For charity

I had a new experience today.

For the last 2 weeks, I have been collecting random articles from the South China Morning Post. Not because I love reading the newspaper, in fact prior to February 1st, I honestly cannot remember when I last bought one. I confess to avoiding the news on a regular basis. I figure the good stuff or the stuff that I need to hear, need to be aware of, will find a way of reaching me, and it always does. For years now, listening to the news or scanning a newspaper just seems to depress me, so I gave it up. Now I let the BBC deliver the highlights in bullet form into my email box. On the days I don't want to know, I simply hit delete, but mostly I scan it and occasionally read an entire article.

So having to flick through an entire paper for the last two weeks has been interesting for me. I've read all sorts of things I'd rather not know about and they have stirred up all sorts of emotions for me. That in itself was an interesting experiment; noticing my limits, my boundaries. After the scanning and some reading, I made my daily selection, duly cutting out my chosen articles and filing them away. Two weeks later, today in fact, I gathered my pile of 30 articles or so and made my way to the Hong Kong Society for the Blind where I spent 2 hours recording myself reading the articles. I felt like a news reader, only less glamorous. The room was barely big enough to contain me, a PC and a chair and it was cold. By the end of the session my hands were actually numb. And, ironically, my vision was suffering badly. I don't often need to read small print these days and never for that length of time and my astigmatism was really challenging the task in hand! For the first time though, I didn't actually get angry with my eyes, the way I normally do when they start to fail me in this way. It was surely because I was aware of where I was, and why I was doing this thing today. Instead I felt grateful that I could do this..it was hard, but I could do it.

After my eyesight, the next most challenging thing was having to navigate my way through all the rather tricky pronunciations. Now I fully understand why they ask that you clearly spell out any words you are not sure how to pronounce! Despite my careful selections with this in mind, lets not forgot where this paper was printed! There were many tricky words and it was time-consuming. Maybe I will do that "beginners cantonese" class next month.

So, in case it's still unclear from my ramblings, today I recorded news articles from the local newspaper for the HKSB where the blind will listen to the cassette to not only catch up on national news from the last 2 weeks but also they will use it to improve their spoken english. It felt good to help. It's such a simple thing. I hope many will benefit from those few hours I donated. I'll be back but according to the rota, not until April.

Thank You AWA once again, for presenting me with this meaningful opportunity.