Last Thursday, we managed to get an appointment at one of Melbourne's nursing home. It was in the middle of nowhere, seriously, there were like nothing near that nursing home. We thought that we were at some kind of deserted area or something ;p But i guess its nice and quite plus peaceful for people who retired already and just want to relax.
So when we got into the nursing home, our first reaction was, 'oh my god, are we really doing this?' We were all pretty scared when we just got there coz all we saw was elderly who needed intensive care and he had no idea what to do! When I say intensive care means, on a bed 24/7.
But then the activity coordinator, lets just call her Julia, brought us to elderly who didn't need such intensive care. The other reason why we were so scared was that we didn't know whether they would be willing to give out such information (their life story) to us, four strangers.
But then again we were there already, there's nothing much worrying we can do anymore.
Julia quickly introduced us to what she calls 'the interesting bunch'.
I was lucky enough to talk to a man named John -78 years old (his name isn't really John but for personal purposes I wouldn't reveal his real name). He was very very nice SURPRISINGLY, and straight away jumped into telling his loooooong life story. If I type every single thing he said in this blog, it would probably take me more than 3days to write, no joke, since i type slow as well. So anyways, the shorten version of John's story was that.....
He worked at the pro juice section of Queen Victoria Market his entire life. He started working there when he was 12 years old. When he was 16, his boss decided to move away so passes down the business to John (he must have been a very very good worker, don't you think?). Then he got into bicycle racing. He won so many different races that the bicycle manufacturer who was sponsoring the event wanted him to work for them. My reaction to that was 'wow, john well done!' Then he met this wonderful woman named Marry at Victoria Market and married her! She was a ballroom dancer and apparently was very good one as well. They had two sons who has two sons and all of them work at Queen Victoria Market (by the way, the story of his sons and their sons, i think he told me like almost four times, he was so cute! Must be very proud of his family!).
- The most interesting thing he said:
My life is like a TOMATO, because tomato is strong and can grow in any kind of environment
- The most useful advice he gave me:
Everyone has a same opportunity, some make it, some don't, it is all up to you
So that was the shorten version of my chat to John for the days. Pretty funny man huh. What I learn from this talk/visit was that THEY ARE NOT SCARY!
And also it's very interesting how they didn't get suspicious at all. I mean not that we were suspicious looking or anything, but say if someone comes up to you and ask for your life story, would you give it to them? Probably not right. Maybe this is what they call a generation gap. In the world we are living now there are so many bad things happening and things seems to be more complicated compare to John's time. Probably that's why, we grew up in an environment where 'strangers are bad people, when they come talk to you, RUN AWAY FAST!!' I personally think that this is a very interesting difference of our generation and John's. But then again, we share so much information through social networking websites (facebook, myspace and BLOG), that's like almost the same at telling your life story. People in our age don't seems to care if its only on the internet, but when it comes to person to person, they cannot ran away fast enough. Why is that? Or am I just reading too much in this sharing your story issue?
Rika**
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