In Continuum.

It used to be commonplace, but I guess the idea of donation has been diluted over the years, all thanks to the scandals in Singapore. If you weren't familiar with the donation culture in Singapore, you'd think that Singapore is a charitable country, with generous people everywhere who cares for the poor and the needy. A couple of years ago, if you were to turn on the television, it wouldn't be hard to spot local celebrities saying something supposedly touching and heart wrenching about a certain needy person who needs all our support, and then they'd recite a series of phone numbers for you to donate money to. That'd probably run for about a month before the actual charity event is nationally broadcasted on television, and that'd include celebrities performing death defying stunts on live television just to win the hearts and minds of the apathetic public. The stunts include everything from walking across a tight rope, being surrounded by a tub of ice, to do some stupid stunts upside down, or to play musical instruments with an unusual part of your body. No, not the penis - think lower. Anyway, nationally broadcasted charity events used to be really common in Singapore. It ranged from three to four time a year in the past, and that all ended when the scandals started to pop up from every which direction possible.

Then, people start to feel pissed off about the entire system as a whole. It's strange how it took a giant corporation's demise in order for us to realize that something was deeply wrong back then. I mean, with all the money spent paying the celebrities to perform (yes, they are paid) and not to mention the cars and the condominiums as the grand prize, you start to wonder why they couldn't just take those money spent on the celebrities and the prizes on helping the people that they were supposed to help in the first place. Something didn't make sense, and that occurred to me at a very young age. I wrote a paper about the subject of Singaporeans being apathetic towards charity once, and I received an A for that paper. I hated that course, and I hated the lecturer who taught for that course. Still, I suppose the 34-page monster of a paper earned me quite a bit of credits, and it all paid off in the end. Anyway, one of the points that I raised in the paper was how children in Singapore were cultivated, from a very young age, that donating to charities and helping the needy is a responsibility or an obligation, when it really shouldn't be that way at all. We almost felt as if we were forced to do a great many things in the past, and it certainly wasn't something that most of us were willing to do.

We probably invested half of our hearts in going around to collect donations in our neighborhoods, to help in the elderly homes, and to help clear the newspapers of the old people in a particular neighborhood. It was supposed to instill a sense of charity in the students, but I am sure it probably didn't make us feel any less unwilling than we already were. It was a chore, to be honest, and not to mention the way charity organizations used to bug the students to return the charity cards as soon as possible. I remember being pestered by a certain charity organization just because I was late in sending back the charity card, something which I had to pay right out of my pocket for. Charity isn't something that I regularly engage myself in, and yet there are times when I do help out whenever I can. We've been brought up to think that giving to charity is something that you have to do at school in order to get a certain amount of participation points, something you needed in order to graduate from high school. I'm sure a lot of us remember the CIP system and how we all had to complete at least twenty hours of community service before we could graduate. I hated doing charity work, and I hated the idea of donation altogether. I avoid students that hold little tin cans of money on the streets because, well, I got sick and tired of it all.

About a week or two ago, a friend of mine messaged me online and asked if I'd like to donate blood at the blood drive that is currently being held at school. He asked me not exactly because he was particularly interested in doing so, but because (for some reason) his public relations class used the blood drive as an extra credit assignment. He had to recruit as many people to donate their blood as possible, and I jumped at the opportunity for reasons unknown. I mean, like I mentioned, I haven't exactly been the most giving and selfless person that I know. There has been a dozen blood drives in all of the schools that I have ever been to, and I've never ever been interested in any of those. I remember debating with myself as to the reason why I never bothered, and the conclusion I came to was because I didn't want to save some guy who beats up his wife a lot, or some alcoholic who'd eventually turn out to be a serial killer or something. You never know, since you can never dictate whose blood goes to who. I convinced myself that that was the perfectly legitimate reason to not donate my blood back then. Besides, I felt that donating money was a whole lot easier than to have a giant needle embedded underneath your skin. Yet, since I've been through the whole blood donation process. I can safely say that being pricked by a needle is a lot less painful than fishing out your wallet.

I turned up at the Student Union at the supposed time on Tuesday morning, and my friend was there to take me into the corner of the building where they were having the blood drive. A few people were already inside on the folded chairs while we signed in, and the person at the counter handed out brochures for us to read before going for the health screening. He also gave us forms to fill up about our medical history, and I almost ticked the "yes" box when I read the part about whether I have had intercourse with another man. Anyway, it was a form full of diseases that I haven't even heard of before, and most of the boxes were ticked under the big bold "No", save for the one about whether or not I have been outside the United States in the past couple of years. Well, I came to the United States less than two months ago, so I guess it was an obvious yes for the both of us. Anyway, so we were ushered to the back of the room for a brief medical screening, and the nurse asked me about the countries that I have visited in the past three years, how long I have been in those places, where exactly in those places have I been to, and I had to have my blood tested first before going in.

I must say that that blood test with the snappy thing on the tip of my middle finger probably hurt more than the needle going into my blood veins, for some reason. She then started to squeeze my middle finger furiously just to get the blood out into this plastic tube, and I just watched my blood with curious fascination. I've never had a problem with blood for some reason, and I know of a person or two who'd faint at the sight of it. Anyway, she dripped my blood into this bottle of chemicals, and she OK-ed me for the blood donation swiftly after taking my blood pressure and my temperature. Apparently, in the United States, whether or not you choose to donate blood is a confidential matter. The last stage of the health screening involved me peeling off a barcode sticker to paste on the official form, indicating if I wanted to donate for real or not. This process was not meant to be seen by anybody, which was why the nurse turned her head away while I pasted the sticker. I am not exactly sure why I had to do that initially, and I was thoroughly confused when she handed me the stickers and turned her head away. I suppose it has got something to do with private matters of individuals, who knows.

Anyway, so I was all excited to jump into that chair and have the needle pushed through my skin and into my veins. That excitement was short-lived though, because the guy in front of me was back on the chair even after donating his blood, and his face was so pale that I swear I could see blood vessels from underneath the skin. He was munching on biscuits and sipping on a can of ginger ale just to regain his energy, and I started to wonder if this whole blood donation thing would take a toll on me just like this guy. I mean, he looked like he was about to die on that chair right there and then, and the male nurse next to me was nonchalantly taking put the needle while swiping my elbow with alcohol. The pale white guy then asked for a can of ginger ale and some chips, and there was a splitting moment when I thought I was going to pass out as well. My friend was right next to me, and he told me about the first time he donated blood in his school and how he passed out on the chair. Apparently, instead of squeezing the ball in your hand once ever four to five seconds or so, my friend squeezed it pretty much every second of his time on the chair. He passed out from losing too much blood and too fast, and I actually made it a point to religiously count how many seconds have gone by before giving the ball a tight squeeze.

So, the male nurse took out the needle and showed it to me, and that needle looked like a straw. I swear, that thing looked like it was just pulled out from a juice box and connected to the plastic tube that was hanging from a small metal hanger next to my chair. He wrapped the arm band of the blood pressure measuring device around my upper arm first, and then tapped my veins a few times before he inserted the tip of the needle into my skin. He told me to look away if I didn't want to see it, but I have this strange ability to tolerate blood and gore, for some reason. Anyway, I looked as he inserted the needle up and up and up, and then he carefully taped the end of the needle to my skin to prevent it from moving around. Blood then started to trickle through the tube and into the bag. One pint, the man said, and then he moved on to my friend to insert the needle into his arm. One pint of blood is exactly like one pint of beer that you'd order at a bar, and that is quite a lot of blood lost from my system, in my opinion. I mean, I have had some serious injuries in my life, but I don't think I have ever lost that much blood ever before. I asked him how much blood we have in our body, and how much we can lose until it becomes dangerous. Apparently, we have about eight to twelve pints of blood, and it only takes about four to take you into critical conditions. A quarter of the way to being critical, I felt somewhat insecure.

But, the donation process was pretty painless to be honest. I sat there throughout the donation process and read the brochure that was given to me. I asked for a can of Pepsi, and the man's assistant gave it to me without second questions. It was like being served drinks on a sandy beach, and I was some really important guest on a yacht party or something. But I wasn't on a yacht, and I wasn't on a beach. In fact, I wasn't even sipping on margaritas, but was draining blood from the little punctured hole in my elbow. I could feel my left arm turn numb after a while, and then later followed by my left leg. I'm not sure if it was caused by the blood donation at all, but I wasn't too worried anyway. Like a child who's just gotten his taste of soft drinks like I had, I was happy to give some blood away in exchange for free drinks and snacks. Every once in a while, I'd forget to squeeze on the ball that was in my palm, and I'd give it one or two tight squeezes. That action would cause the blood flow into the bag to become suddenly sped up, and it was actually kinda fun to watch. The male nurse came around to check up on the blood supply every once in a while, making sure that we were OK and that we weren't passing out or anything. I was the first to be done with the whole blood donation thing, and that was when I helped myself to a bag of Oreo cookies with some apple juice.

In the end, blood donation really isn't all that big a deal at all. So I lost the blood that took 56 days to form in my body, but I really couldn't feel much of the after effects at all. My sister is an avid fan of blood donation, my apparently she has really only donated her blood once because she has too little iron in her blood to donate more. Being underweight seems to be a problem with blood donation in Singapore, but not so much here in the United States apparently. It is funny now, in retrospect, to think that my blood is going to be something that I leave behind in this country, other than a great many things. However, a part of me still has this strange dilemma about the blood being used on the wrong people. How do you qualify people, though, since we never actually know of their contributions (or lack thereof) to the society in the future. At any rate, I will elaborate on that in part two, so stay tuned!