Okay I don't know where to start. I guess I'll just recount everything from beginning to end (though we're apparently not allowed to quote people, so).

So Xinyuan and I had an agreement: if by the end of the month I was no longer homeless, I'd go with her for this workshop on human rights organised by MARUAH (Singapore Working Group for an ASEAN Human Rights Mechanism) and UNYAS (United Nations Youth Association of Singapore).

Well, as everyone knows, we found a place the day I got back from POP chalet. So I had to attend the workshop with her.

I don't regret it, though. It was good.

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Somehow there was a last-minute change of location for the workshop; it was moved to the AWARE Centre at Block 5, Dover Crescent. I was quite annoyed; other people get driven, but I had to take public transport all the way from Sengkang to freaking Dover. Wth. It took me one and a half hours to get there, and to make things worse Xinyuan decided to walk off by herself to find the place instead of meeting me at the bus stop (not that it'd have helped if she'd met me there anyway; it turned out that we were at different bus stops).

Anyway I found the place too and hung around outside to wait for Xinyuan, during which both Yeong Wei (one of the organisers) and Braema Mathi herself tried to welcome me in. Slightly intimidating (my first reaction was 'omg I swear she looks really familiar - HOLY CRAP IT'S BRAEMA MATHI!!!!!111' *fangirl*), but quite cool.

Then Xinyuan came and pushed me in and we both registered for the workshop. Xinyuan noticed Ms Braema too and started fangirling.

Most of the people in the room were in university and at least 18 (except for a couple of Republic Poly people and 1 Sec3 guy who came because his mum's in MARUAH too or something), so it was quite scary but intellectually stimulating. I mostly just sat around and listened in to their conversations but didn't really join in :X

Then the workshop started proper; since I can't quote individual speakers I'll just summarise my takeaways from the plenary. Mr Siew Kum Hong was the moderator (or whatchamacallit).

The first speaker was from UNYAS, so she spoke about the issue of youths and their involvement in human rights. Apparently ex-victims of human trafficking in Cambodia are now involved in giving talks about their experiences. Basically youths of today have a responsibility to start changing the world they live in - though a good point was raised during the Q&A: why only help those in Cambodia or Vietnam? Why not promote education for the poor in Singapore - those that end up having to drop out after PSLE? (At that time I wrote "SG chauvinism" in my notebook, though it's probably too harsh a description.) Still, I think Singapore would be a better starting point for youths wanting to help in the rights movement. We're not all as blessed as we think we are in Singapore.

The second speaker was Alex Au himself (of yawningbread.org fame). His lecture was insanely cool. He basically drew comparisons between the "extended family" and "condo management" forms of governance, the difference being that the patriarchal structure has a fixed hierarchy of power which cannot be challenged while the condo management structure manages the condo for the residents, but the residents have the ultimate say on things once a year at the condo GM when they vote on stuff like whether or not to change the sauna to a steam bath (am speaking from personal experience here lol. We actually had a discussion about it at the GM last year.) He also mentioned that he believes in freedom of expression, so I asked whether or not he believes that it is possible to have complete freedom of expression in society. He answered yes. I salute him. (No, seriously. If you're going to express a view then you'd better stick to it when people ask you about it.) But he did mention that lines must be drawn to prevent abuse, which I fully agree with, except that imo it won't be complete freedom of expression anymore. But whatever. Definitions, definitions. He just earned my respect.

The third and fourth speakers were Sumi and Braema Mathi. Quite interesting, but I didn't really take notes so I can't remember what exactly were their topics. Basically Sumi linked human rights to businesses and Ms Braema summarised everything and inspired us to...do more and go forth? Something like that.

Then we had lunch (vegetarian halal LOL) followed by group sessions; Xinyuan and I were in Group 1 with...okay I can't remember their names but the 3 from Republic Poly and the other Sec3 guy (Akhil? Xinyuan says) were in there. We had to rank 9 different human rights in order of importance, but it was hard to decide so we put "Right to life" in the centre and everything else around it. Then we had a role-playing session with different characters from all walks of life to see who was the most deprived of human rights; ironically it was the NSman who had the least rights ahahaha. Some guy got the role of a 20-year-old lesbian and shared a story about his friend who's a lesbian and likes a straight girl, but the straight girl doesn't like her back so she lets out her sexual frustration by going around having sex with 15/16 year-old xiao mei meis. How dysfunctional :O

Finally we split up into groups of 3 (Akhil joined Xinyuan and I to form a group) drew this tree thingum that involved a problem (tree trunk), its roots (tree roots) and its consequences (foliage). Our group chose traffic jams ahaha. We had a field day finding roots and consequences (example of root and consequence: Shell has $1 offers for petrol, which cause traffic jams, which use up even more oil, which cause oil prices to go up, which cause Shell to give discounts for petrol again and the cycle continues).

Everyone else did Serious Problems like racism and the issue of housing foreign workers at Serangoon Gardens, which was probably why ours felt more like a filler comedy act than an actual presentation. But whatever.

Then the workshop ended and for some odd reason people found us fascinating and talked to us just because we're 15 and everyone else is like...at least 18 and above. Left at around 5.30 and took the bus back to Dover; at least we knew the way back this time so it didn't seem to take that long to walk back to the bus stop.