Catholic200SG

Perhaps the most worthwhile thing from being vaccinated is being able to volunteer for the recently concluded Catholic200SG Festival. I almost did not get to volunteer because they preferred volunteers who could commit for at least 3 sessions and the third session offered to me was at regular working hours. After initially replying to KIV me first, I contacted the volunteer manager again few hours later after I decided to use my annual leave.

Around three weeks ago, I realised that I still had 1.5 days of remaining annual leave even after taking leave from 23 Dec until the New Year. That is a good 10 days of just doing nothing at home and I was not really keen on extending another 1.5 days. Thus on the pre-festival week, I decided to be thick skin to inform the volunteer managers that I had some leave to burn if they needed help for any preparation. That led to helping out with some arts and craft as well as one additional volunteering slot last week. Yay! At least I managed to use my remaining annual leave more meaningfully.

I actually received 2 shirts and 2 masks since my first two duties were on consecutive days

Pre-festival: helping out for Family Church Build

I could only help out on the Tuesday and Wednesday afternoon before the festival. Honestly I did not help much. When I came on Tuesday, the church models were already built. I only helped out with detailing some of the windows (of Sts Peter and Paul) and pillars (Cathedral) and that was very little. I mostly spent time settling the base and anything hidden underneath to support the main exhibit. Nevertheless, I found it quite therapeutic to do some arts and crafts since it has been ages since the last time I had to cut paper, cut styrofoam, use glue and scissors etc.

The progress of things when I left on Wednesday

The volunteer manager was also nice with some refreshment. I finally got to try Mr Coconut which I was previously curious about the hype. After trying, I will not buy for myself. The fresh one only had 2 pieces of the coconut meat and if that is about $4-5ish, it is totally not worth it. The following day she bought Auntie Anne's pretzels and Koi.

Day 1

My first session was on the morning of the first day. I was assigned at the cafe's takeaway counter. I only helped with the preparation work (e.g. arranging where to put the utensils, sauces, boxes and heat bags) because when the takeaway counter started to operate at 11am, I moved to set up a drink booth at the Cathedral. It was relatively quiet as there were not many events in that morning.  There were more volunteers than visitors and I counted less than 15 visitors walking towards the annex building from the time the counter was ready until the end of my shift at 130pm.

One interesting thing was to see the Archbishop's entourage in the morning. As it was the opening day, he passed by the cafe's takeaway counter on his way from the Cathedral to the Catholic Centre. Later on I saw the entourage again when they returned to the Cathedral.

Day 2

I was given logistics duty at night shift from 5 to 930pm. It was really a waste of time as it was literally just sitting down doing nothing for 3 hours. We only worked at the last half an hour after the closing time to do disinfection. There were only two things going on during this time (the festival shop and the art exhibition) and that was why there was nothing much for us to do.

I felt so miserable on this day as I had to listen to a haolian girl, a typical irrating church auntie, a chinese speaking bimbo. Bleah.. basically I enjoyed my time with the other volunteers at my slot on the previous day.

Day 5

I decided to come earlier to utilise my voucher to get lunch from the cafe's takeaway counter. Although the voucher expiry is until Dec 2022, I doubt I will go to this place in the future just to use the voucher. I chose fish and chips. The fish was still good but the chips were soggy and tasteless while the coleslaw was mostly sour and missing the sweetness. I frankly think it was bad for a $15 meal. I also managed to pop by to the Family Church Build to see the final product.

Err.. not exactly what I expected based on how the artist described his visual. Glad that they made the base on the east side nicer since I highlighted to take care of that spot before I left on Wednesday.

This day was an additional slot for me because at the start, I was only assigned to 3 sessions. I was happy to finally experience working at F&B as I was helping to do dishwashing for the cafe. Now I feel quite turned off to do dine in seeing how the dishes are handled. Haha but I do not really know the 'industrial' dishwasher works so maybe it indeed cleans better than manual washing or the domestic dishwasher. After all, it works very fast (~2 minutes per cycle) and it uses ~90 degrees water to clean.

On the second half of the shift, I went to bring more prawn crackers for the booth at Cathedral. It was nice to see that now the booth there was mainly selling cookies and prawn crackers which definitely were more sell-able than 100+ and Coke. I decided to stay there because the volunteer stationed there was much more friendly and pleasant to talk to. In addition, I know how boring to be there alone.

I was emo because Jesus plushie at the Cathedral shop were sold out. I checked online the day before and it was available so I was thinking of buying it :( I am lazy if I order online and then have to make a special trip after the festival just to collect. Perhaps I am just not fated to buy. I already missed out the Jesus plushie from the festival shop which I knew was already sold out when I checked the shop on Sunday.

I went to the book shop but nothing caught my interest to buy. The Bethlehem Village was really interesting and nice. It was really a huge animatronics exhibit stretching up to almost the whole length of the book shop. The lighting effect would be even more impactful if it was located further away from the bright book shop. Sadly I did not take any photo on it because the area was quite squuezy with other people taking photos too. Not to mention that my mood was already downhill since I could not get Jesus plushie or found any interesting book to buy.  

Day 7

Going for confession is the main purpose for me to volunteer for Catholic200SG festival. I did not even notice that the parish-based booking for Advent penitential rite was already opened and fully booked when announced at last week Mass. Thus I made the correct decision to participate in this event. I took leave for the whole of the day so I was considering between going for confession before vs after my duty today. Thank God I decided to go before my duty since it was raining after my duty. I also cancelled my plan to check out the Luminary Lit and the bookshop at Sts Peter and Paul.

I was rather disappointed with Journey of Grace. It was being listed as a separate 'event' from the confession but it turned out to be more of a the queue management strategy before and after the confession. Instead of just sitting down doing nothing while waiting for confession, we waited at the Main Church in front of the exposed Blessed Sacrament. After the confession, we went to the chapel for Adoration to do our penance and reflection. Anyway, this arrangement was definitely better than just waiting around doing nothing or finding our own quiet spot for penance. It is just that I was expecting that there was something more special from the Journey of Grace. I am usually stressed about what to say before the confession and the Act of Contrition so I really appreciated the handout on how to prepare for the confession and the Act of Contrition printed on the table in the confession room.

The handout to prepare for the confession

I just did confession last month so this was the shortest period in between my confession. I was so tempted to skip but in the end I decided to be obedient to the minimum Lenten and Advent confessions yearly. This time my penance was to read from Psalms 32, 51 and 86. As part of the whole Journey of Grace, I went to the Adoration Room as the last stop but I was super distracted as the room becoming more crowded. Thus I decided to just quickly go to allow others to have the space.

I was on logistics duty again and luckily this time, my partners were nicer and we actually had things to do. We helped to transfer queue poles to the Cathedral. It was a right decision for me to go back up to take umbrellas because it started raining heavily by the time I took them. The rest was already stuck somewhere along the way to shelter themselves from the rain. Anyway the rain was too heavy and even with the umbrella, my pants and shoes were soak. Since the shoes were already wet, there was no worry about walking through the water ponding at the intersections to cross over to Cathedral. The best part was the rain sort of stopped on our way back after delivering the queue poles. After that, I went to wash dishes again for about an hour and that wrapped up my volunteering experience. One of the volunteer managers gave me some Christmas cookies at the end. Thank you. Hehe..

Day 8/Last Day

Today marks the end of the Festival. Initially I did not plan to go and I just wanted to rest and do nothing at home today. Somehow when considering between self-collection vs delivery for lunch, I decided to just drop by to the Festival to check the Luminary Lit and the bookshop at Sts Peter and Paul Church and to take photos of the Bethlehem Village.

Thank God for the prompting as I enjoyed my visit today. I think Luminary Lit is one of the bigger exhibits in this whole festival. I did not intend to take photo with myself but the volunteer on duty offered me. Since at that time I was alone in the hall, I could even take off my mask for the photo. Haha.. but because I had no intention to take photo today, I was underdressed with sandals.

At the entrance which is shaped like the Bible

I also took some photos of Bethlehem Village. Unfortunately there were several other visitors in the area so I could not remove my mask for a photo.

This is only 2/3 of the exhibit as there was not enough space to distance myself from the exhibit to take the whole length

I browsed through the books at the bookshop there again but decided not to buy anything since I overheard that the payment was only through Paynow. The most interesting finding was The Glories of Mary, which I am currently reading at home, at $6.50. That is exactly the same price as the copy which I bought more than a decade ago.

I really find the pricing of religious books to be rather random. Some smaller and thinner books can be more expensive (e.g. $20+)  than other bigger and thicker book (e.g. less than $10). I had similar observations at the bookshop at Sts Peter and Paul too. I suppose God listened to my cries for Jesus plushie because the bookshop also has its own version of Jesus plushie ($19.90). There is also Holy Family plushie (Joseph, Mary and baby Jesus) at $49.90 which I find expensive. Joseph and Mary are of the same size as the Jesus' plushie which means the baby Jesus is ~$10. Anyway I decided to buy all as early Christmas presents for myself. I also bought two books but I will only write more about them after reading.

I attended the concurrent Mass which conclude all the Catholic200SG celebrations. All the parishes were ringing their church bells at the same time at 6pm. Unfortunately from inside the church, I could not hear my own church bell because at the same time they were showing the video broadcast from the Cathedral. I was surprised that the homily was a recording from the Archbishop because that really meant everyone listened to same homily. Of course it would be even more true to the spirit of concurrence if they broadcasted the homily live from the Cathedral but I suppose it is not easy to handle the timing.

Afterthoughts

I am really glad and thankful for God's prompting to visit the Festival today since it helped to lift up my mood. I am expecting a spirit-filled experience which unfortunately was destroyed by two people. Ironically, these were from the organisation-side whom we were supposed to help.

I deliberately did not mention the name but it is obvious there is only one cafe. One is the white-haired chef and one is bleached-hair guy. Let's start with the bleached-hair guy first. I don't know what their usual workflow is but it would be extremely helpful if he would just scrape of the food waste to the dustbin (which was just below where the dishes to be washed were placed) before he separated the plates from the cutleries. Fine if he did not do so but at least put things down nicely instead of throwing the crockery and slamming the plates etc.

The white-haired chef is the worst with his toxic behaviour and verbal abuse. He was rude and would just find fault with everything if it was not done according to his way. When I did not rush, he said I was slow but when I did more quickly, he said why kancheong. When one of the service staff told him to speak nicely, not to scold and raise his voice since I was only a volunteer to help and not their staff, he retorted that he was not scolding and it was his normal way of speaking. That proved two things: it is not only myself who finds his way of speaking unacceptable and it is a red flag if this is his daily behaviour. After all, it was not unique to me since other volunteers who ever did dishwashing also shared similar stories. It is really appalling if this is how normally treats the staff since the cafe employs the disadvantaged who may not dare to stand up and protect themselves from such toxic behaviour and verbal abuse. If I want to nasty, I can actually whistleblow to some organisations or to authorities to investigate. Anyway he totally ruined my mood and I am not going to let it slide without doing nothing. At the very least, I decided to raise this as a feedback to the volunteer managers.

Other than that, I generally had God-filled moments with the other volunteers and visitors. Having said that, a part of me feels reluctant to involved in Church-related things anymore because some of the 'old guards' are not reflecting or even destroying the image of God. I need to remind myself not to be too affected because I come/serve/contribute for God, and not for humans. In additions, we are all sinners so perhaps I have hurt others too. That's why I prefer a more backend involvement so that I do not accidentally ruining the image of God considering my own sinful nature.

My biggest regret is that I never enjoyed the evening atmosphere to see how everything looked like with the lighted decorations. My evening duty last Sunday ended after 9pm which was sort of the official end time. The nasty chef ruined my mood on Wednesday while the rain spoilt my plan on Friday. Oh well =x there were mostly light decorations.