Seems that these are difficult times indeed - there seem to be quite a few charity events lately. Just a month after the Fund-raising Carnival at my old high school (St David High School), today there was the HOPe & Fun 2.0 Charity Carnival organized by the Agapecare Society of Melaka, held at the Dewan MPHTJ Bukit Beruang.
H.O.P.e. by the way it is written, stands for "Help Other People event", and is the 2nd such event organized by the Agapecare Society, hence the 2.0. The first fund-raiser was held way, way, way back in 2006! Almost 20 years ago! 😲
My family and I have a habit of going early, so we arrived roughly half an hour after the official start of the event at 10am. Public Service Announcement - even though it was a Saturday, currently free "weekend" parking was only given on Monday's and Tuesday's. That's right - for Saturday and Sunday, you still need to pay for parking either using the scratch coupons or SVP Smart Parking app (which seems to work reasonably well). There were parking bays in the hall area, however, they were reserved for the volunteers, so we parked outside along the row of shops nearby. Wanted to stay for up to 2 hours though (foreshadowing what was coming), things didn't quite go exactly as planned.
There were a couple of food trucks open for business just outside the Dewan MPHTJ Bukit Beruang - the one that caught our attention was the one from Cowrasa - selling milk, yogurt and ice cream! 😋
Going into the hall, noted a counter from Oriental hospital offering free basic health check and an assortment of pre-loved (fancy way of saying used / 2nd hand) clothes, books and other stuff for sale. Just like the recent carnival at St David, all transactions were via coupon / voucher, which we had also bought earlier to avoid wasting time in the queue. Even the stuff for sale AND food trucks were accepting only coupons as payment. Notably there was no queue today, so looks like many other people also followed suit. There were some tables and benches set up in the hall where we could sit down to eat. A few row of chairs were also arranged in front of the raised stage, where there were some dance and song performances by students and also senior citizens. The old folk were quite good, playing renditions of classic "oldies" like "young ones" by Cliff Richards as well as lagu keronchong melayu & baba nyonya on their guitars, ukulele, tambourine and beatbox.
The stalls outside boasted a small but highly varied selection of food and drinks, cookies, even one selling fresh satay. There were also some games booths and one selling potted plants as well. There was more space to stand under the tents, so was not so congested, though the crowd was not as large as the one at the St David event. Again, I was in "full emersion mode" so did not take any photos - need to kick back into blogger mode if I'm going to be writing posts such as this in the future.... 😅
First round of food (I purposely did not eat breakfast at home so that I could maximize food intake here) for me was some Nasi Lemak from Jasin, Siew Pau, fruit tarts. As we had time, walked around some more, and bumped into my ex-high school mate and ex-colleague. One hour into our arrival, the sky darkened, and it started drizzling. As time went on, it got heavier until it became a downpour. Fortunately, there was ample space in the hall for everyone to seek refuge from the unforgiving weather. We just found ourselves a bench near the stage and continued to watch some of the performances.
One thing to note - this hall was set up for badminton, so the lighting was arranged to evenly light up the center of the hall where the courts were. The stage was, however, practically unlit, so this did serious injustice to the performers, who were literally singing and dancing in the dark. Not sure if it was because the organizers did not turn on the stage lights, or just that there were none to begin with....
A quick time check - our 2 hours were up but there was no sign of the rain abating. It did ease off, though was still not possible for us to make it back to our car (lesson learned for future outings - do bring umbrella). So, with the last of our coupons, we bought a sizeable haul of milk and ice cream from the Cowrasa food court. Ice cream had to be consumed on the spot, and so happened by the time we finished, the rain had become a drizzle and we had our chance to leave after passing our unspent coupons off to someone.
Well, all in all, for a good cause, and although organized by Agapecare Society, there were no religious elements in this event so all were welcome to join and participate. If there were one thing I feel they could have improved - it was on the publicity. If it weren't for the fact that I knew someone from the organizing team, I would never have known about this event. A pity as all in all was a good effort and successful charity / fund-raiser in my humble opinion. Also a chance for us to give back to society and enjoy some quality family time together! 😀
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