Heng Ee St John Ambulance 40th Anniversary Celebration

It's finally over. After months of preparation, the Heng Ee St John Ambulance Divisions celebrated their 40th Anniversary in a grand style. Five years ago, we did it in the school field and the large scale campfire style celebration stunned and fascinated many. This time we wanted to do something different. Formal dinner indoors. Very ambitious indeed. Target : 80 tables.
The scariest part actually is that except for the chairperson who attended the function five years ago as a form two member, none of the organising committee members actually knew about the mammoth task that lay ahead. With an inexperienced bunch of teenagers as the organising committee, I took up the insane decision to go ahead with the plans. Of course I have the confidence because of Thian Wooi. The guy in black on the left. He is our ex-member, now a professional doing decorations for large scale functions. With him helping with the main organising work, I knew I can count on him. Michelle (centre) had seen the celebration five years ago but deep in her heart she knew this would be no esay job. Like me, she had no choice but to go along with the crazy idea. But she did her role very well as the main person running the whole show. She must have gone through very difficult times these few months. Well done, Michelle. I know how you suffered. Looking back, don't you feel proud you have done such a good job? And the handsome guy standing next to her? Minghan, barely 17, is a fun-loving happy go lucky chap who didn't know the difficulty of the job entrusted to him because he was not around 5 years ago. But through the months of preparation you can see him and the rest of the committee members like Ghee Yang, Yong Ming slowly growing in maturity in organisation work. There are many others which I will not name here who really sacrificed so much of their time and effort to make this a success. Among the other teacher advisors, only Ms Cheah and Sashi know what the anniversary celebration was like. The rest are inexperienced and didn't really know what we were doing. I am very grateful for Ms Cheah's help. She took over a lot of supervision and made my work easier.
After agreeing to my proposal of having a grand dress up dinner, we set up to discuss our budget. RM40K! I didn't want to say it out but for a school society to handle this large amount is a bit frightening. But with a very generous ex-member Dato Yeap supporting our efforts, Thian Wooi's ability to find me low costing, a bit of funds I accumulated in the Divisions throughout the years and most of all the experience of doing the past 3 anniversary celebrations, I knew we could do it. Of course, first I had to convince the boss to let us do it. Getting his approval was super easy. I don't know whether he knew what we were saying, he just confidently said go ahead! I thank him for the confidence he had in us. We have indeed made a name for ourselves of being able to do large scale functions. But his confidence in us made us even more pressured, to live up to his expectations.
Our first task was to prepare TRACES VI our commemorative magazine and to collect funds build our base. Surprisingly our members did very well with the collection. Most of them managed to hit the target of RM50 to qualify for the dinner. To make sure the function can achieve the target we "encouraged" societies and clubs from the school to donate RM350 to book at least a table. At first, the response was rather slow and I had to request the school administration to allow me to get the students to use society fund to donate. Later when word got out that it is a dress up function, the response was so overwhelming that we had to stop them coming because we wanted to keep more tables fro RM500 donation from parents and ex-members. My prediction that students would rather pay RM35 for a dress-up sit-down formal dinner than RM10 for a cheap meal in the school field came true. On that night they came dressed to kill!At first some of my committee members were actually sceptical that their friends would come but I had some support from some of them like Tyranne who knew and could visualize what I had in my plans. The response from ex-members were a bit slow but picked up later. A special thank you to Hang Ming who purposely made the trip back to help in the function. And those who were away in other states and couldn't attend but sent donations. Really touched by their spirit and support. But was really disappointed with some ex-members who actually received monetary awards from Dato Yeap for their academic performance but refuse to donate or attend even though they are in Penang. Well, not all the members have this sense of belonging that I always instill in them. Clearly I have failed in my task.
Next the important part of providing entertainment. Like the previous anniversary celebrations, we wanted items which appeal to the masses. Besides the cultural and classical performances shown during the School Concert, which only "cultured people know how to appreciate" there are various ways our students actually showcase their talents. We divided our entertainment into 3 parts. A Talent Search where the final judges are the dinner participants themselves. Shafei.........My heart will go on...Darren.......Ai Xiao De Yan Qing .......Shuen Wen and Shu Ning........with their own accompaniment........Yong Ming.....multi-talented....superb voice, self accompanied on the keyboard, emcee and model.....Yeat Siong ..our very own Jay Chou....
And the winners are........
Some items presented by our guests.
And of course our very own St John members and ex-members performances. Siew Hui with her professional singing We are so lucky to have Lian Lian to lead the entertainment. She planned and choreographed the fashion show and dances and even danced so many items that night. The fashion show.... The dances.....The emcees............Dr Lee, HQ Area Commander giving his speech....The Reception....The Banquet Hall..........The Highlight of the evening.........The Finale........The OC and the members enjoying themselves.........Photographers having a field day..........On the left is Vincent....most of these photos are taken from his album(without permission actually!But I don't think he minds.)The smiles on their faces say it all.........................