MERCYful Day

I mentioned on a previous post that I planned to be a volunteer with an NGO, preferably MERCY Malaysia. And so, I made my way to MERCY's headquarters today in KL with Nunu and we started the day as nervous volunteers who were as blank as the paper, not knowing what to expect.

As newbies, there wasn't much for us to do so our task for the day was to help the Finance Department calculate the donation money they received from the public. And the money came from all over the world; US, Thailand, China, Peru, Australia, Ecuador, you name it, they had it. So, we had to separate the money according to currencies and calculate the total value before passing them to the big boss of the department.

Mind you, it wasn't such a simple task. The coins in particular were very confusing. Some looked very alike, others had very small numbers on them that it was hard to see the value of the coins. I found some of the notes to be no better than used baby wipes. Let's not talk about the smell. My hands felt literally itchy after handling those notes. Had to use hand sanitizer to clean my hands.

But I would say it was a rather interesting experience. Nunu and I felt like grown ups today. Walking along the busy streets of KL all on our own, sitting in an office full of adults, getting our lunch while surrounded with men and women in their working attires, took our own LRT home.

We caught a glimpse of the adult world and well, though it can be exciting, what with having to live your own life and all, I know it's not all sugar and spice. When we were sitting in the restaurant, I could hear snippets of their conversations, on how they wanted to stimulate the market growth, or how this chemical engineer was trying to convince this other man to get into a business deal with him.

And there was me and Nunu too, sitting and grumbling on how smelly the Indian Rupee money was. Oh yes, we were just a small, small fish in a big, big pond.

But I'm looking forward to explore what's inside the big, big pond soon.

Photos from today. Grabbed from Nunu.

Blowing bubbles away before we started our work

Welcome to MERCY Malaysia

The smelly Rupee notes. Oh yes. The lady warned me to wash my hands after handling those notes.

Nunu got excited looking at those money. Mata duitan tu. Haha.

And I'm 10 Hong Kong Dollars richer ;)

We stopped by Central Market after work. I couldn't help taking photos like a tourist.

We even tried the fish foot spa. Damn, it was so ticklish and we were laughing like maniacs. Of course, that also came with perplexed stares from the Mat Salleh tourists.