'd see at a local wet market.

homemade layered kueh, which are heavenly when freshly made.
we had ordered a total of 200 to bring back to singapore. S$1/piece.

their version of ice kacang that had a chocolate-coffee taste to it, without the artificial colouring and syrups we taste in our local ones. they had bits and pieces of bread in them too.
too bad they cant be brought back. also S$1/bowl.

the sight of the farmers' training centre, still under construction.
the orange thingy on the left is the clean water we get.
the hut looking thing on the right is a container with 4 guest houses, furnished with 2 beds each and other amenities.
thank God for the mosquito nets over the windows.

thats ruiming, in boots that we had to wear. he walks over planks of wood that form our temporary pathway since the rains didnt allow paving works to be done.
that hut looking thing in the background is one of the classrooms that we were doing most of the teaching material preparation for the centre, also going to be where future farmers will be taught new agricultural farming skills.

the very important generator that we had to rely on for our electricity and pumping of water flow. it needs 250,000RP/day of petrol (which we manually fill into jerry cans from a petrol station) to run the farm.
it rests for 2-3 hours everyday, thats the time everyone refrains from trying to go the loo, since there will be no water to clean your ass.
no toilet papers to be used there you see.

the other line of clothes we created since we had quite a bit of clothes.
all handwashed ourselves too ok.
thats airell, probably handling his clothes for the first time in his life. awww :)

one of the afternoons when the generator is down, after lunch, when no work can be done cos our laptops need power.
this particular day, we had fresh coconut juices. as you can notice, even the canteen was still under construction when we were there. oh, and see, contrary to the usual belief, im wearing a sleeved top.

one of the early days when we had a tour of the place by mr. lester chew, the director of the farm and our host in blue.
all in boots except cheak who wanted to make full use of his ugly crocs (that we told him many times of) he had bought specially for the trip.
apparently, i was told i looked like a professional zoo keeper with the collared tee, longer shorts and boots.

another one of those days with the generator down and we decided to be useful and help out with the dinner preparations.
nadia (looking super serious), badang and qiaolin (mad woman with the knife) were peeling onions, brian (with that awful smile) and i were skinning, dicing and slicing carrots for soup.
well, no one died of food poisoning so ya.

the boys' favourite addiction, teh botol. basically, tea in a bottle.
ok other than the other bottled drinks like coke, sprite and fanta.

meowmeow, the stray manja kitten, now the centre's pet, we probably spoilt by human touch and our pampering.

kids at a sunday school whom we visited and sang to, also where we embarrassingly learnt that the action of sticking out the tongue was a horrible vulgar thing to teach.


the next few pictures are leisure pictures from week one, when we still had time to explore the island. if i showed you few what work we did through pictures, it'll be super boring really. trust me, powerpoint slides preparation, video taking, even compost making and wormery.
so just be contented with these pictures alright.

cheak, ivan, vera, chinaman, jabez, qiaolin, ruiming, brian
at teluk dalam, one of the world's top surfing spots.
standing on kilometres of dead corals, which got hit by the 2004 tsunami.

still at teluk dalam, where they simply went mad.
dian (3rd year mcm student, 5-mth intern att), ferina, brian with ruiming's tourist hat and airell, well, being airell.

at one of the fishing jetties that the boys went for fishing earlier but we were there to just play with the rather strong current waves.
chongern, dian, qiaolin, amelia, cheak, nadia,
jabez, badang, chinaman, siraj, ferina.

mr ramani, nadia and i were the *cough untrained lifeguards.

siraj and chinaman, posing with the new fashion of high waist board shorts.

sirombu beach, big fun waves and very very fine brown sand with numerous uncountable seashells to pick from the shore.

qiaolin and i, before entering the waves

the boys, still being themselves

them, doing their thing.

what started out like this.

still ended up looking like that, even after many MANY retakes.


oook work week starts.

we had a informal english teaching session at some senior and junior high school classes for two days.

the schools still used chalkboards, which we used to scribble the english lyrics and tell them the meanings in bahasa indonesia (which we obviously needed help from the very helpful facilitators at the farm!).

these are some of the chairs they still sit on in their classrooms.

one of the schools' library.

teaching them simple english action songs like Peace Like a River, that would be able to spark better interest for the foreign language to them.

lotsa changes made compared to the preparation, but thanks to the team, it went pretty well and everyone seemed to enjoy it.
even while singing kids' songs:)

a group picture with one of the principals, somehow all the principals wear, what looked like military uniforms.
vera, badang, airell, brian, mrs sng, sch administrator and febri (a really really really nice and helpful facilitator whos talented, skilled, smart and friendly!).

we also visited an orphanage with kids aged from 6 to 18 years old.
before the trip, we bought stationary items and all sorts to be placed in nice red goodie bags for the kids as presents for them.

they sang to us, their version of Father Abraham in bahasa indonesia.

and so we did our version of Father Abraham in english.
we gave them lanterns and taught them how to assemble it too, cos during that period, it was the starting of the moon cake festival.

this is one of the little girls i took with.
she was so brave to sing a solo song by herself!
she does look alot like my junior, carmen huang to me though:)

that's airell and his band.
ya, he likes to act cute as you might have already noticed.

that's our group photo with the 50-odd orphans.

while we were there, we had to plan a cultural night too. which would have some of their local schools and us performing items too.
we performed the legend of bukit merah and chang'er, turning out to be more hilarious than it should be.
front row was the vips and the back were the students as well as villagers.
we had to play coordinators, organisers, performers and even ushers.
multitasking taken to another level.

our prettt-ily madeup emcees, ferina (in bahasa indonesia) and dian (in english).

here are some of the perfomers who performed mostly folk dances, interesting.
thing is, both schools wore similar costumes so we had some difficulty differentiating them for quite awhile.

after the whole performance, here's the group picture with some of the school teachers and students. that night, we had our own big bbq after that! :)

airell and siraj, being disturbed while enjoying their personal time.

one of my favourite pictures!:)
with vera, my 2-week room mate at guest house 1, which was considered one of the neatest rooms even though we had quite abit of logistical items.
also the room where the factorypacking of goodie bags
and most of the latenight movie screening were done la.

last day, at the airport again.
but this time, taking a group picture with the very dear pickup truck and its super duper driver, budi the great.
he maneuvers bumps and portholes with excellent skills so that our bumps dont get as raw as they should. of cos not all of us can be on that truck, the rest were ferried in hired small vans or mr chew's cute red car.
but it certainly had its sentimental value, plus, soaking up the scenery and niasan life was the best when sat at the back of the truck :)

the boys held more sentimental value with the truck, with their sore bums and sun burnt backs that scorched under the ice cold showers - which was hilarious to listen to, since we shared bathrooms cos the male toilet wasnt ready for use yet.
budi's on the left and doan (also another really really really nice and helpful facilitator whos talented, skilled, smart and friendly!) is next to brian.

thats the final group shot at the nias airport before we flew off back to medan.
banner's a tad tilted, blame those taller people, they kept bringing it higher!

ah-HA. with the propeller plane again, this time, making the other passengers wait a liiiiiiiittle bit longer than usual :)

so there. our group shot back at changi airport at about 11pm.
with the banner lower this time.
back to toilet paper, warm water, internet connection, etc. :)