There was an AIESEC meeting today, an LC gathering. Feeling damn bad and guilty cos I had been so uninvolved since sem started, so even though I REALLY REALLY felt like ponning, in the end I opted against it. I bet I'd made many of the committee members damn pek chek, leaving lots of things half done.. heh but actually some of that is not my fault lar, seriously. It's the trainee's fault!!! The trainees involved juz plain irresponsible sometimes. Some of them. But I'm in charge of them nonetheless, so I guess it kinda was like my fault. SIGH!

Talking about AIESEC, the last event I had was this interview session for those applicants who wanna join AIESEC next year. Interviewed a few PRCS, and that totally changed my view of them. Totally. What do we usually see them as? PRCs... In JC and sec sch, we usually view them as strong competitors for scholarships and top positions in schools. No really compelling reasons for me to like them. Especially not when they are competing with us in our country, and most of the time, winning us.

Then at the interview, I slowly learned about each of their life stories. One of them came from a small rural village in China. When she was a teenager, her parents brought her to a large Chinese urban city to live. The change was drastic, but she learned to cope. She was faced with terrible circumstances cos the urbanites looked down on a girl from a tiny rural village. School was a terrible experience. But with her resilience, she coped. And did well! She topped her school for the national exams and got a scholarship to come to Singapore to study.

She was overjoyed! Only to find that in Singapore, it was a new nightmare all over again. She was all alone. In a foreign country. Surrounded by people who spoke a language she barely understood. She felt left out, and ostracised. She cried herself to sleep almost everyday, but told herself she MUST survive. Because this is Singapore and it's such a privilege for her to be able to study here! She must not let her parents down. They were so proud of her when she got the scholarship. They earned so little a month but yet scraped together all they had to make sure she could live comfortably in a country that had living costs a few times that of China. She could not let her parents know how hard she was finding it here. So she always squeezed out laughter whenever she saved enough to make a call home.

From then on, she forced herself to memorise words from the English dictionary everyday, and studied much harder than many of her peers. Just so she could survive in Singapore, and excel. To make her parents proud. She succeeded! She did very well in her exams here.

As she recounted her story, her voice choked with emotion a few times. I felt so terrible.. especially when she was talking about the tough experiences she had with Singaporeans after she had arrived. I was one of those who would most probably have given her a hard time. I couldn't look her straight in the eye. Cos I was one of those Singaporeans who would most probably have made her already terrible life a living hell.

After that, I really felt like letting her get into AIESEC. Maybe I just felt like making it up to her, and all those PRCs I had given a hard time to before. But there was a quota for foreigners in AIESEC. So, in the end, we had to reject her application. Hers was just one of the many PRC stories I came to know of that evening. I started thinking.. we always see PRCs as smart people the government brought in who fight with us for scholarships and top positions etc. How often do we see them as individuals? How often do we see them as persons with stories to be told? Or do we juz take them as studying machines who know of nothing next to the things told by the textbooks?

That's why I really love AIESEC sometimes. You get to know people all over the world, you get to know them personally, you learn about their cultures thru the PEOPLE and not thru National Geographic magazines etc. There was this Slovakian trainee and this African trainee talking about their countries and their experiences in Singapore at the gathering juz now. It was such an eye-opener! But since I'm kinda busy watching tv, shall tell u people about tomorrow. Haha.