The event was entertaining, interesting, knowledgeable and full of admirable people.
Thursday 6pm at Luna Park was the registeration. Here you can see a 'bed' cover in newspaper - attempting to portray the idea of sleeping out:
There were also a small gallery of art by homeless people when they were asked to describe what a day in their life is like (they were really sad art I must say) :
At 7pm we had a warm reception by Mike Bailey (you can find more about him here) and organisers for this event:
Dinner was then served. We had soup and bread, personally it wasn't very filling - but homeless people might have even less than this, so I'm not to complain.
To make the event rich, after the light meal, we started discussing the issue of homelessness, what it's like being homeless and how St Vincent de Paul Society have been helping the homeless.
One of my most admired person was there too! A man that needs no introduction - Dick Smith the entrepreneur himself. :D
After the presentation, when it was social time, I got to speak to Dick Smith. If I had to sumarise his personality in a few phrases, he is: Interesting, Kind, Knowledgeable and Modest. Just being around him fascinating. He would talk about his many pranks (i.e: Iceberg prank), to his near death balloon advertures, to his encounters with the government.
What a person! I want to be just like him if not better. :D
Soon, it was 11pm and came time for us to go to bed. Luckily it was raining, so instead of sleeping out in the open, most of us found a spot in the 'bumper cars' ride area of Luna Park. The ground was cold and hard, my gratitude goes to the people who provided us with these clean thin pieces of cardboard to sleep on. No matresses were allowed, so most only had sleeping bag and pillow.
Did I manage to sleep at night you ask? Not a single bit. The ground is hard, it was freezing, and in addition, at 2am in the morning, a particular someone was causing so much racket, and purposely trying to wake everyone up. It made me think: being homeless is not just about having no where to stay, it's also about having to deal and put up with all kinds of different people whether they like it or not.
You don't know how happy I was to sleep in my matress bed the next evening. It made me understand "appreciation" at a deeper level. For it is only when we don't have something that we learn how valuable everyday things we take for grant are. So why not appreciate it while we have it. :)
