Adventure

Super long never update this. Took a lot of flights recently. Last Oct, I went to Beijing for a 3-day business trip. Then I visited many places on my own, like Great Wall, Forbidden City, Palace Garden, ... That was the cheapest trip , cheap until my expenses there was less than the value my digital camera. Nice trip.

5 Jan - 10 Jan 2005, I was back to Malaysia to attend CcaCca's wedding. What a first wedding of my friend I've ever attended. That was also a great time to meet up with many old friends, hari hari drink here and there, and playing pool somemore. .... nice sweet home trip.

24 Jan - 30 Jan 2005, I was away to Switzerland to attend yet another business trip. This time is even more interesting. The hotel and airticket expenses were covered by HP. Hehe, the day before I reach Geneve, snow storm!!! When the plane was landing on Geneve, I could see the ground all in white color, except the roads. As the city is organized in many squares or rectangles, it looked like extremely big paddy farm with all the paddy covered by white white snow. Mmmm, interesting, the tall tall trees become much shorter, probably half of the tree trunks are covered by snow.

The weather was about -2 to -5 degree C. Luckily I brought big big jacket. Though not very cold, when the wind blowing at you, it was still quite freezing. I was very lucky that, the next day morning it snow again :d , so I quickly take some pictures to capture the snowing moment.

After the workshop, some of us went to the city to walk around. People here, no night life except pub, ...., people here driving slowly. When you are blocking their way, they will just wait you finish crossing the road. The bus and tramp, never check the ticket, though I still invested CHF 7 for a ticket valid from 9am to midnight. It's good that whenever you overshoot, you still can take the bus/tramp to go back without incurring additional cost. Not bad, especially good for dump dump no direction tourists.

For quite a long time I never wear a watch, so I bought 2 SWATCHes here as souvenir, 1 for myself, 1 for my pig pig cousin, each cost CHF 60. I also bought quite alot of chocolates home .... Mmmmm ... luckily the chocolates are not melted when I reach Singapore. :)

More to story, but today stop here. :) ....... to be continue .....

Saturday. What do I do? You'll never get it right. Professor has gone to MIT for some academic stuffs. Thus, no meeting at Saturday until further notice given :D . Well, today I went to DobiGod (a place) to meet up with Cendawan, have lunch, and to seek information about the MAS group tickets to go home during CNY. However, only then we remember Malaysians are very lazy type, MAS office is closed at weekends and holidays. zadao :( ~~~

OK, nevermind, we have better program today. We went to 2nd destination for our true program of the day, the Suntech City, for the SPOOKY magic show :? . Once we enter the hall, it looked like a hunted hall, only very little light. The 'duckilar' walking here and there to shock people :o , so we hear alot of screaming here and there :? .

First part of the show a bit childish, ask people to put in belongings into black bags, and the magician knows which belongings belongs to who (bendy also know lah) :p ....the lady magician dancing with the floating table :o , .... , cheh.... can see the strings 1 :d .... chop head session, hehe, first chop the carrot, then ask the bendy guy to put his head into the choping plate, of course, when the magician push in the 'ba lang dao', it didnt hurt him :o . Even though you know he'll be alright, but when you are watching he was as if being chopped by the magician, quite geli also :o , ....

Even into crazy mode, the magician wearing doctor uniform, cut his staff's abdomen. Then he came down the stage and screaming: "More~~~~, more~~~ .... You!!!" The lady he was pointing to immediately run off to the back!!! 8) OK, then he finds another 'victim', .... "You!!!", the lady wanna run away but the magician hold her quick enough, and drag her to the stage :o . The magician put her into the rectangular box, where we cant see what the lady doing inside the box. Magician then set fire on the inner part of the box :o . .... open up the box, hehe, left the black bones. .......

Hehehe, what a day, well, the two ladies probably their own staffs, who knows ... but yet, if the magician really pointing you to go up the stage, you might be feeling scary, especially if you dont understand how the magic works .... though they are professional magician, but accident might happen!!!

Thursday again. Thus, it was a thirsty day. It was a hot day, that the sun was working at its full power. Luckily, now I am staying in a lab in NUS, the aircon still considerably working fine. Mmmm, almost forgotten where did I stop my adventurous story. K... here they are:

First some vocabularies for text below:
zadao -- Aikss, what the? (in a polite manner)
syok -- Feel entertained.

Day IV Morning -- :) Zzzzz...Zzzzz...."Ah Chung, ah chung!!! ... " xman:"Waaah, zadao :? , it's 6:00++am now. Should have been morning exercising together with other groups now." xman:"Wao, all others are there exercising already." :) Hehe, what a shame to have the girls to wake us up. ... After that, each group exercise by their own. Our group jogged slowly, slowly, ... , xman:"eiiii, looked familiar!!! The beach!!! :? Play water again? I only bring 7 set of cloth, each for one day, now playing like that, how many sets I bring also not enough lah!!!" Hehehe, not only I didnt want to. Looked like others also didnt want too. Who like to play with salt water wor, hehe. Instructor Christ said, "You have the choice. ..." Hehe, then we just head back for breakfast.

Today is canoeing day. Among jungle tracking, canoeing, sailing, I like canoeing the most :d . .... First of all, pick your life jacket. You must love your life jacket whether you need it or not, otherwise it'll just malfunction when you really need it. .... The canoe is meant for two persons. Thus, you have to find a partner to work with, throughout the trip. And usually, the instructor will try to pair a 'swimmable' with another 'non-swimmable'. Hehe, I just agreed with the first girl who approached me :D . ...

The girl and I sit in a canoe, the instructor Christ asked, "Are you ready?" "Yeah." bushhhhhh, bluk bluk bluk~~~ pam! pam! pam! wasai :? . This is to train you to give signal when you are capsided. Hit the canoe sides with two hands, exactly three times then come out quickly. .... Anyway, I was totally wet. Later on, we learned to canoe the canoe. The paddle both side can be used to 'dig' the water to move forward, left right left right, like marching ha. The one sitting behind is important. He/She controls the direction of the canoe, turned too much then the canoe slow down considerably, and you have to work hard to canoe again, turned too little, then you might hit others or even hit the river bank!!! However, the one sitting behind couldnt see the front probably, especially if the 'not thin at all' sitting in front of you :D . But the front sit person has to give direction properly, left left right right. ... 8) , syok, we enjoyed the canoeing very much, no one willing to leave (hehe :d , for me, definitely for due to the girl), we then moved the canoes to a 'vehicle'. ......

After lunch, we were ready to set off. The 'vehicle' dropped us at Kinarut river. Yuuuu huuu, let's canoe. I was sitting at the back sit. Thus, the girl in front of me just worked hard to canoe and gave direction. She wouldnt notice I quietly take snap :d . Canoeing at the Kinarut river let me remembered the movie series 'The Swamp Thing'. You would just see swamp after canoeing for a while. .... the water flow getting more rigorous. It was going to rain, eeeee, raining again. We couldnt control our canoe very well. Canoes were being pushed towards one side, waah, hitting the swamp and trees. :o Oh my god, all of us stayed together, holding each other's canoe for the time being. ...... When water flow was less rigorous we then canoe quickly towards our destination.

Mmmm...It was still raining, what to do? Quickly set up the tent, and also the camp fire. I took the tent out quickly for the setup. The instructor immediately said, "No no no no, take the old tent." :p Hehe, I shouldnt take the one we are going to sleep on out. ...... the rain didnt take too long to stop :) , fortunately, otherwise it'll be difficult to sustain the camp fire. ... eerrr ... legs were almost hardened, imagine sitting inside the canoe for long time, your legs could just 'open' widely and couldnt move. .... Environment wise, I still preferred the jungle with river. Here you couldnt get very clean water from the river, remember, it's swamp thing!!! Thus, we drank only the water we brought from OBS. From here, we could see the light from OBS. We were almost at the junction of river and sea.

...... to be continue ......

Monday is an extension of weekend. Cant sleep well in the weekend then sleep more at Monday, whether at home or at work :) .

Continuing OBS 6 1/2-day training --
Day III Midnight -- There was no luxury bed to sleep on, no aircon regulating temperature, no pillow, just sleep anyway you can sleep :) . However, you could enjoy the singing of insects "ngit ngit ngit ngit ngit ...", true water flowing (different with sea water type, river has its water flowing continuously). Occasionally, you could hear loud "ngiao ngiuuuu ngiao ...." }:) , jungle always full of mosquitoes. Fortunately, I brought insect repellent 8) , using one time can last for two hours. But still, the ground was not flat enough, no pillow, ... (a lot of complaints ha). I was awake most of the time, and got bitten by mosquitoes still. One way to relief itching, was to stand near the camp fire, you'll suddenly feel so syok, it was like applying the most 'spicy' cream to your skin :) , and confirmed the mosquitoes couldnt go near the fire. Little sleep and little awake until morning.

Day III Morning -- Hehehe, I would be brushing teeth if I was at home. But, I didnt bring toothbrush, so just leave it :D . The girls were cooking maggie mee. Mmmm, smell good, OK, let me get more wood and make my favourite milo (Milo milo anda minum sihat dan kuat!!!). Instructor said, "Never cut the trees, the trees take years to grow, take those dead wood." "Yaya, got it. :) " ... ... Let me get my 'cup' for breakfast and milo. The 'cup', exactly those we use for bathing (at the era using pail for hot water instead of water paip or heater). Oh my god, :o , full of red ants!!! The 'cup' used for dinner but never got washed with 'soup'. eeee ... dont care, simply got it flushed in the river. .... Mmmmm ... what a tasty breakfast. 8) . Maggie mee was super soft, Milo was super sweet. My hands were shaking while taking food, too hungry. Couldnt control the power of the fire, rendered the mee "too well" cooked. The milo, hehe, they never stir it properly and kept adding sugar, and asked, "Why not sweet one ah?" haha.

Wow, what a great morning. It was gaming time. Instructor said, "Follow what I do, ok? Tommy tommy tommy tommy tommy hop, tommy hop, tommy tommy tommy tommy." You try, ... , wrong, ..., salah, ... :( We followed exactly already, the pointing finger of the right hand pointing to each finger of the left hand while tommy tommy tommy ...... Hehehe, za dao, you have to put your left hand to your right hand wrist, only then you completed the "operation." The last action was like putting his hand there naturally, but actually he did that purposely every time he showed us what to follow him to do. Hehe, only the wise can see that, otherwise you would have concentrated too much on his fingers.

Yeah ... let's head back. I donated my right dragonfly shoe to the girl who lost her right shoe during the river battle. Leech please go away, I could only pray so. Mmm, the map was quite detail, showing quite alot of path. I was the one holding the compass on my neck, we used the greedy approach, simply follow the way which has smaller angle to the destination. (If we needed to go through U-turn type path, we would be going round and round :p ) ... :? The 'not thin at all' cant make it again, my bag was added with rubbish already, those burnt cann that we were not suppose to throw in the jungle. eerrr...zadao, the instructor asked me to carry his bag somemore. No shoes, and carry two bags!!! Nvm, no use to talk alot, fortunately team members willing to share the load, we took turns to carry two bags. :? ... Waaah, the girls faster than us already. I wanna rest but they kept going, errr, okok, I better kept going too, not to meet up with the 'not thin at all' behind us. ...... Yeh, the pickup was waiting for us. What a great relief for the day.

Day III Night -- After the jungle tracking, our relationship was built up. It was really "huan4 nan4 jian4 zhen1 qing2" :) (during the trouble, you see the true friendship). How you would help others when one was 'leeched', muscle cramped, cold, hungry, insomnia, mosquito bitten, ....... What can we do at night? Hehe, one of the nice programmes, treasure hunting!!! We were divided into smaller groups, rougly three in a group. Given a map to each group, we were to record all the symbols drawn in the places indicated in the map. It was dark, thus, a bigger torch light (mine was the biggest, those went to Mount Kinabalu with me know 8) ) would definitely help. Hehe, somemore I had played this game the year before, thus, I already knew some of the places with the mystery symbols. This required team work too. The OBS campus was pretty huge. Running from one place to another place takes time. Thus, one couldnt give up too easily. Otherwise, you would find nothing at the end, as you gave up most of the time to find the mystery symbols. You had to believe there was a symbol there as indicated in the map, and your opponents didnt destroy it :) . It turned out that I didnt find many new symbols though. Thus, it broke my theory on "having bigger torch light would definitely help"!!! ......

We had to pack up again, not going home yet, it was only day III, but going to sea coarse the next day. Hehehe, this time we were using bag which was slightly water-proof. Anyway, this time I had my plastic bag containing all the things inside my bag :p , just in case. Just before we slept, we were asked to write our own diary. As I was too tired, I was sleeping with the diary opened, unfinished, and I was still holding the pen, until morning. What a good day to sleep. Today, I cant find the diary anymore, though I didnt write much, but it must be fun to review it, the real diary, instead of write up on the past.

It's getting late now. Good sleep. And of course, .... to be continue ......

Saturday. What to do? Every Saturday I'll have meeting with supervisor and friends in the morning from 10:00am to 12:00pm. Today, supervisor was not around. But I still went to NTU as usual to meet my friends. We cant discuss but we still can talk talk 8 8 here and there. :p . ... ... then long sleep at afternoon, online at night. What a simple life.

No story created today, but I guess I still can tell something in the past. Roughly June 1994 holiday, I went to Outward Bound School (OBS) in Kinarut for some kind of training. It was a 6 1/2-day training programme.
Day I -- The first day of any programmes is always an easy day, always some sort of games for remembering names of friends :) , Veronica, Inci, Tang, ..., still remember two girls and one boy, not bad ha :D , others only roughly remember their faces. Name of my group was something like 'Hornbill'. Most of them were from Sandakan and Tawau. My group was quite balance, around four girls and six boys. Hmmm....pretty girls :) , but they were taller than me type, and also older . Just before we slept, we were busy packing (though we just unpacked our stuffs in the afternoon :? ) for Jungle tracking in the next day. .... OK, done :) . Sleep.

Day II -- Morning 6:30am, morning exercise. It was quite normal to have warm-up exercise, feel so good. What then? }:) Morning sea water playing?? eeeeee ... my half wet cloth got totally wet. That's one set of cloth, solely for the water playing. ... ... Later on we got into a car to send us into jungle. There we got a map, and a compass. Given our location and the destination in the map, we were to find our way there. Most of the girls wearing long pants, hehe, all afraid of 'something' crawled in to suck blood, leeches of cause. Anyway, that didnt scare me off, as walking in front wont get into that problem. :p (always those at the back got into the troubles created by those in front)

Hmmm....it was quite tiring, some how one of our group member couldnt follow up, the main reason being he was not thin at all. eee ... as I was not the first time being there, and the instructor knew me before (during my first time in OBS at 1993), I was asked to help the 'not thin at all' guy. OK, what to do? Some of the stuffs in his bag was transferred to my bag. Ahhh....I was short enough, carrying the giant bag just made me couldnt grow taller }:) . "OK, hope now you can follow up." ... ... eerrrr, alamak, the 'not thin at all' guy was walking at an estimated speed of 2cm to 5cm per second in average. "Oh my god, we still have long way to go." ... almost fainted. :jawdrop:

Finally, we came to almost the top of the hill, hmmm ... soft wind blowing at us, how nice would it be? to have lunch with nature scene. :) . ... That was just the beginning. After lunch, it started to rain. Oh ooooo, we got to go. Some of us took the plastic bags given to us yesterday to act as sweater (including me :) ). ... ... the rain was heavy and heavier, and the ground was slippery. Ha , now it wasnt a good idea to be the one walking in front. Whenever you fall down, you'll get laughing :) in return. When the one behind you fall down, you'll fall down too. Hehe, one way was to walk faster than the one behind you. Otherwise, good luck.

Hmmm ... it was time to cross the river. However, the rain caused the river full blown with yellowish water, pretty strong water flow :? . If you dont catch anything, then, that's it, flow along the river then. Somehow people in my group were quite brave, they still wanna cross the river. OK then, we all formed a circle and cross the river together. When one got blown away, the two besides should hold him/her tight (live or die together type). We tried to have boy girl boy girl arranged in the circle. Hehe, pretty girl beside me :) . This required team work, move together, stop together. 1 2 3, 1 2 3, 1 2 3, ...., we managed to cross roughly one third of the width. Oh my god, my muscle going to cramp soon, and my shoe going to go off, eerrrr :( . The pretty girl beside me even worse, almost no energy to move on, hey dont faint. I was holding her bag tight. Ahhhh, we backed off to river bank. Too bad, my shoe had gone along the river, my dragonfly left shoe, hope no one down there drinking the water :p .

Ha....our group had too many girls and one 'not thin at all' guy. The instructor thought of another way out. He asked me to take out the rope for the tent. Waah, he swimmed across the river and tight the rope on the tree at the other side. Hehe, the instructor first tried to bring a girl to cross the river. If any girl couldnt cross the river, then all of us shouldnt cross the river at all. The water was strong. When the girl tried to cross the river by holding the rope tight, the water kept hitting her face. Waah, the girl's legs almost following the water flow, not touching the ground anymore, water hitting her face, cant breath somemore. Luckily, the instructor still managed to get her back to our side. Phewwww, what a dangerous trial. Then all of us gave up, and not trying to cross the river anymore, the girl almost got drown liao, you still wanna try meh!!! Guess what, the girl also lost one of her shoe, it was right shoe. :o . ... ...

At night, it was very cold. Our bags were not water-proof. Thus, everything inside got wet. Unluckily, the toilet paper was in my bag, and I didnt use the plastic bag to contain those things in my bag, .... hehe. The instructor was 'git si' already, said, "I dont know what is it." Haha, because he wanna find somewhere to clear his stomach. :p . Our cloth was wet. Luckily, the rain didnt continue at night. We managed to setup the tent, a camp fire, to keep warm and make dinner. Dinner was mostly canned food, like soya bean, satin fish, .... Haha, what a day. Though the rain stopped, but I could still hear the water flow from the river, just like the water flow of the waterfall. ... ... To be continue ...