Rotary Time

So its been a while since my last update, I know you all have been depressed without them. A doctor here read one of my blogs and has now begun prescribing it to schizophrenic and depressed patients instead of Percocet or Prozac with phenomenal results. That’s actually not true but what if it was….really what if?

Ok back to reality, over the past month a lot has happened but for this blog I am going to focus predominantly on my activities with Rotary, which have greatly picked up of late. For those of you with the courage, stamina and goodwill to read on…I applaud you. The honor and vision that you operate your blog post reading cycle with will be rewarded if not now then through the echoes of time. May your first born be strong and healthy…..ok you get the point, thanks for reading.

I met up with my Rotary Counselor, Val Winslow, who is a constitutional law professor at the National University of Singapore, which is their equivalent to Harvard. We grabbed a coffee and had some pastries at a really nice Italian eatery, much nicer place then I personally have been affording myself. We discussed Rotary, law, death penalty, cost of cars, healthcare and a ton more. I went and checked out a church the weekend before and turns out he is an elder there….small city/country/state. We sat there and chatted it up for nearly 3-4 hours. He invited me to meet his club in a couple of weeks. It was really nice of him to take me out and offer to take me to a meeting, I was excited to get more involved with the clubs here.

In the mean time, another Rotary Scholar from Ireland, Emma, (one of the sweetest people I have ever met…seriously ridiculously nice) and I wanted to get all the Rotary Scholars in Singapore together for a dinner. Deepavali/Deewali which is the Indian New Year was that week so we decided to have dinner on Deepavali in Little India. There were five of us that could make it representing Ireland, Japan, USA, UK and France. It was like a mini meeting of the UN. Turns out just like News Year in the US the big party is the night before Deepavali so Little India was pretty quiet. We grabbed some good food and shared what we had

learned so far and trips we all were planning on taking or had taken and Rotary projects and presentations. Bali came up a lot, so did Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia. All of them are really great people. I felt even more honored to be a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar. We are planning on meeting once a month from here on out, hopefully adding more Rotary Ambassadors as we go.

The next week came and Val came with his wife and picked me up to bring me to my first Rotary meeting. The meeting was across the country so it took us a long time to get there….around 30 minutes in heavy traffic haha. Yep that’s right 30 minutes to get across the country….not many places where you can say that. So I was told that I was not going to be speaking at this dinner so I did not bring my presentation. Turns out that was not correct…yep I had been tricked…..but just like any red blooded American we have no problem talking about ourselves to a group of strangers, so getting to talk about myself for 15 minutes was awesome…..I mean they actually had to ask me to stop…ok not really and I really don’t like talking about myself all that much…..or do I? I actually focused a lot on my work with Guardian ad Litem, why I was so drawn to Rotary and how much I have enjoyed my experience so far.

This meeting was actually two club meetings in one (Rotary Club Serangoon Gardens and Rotary Club Victoria) attended by the District Governor who oversees all Rotary clubs in Singapore and Malaysia (66 in total). The District Governor comes once every couple of years or so so this was a pretty special meeting. They shared some of their projects, one was singing with, teaching and feeding children at an orphanage, a trip to aid the needy in Thailand which has been going through some of the worst flooding in a century and surveying of a chicken factory, yep it was a broad range of projects to say the least, all doing amazing things. I got contacts so that I could participate the next time they go.

My presentation went well and so did the other Rotary Scholar who was my friend from France, Paul Louis, that had attended the Deepavali dinner. I was asked a lot of questions about US politics and my opinion of the Singapore government as well as many questions about how I was liking Singapore, my age and kind of surprisingly whether I had a significant other or not. The girls in the room were disappointed when they found out I was engaged…yep can’t make stuff up like that…..tears were shed…..riot police were called…I felt like I was a Beatle leaving a 1970’s concert…..it was intense. Well maybe that is a slight exaggeration but they definitely were disappointed, I can tell these things. Both Paul Louis and I were given Rotary Club banners from each club to share with our home clubs.

I am going to be speaking at another meeting this week and another one the following week. I have also booked my first trip outside of Singapore, a Rotary trip to Penang and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and Siem Reap, Cambodia. In Penang a Rotary Scholar and I are going to be spending the weekend helping a group working for a Government Sponsored Enterprise (GSE), don’t have the specifics yet. In Kuala Lumpur, I am going to be doing another presentation at a local Rotary club before heading to Cambodia with a group of their Rotarians. In Cambodia we will be visiting two ongoing projects, one a clean water project for Floating Village Communities on the Tonle Sap Lake and the other is the Village Healthcare Volunteers (VHV) project which is a program for the development of a network of village healthcare volunteers in the same Floating Village Communities.

We are also going to be visiting Angkor Wat which I am extremely excited about. I will be writing a more in depth blog about all of this after the trip.

I am still really enjoying Singapore and can see why people love living here. The country is beautiful, there are some really great people here, the food is fantastic and we are a hop skip and a jump from so many amazing places.

I am learning a lot, trying to take in all I can and appreciate every moment. I very much miss my friends and family, especially my fiancé Emily though. Emily has been great and Skype is a god sent. This experience has been wonderful due in great part to Emily and all of your support. Thank you.