Hello!
Just had the award presentation ceremony yesterday... in the morning, i was frantically trying to finish up the props which were due in the afternoon. I was supposed to finish them like, a week ago. I guess i forgot all of them till i saw the props bag. Anyway, they were only a couple of name tags which were rather easy to deal with.
Well, i wore a plain blouse and attended the rehearsal first. I arrived 5 mins late (at 1.05pm). I guess we spent much more time waiting for the rest to arrive before we actually started the rehearsal at 2. It was the first time i met fiona. I had a nice time talking to her and my fellow nurse-mate cherie! since we were not involved in the skit, we had a lot of time just sitting at the side and talking. The ceremony started at about 5pm. It's rather short actually. It consisted of a series of speeches followed by our award ceremony, pledge and skit. The speeches were rather funny. The first speech was made by the head of the selection panel. He highlighted a few scholars, yiting, qing and peiyueng. Lol... Anyway, yiting is like, the only person who chose social work as her choice of course when she applied for the scholarship. There's 1000+ applicants. Only 400+ were shortlisted for the psychometric test before 71 were shortlisted for the interview. Whoa... anyway, qing didn't get the scholarship initially. She fought really hard for it. Apparently, she approached many people at different times for the sake of an interview. Her fighting spirit moved the interviewers. As for peiyueng, she's significant because she didn't noe wad podiatry was about even when she went for the interview. Lol... Anyway, i noe non of the interviewers lah... oh well, i had a different interview panel from the rest. The skit was just about the process of getting the scholarship. We tried to inject humour with those props and words. Fortunately, we got laughter at the end. The song at the end of the skit was the nicest...at least to me... After the award ceremony, it was the reception. The moment i went in to the reception area, i was stopped by a familiar face! She was the interviewer for the NHG scholarship. She seemed to remember me...lol. She's actually the director for nursing in TTSH. I remember a row of nursing directors from different hospitals interviewed me for the NHG scholarship. I guess i was significant because i was the first to be interviewed. Anyway, i felt really bad when i rejected NHG for MOH. However, she came over to congratulate me instead. I felt relieved... She mentioned something like being shocked when i rejected the NHG scholarship. However, when she found out i accepted MOH instead, also to pursue nursing, she was more than happy. Well, as she had said, we are all fellow nurses no matter which hospital or cluster we serve. I learnt something from the talk with her. We must learn to "let go" in whatever situations we are in. I had a nice chat with her. I think she makes a real nice nurse =D after which, cherie was dragged into the conversation too... All nurses! She was telling us how nurses no longer play minor roles but are advancing to greater, important roles through the taking up of masters programmes and PHDs... i guess, all of us should aspire together with the passion of serving the community =)