Sunday, October 26
The Farm Revisited
I'm supposed to write an article about The Farm. Its this get-away resort I went to near Lenggeng, Seremban on the 24th. Its purpose-built for city-folks and the unassuming to get to know what 'living off the land' entails. I encountered The Farm way, way back in 1998 when I was an unassuming BRAT, when the theme of that BRAT visit was to teach some city kids the 'farming' life...
Five years later, we went on Deepavali, with a very different bunch of children. These were the kids from the Pusat Aktiviti Kanak-kanak (PAKK) Chow Kit, first highlighted in this story on The Star Metro (Klang Valley Edition). These are underprivileged kids who come from broken families and who are the children of sex workers and drug addicts, and so... they would not usually have the privilege to visit a place like The Farm. Because they do go to the centre, they were very disciplined, and an easy bunch to take care of. Speak to some of them and you'd never realise that these are children with dark backgrounds.
It was a very meaningful way to celebrate Deepavali and my birthday eve. I was not on the bus that took them to the place, but according to the BRATs who were, they were singing all the way on the one hour journey to The Farm. Reaching the place, these kids even taught us some games, and happily told us about their life in school and all that.
The Farm's a really cool place. There's plenty of weird things around the place. Like red papayas, for instance.
Or mushrooms...
Green rambutans...
Dragonfruit trees... looking like wild, humongous aloe veras...
Huge tortoises...
And mischievous monkeys...
We brought them fishing of course. The Farm has like three huge ponds, we did some angling in the bigger one, and the remaining two were optimal places for dip-fishing. That's a term I coined myself. You know, its the type of fishing where you take a huge net and wade into the pond and haul the fish up...
Ever had so much fish to eat in one day? These were very, very fresh!!
And we had a wonderful feast!!
So there, I had a really wonderful time and even though the journey back home took longer than usual, and everything left me spent... it was still fantastic. I'm supposed to go write that article now. And yeah, should have posted this up earlier, but didn't have the time to sort out the pics!!
Photos of my day's outing with the PAKK Chow Kit children can be viewed here.
Five years later, we went on Deepavali, with a very different bunch of children. These were the kids from the Pusat Aktiviti Kanak-kanak (PAKK) Chow Kit, first highlighted in this story on The Star Metro (Klang Valley Edition). These are underprivileged kids who come from broken families and who are the children of sex workers and drug addicts, and so... they would not usually have the privilege to visit a place like The Farm. Because they do go to the centre, they were very disciplined, and an easy bunch to take care of. Speak to some of them and you'd never realise that these are children with dark backgrounds.
It was a very meaningful way to celebrate Deepavali and my birthday eve. I was not on the bus that took them to the place, but according to the BRATs who were, they were singing all the way on the one hour journey to The Farm. Reaching the place, these kids even taught us some games, and happily told us about their life in school and all that.
The Farm's a really cool place. There's plenty of weird things around the place. Like red papayas, for instance.
Or mushrooms...
Green rambutans...
Dragonfruit trees... looking like wild, humongous aloe veras...
Huge tortoises...
And mischievous monkeys...
We brought them fishing of course. The Farm has like three huge ponds, we did some angling in the bigger one, and the remaining two were optimal places for dip-fishing. That's a term I coined myself. You know, its the type of fishing where you take a huge net and wade into the pond and haul the fish up...
Ever had so much fish to eat in one day? These were very, very fresh!!
And we had a wonderful feast!!
So there, I had a really wonderful time and even though the journey back home took longer than usual, and everything left me spent... it was still fantastic. I'm supposed to go write that article now. And yeah, should have posted this up earlier, but didn't have the time to sort out the pics!!
Photos of my day's outing with the PAKK Chow Kit children can be viewed here.
