During the weekend, I visited PPKKTAJ with Jing Wen (whose beneficiary is Fui Yin) and Jasmine (AIESEC Alumnus and a staff of Panasonic Trading Malaysia). We were introduced to our beneficiaries by Deepika, who is one of the caretakers in the home.
We showed the balls we brought for Lim – a basketball, a tennis ball, a beach ball, two soft toy balls, and one squeaky toy ball – all of which were kindly donated by the General Manager and Assistant General Manager of Panasonic Trading Malaysia, Mr. Lwee and Mr Yap respectively. Everyone started getting excited and played catch and throw instantly, including Fui Yin and her two good friends.
When playing ball, we realized that some of the balls were too hard as the residence weren’t very good at throwing nor catching. I got hit on my head with a light plastic beach ball and it hurt! We decided that we had to bring back the basketball, tennis ball and beach ball because they were a bit too dangerous for them.
When Jing Wen decided to take out crayons and drawing pads to start colouring with her Fui Yin, everyone dropped their balls and joined too. (Everyone gets easily distracted by new things.) Lim joined too, but simply sat quietly next to her, held a pencil and waited for the camera. When I started taking his photo, he again, posed charmingly for the camera.
When I stopped taking pictures to persuade him to do some colouring, he started to make the clicking sound of the camera. I thought that he must be very intrigued with the camera, and decided to let him play with my DSLR. (It made Deepika panicked but I assured her it was OK.) First I showed him where to press to make the camera sound, and he started snapping away!
Deepika, still panicking, asked Lim to return the camera to me. He continued to make the clicking sound. After a while, he started to make another sound: ‘mmmmmmmmmm..’ and said ‘moquito’ *(sic)*. Jasmine figured that he must be very alert to sound because he gets distracted by the sounds of the camera and the evening mosquitoes.
When Jing Wen started her dancing session with her beneficiary, Fui Yin dragged Lim along for a dance, but he was more interested with the Bollywood tunes coming from the TV and stood staring in front of it!
Before we left, we gave the soft toy balls to some of Lim’s friends. I gave the squeaking toy ball to him because it makes a squeaking sound, which I think he will be happy to mimick.
Now that we know what interests Lim, in our next visit, we will bring along more toy balls that can produce sounds.
