Friday, December 10, 2004
[[
*moo]]
let's see, since it's about time i did a recount for at least ONE trip i went for. India was far too long for me to blog down, so i guess it's up to me to write about farmland.
ayer hitam, i think. that's the name of the place we went to, somewhere in Johor. we started off with a mountain climb which was rather bracing and reminded me of the fun of climbing mountains like that.
bukit timah hill can't exactly be counted as exciting, heck it's not even considered a 'bukit'. at least in my eyes. i still think mt ophir was harder in it's own way, but then again that was when i was in sec 3 and i was far weaker than i am now. i helped the girls shan, cheryl, shufang and jean up the mountain since i was more used to such climbing and took my place in front with the slower climbers. cheryl had had a loose knee cap and i think she had some problem climbing the parts which involved a big step upward. apparently huishan was also looking up for so long her neck ached and later couldnt even turn, haha! =) that's a first. when we reached the summit it was pretty cool and all, literally, though unlike ophir we weren't above the clouds. pity. though we
did manage to catch a glimpse of a far off area which had rain falling from the darker clouds and it was amazing seeing rain falling in the distance away. following that we reached the campsite and settled down to our home for 2 nights. the first night was ok i guess, for a life in a tent, though sleeping and living with two giants in that confined space takes some getting used to. (sorry ivan and gabriel haha)
the program for the next day was
sooo wonderful. hmm, in case you didn't get that, that was sarcasm. we opened with canoeing in the morning, which was fun and all since i was with the instructor for that duration and two proficient canoeists together make for a fun team where we can sprint and paddle in sync. though i must admit, i
hate the puchi (insect in tamil) inside. there was a hell lot of goddamned insects inside! ants, spiders and god knows what other kidns of insects not documented by science yet. disgusting shit. and i thought singaporean canoes were dirty enough with sea water and sand constantly inside. i take back my words man.
*P.S. the next section's pretty long and just about me griping about a shit hole. if you wanna, just skip to the next paragraph yeah*
but then, the day got
much better after that. hmm, in case you didn't get that again, that too was sarcasm. we later had to get into this pond (how can they evne term it a pond? by all appearances,
and smell, it looked like untreated sewage to me) and construct a raft to take us across from one end to the other. the materials given us were rope, two big plastic drums, 7 short wooden poles and 5 long ones. thank god for ivan and derek who followed me into the girl group. one was a boy scout before and the other in ODAC. at least they knew how to tie knots. we eventually made our raft and it sounded good in theory, able to float well, low CG and all that. it came down to selection of who had the glorious (need i say also
dubious?) honour of paddling the raft to the other side. the criteria was one guy, and one girl. the pair of other guys simultaneously looked at me when i announced my weight. i swear they looked almost hungry as they volunteered me to get on the raft. so me, the lightest among the trio, found myself volunteered for service to enter the stinking bog. they found the girl with the matching weight: huishan. i was up till then very sporting and calm until i stepped off the land and into the water and the embankment to get onto the raft. my feet sank into the
mud below. yes, boys and girls, you heard me. mud. and nooo, not your average mud. your goey, grey viscous mud which
sucks. yes, you heard me, and i meant for the pun. i almost lost my shoe in it. i needed someone to pull me back up onto the land. i couldn't free myself from the damn thing. i lost it then. and started to swear a lil. just a lil. i got back up on land and tried to board the raft again. this time huishan and i managed to get on alright, but to our combined horror, all the theory about it being stable was just
bullshit. we were sitting upright and we found that it was so goddamned UNSTABLE. yes, it was so unstable that huishan started screaming and i started my full fledged swearing with my extensive multi-lingual vocabulary. english, chinese, hokkien, malay, tamil, hindi and german all came flowing out as we attempted to stablize the damn thing. and great, we were hardly two meters from shore. so i ceased my litany and suggested to huishan,
look, why don't we ease slowly to prone position and hug the drum and paddle with our hands. yes, our hands, when we had a 2 meter pole as an intended oar. so slowly, while trying to keep a low CG and not rock the boat, pun intended, we eased into that position and precariously started paddling with our hands and made very, very slow progress. every now and then i would tell her to lean forward or backward to compensate for the drum starting to capsize. we made it to the opposite bank and i got off, happy as hell that i managed not to capsize. then came the bomb: the instructor told us to get the raft back to the shore we started from. i ran out of curse words then. and since i was already chest deep in the damn water/sewage, i thought "what the hell" and suggested to shan that she frogstyle from behind the drums and i'll backstroke from the front. we got it back across faster than before, but i got up from the water with my thighs tired as hell. my first sentence when i got back out was "i smell wonderful!" after that was the washing up then lunch. i took 15 mins to get all the water snails and algae and sand and
mud from my shoes off. by then everyone was eating lunch and i was the last to get my food. i swore to myself then that i wouldn't enter that goddamned and godforsaken body of liquid manure
again. and as always, the man upstairs always loves to play jokes on me. this wasn't the first time he sabotaged me, and i certainly don't think it'll be the last. i found out later not only i'll have to enter that shit hole again, but i'll have to enter it twice: once for some thing where we had a rope across its surface and i had to use the rope and wade across, second time for the rafting thing and this time we had to keep a piece of toilet roll dry. so, i got into the water, twice. this time i went barefoot to preserve my shoes. i sank into the mud almost knee deep and it was disgusting warm. i came out and since it was a team challenge and these were all obstacle course challenge stations, there was no time to hose down the mud so i just carried on with the rest of the program.
i followed with the tyre challenge where we had to get our team across a series of tyres without stepping on the ground with the aid of only 2 planks of wood. thank god for our team which had people with good balance and mainly gymnasts, haha. next was the canoeing challenge in which we had to launch our boat from muddy shallow water, cut through a maze of water hyacinths and later through open water to the opposing shore and get off, touch a tree, and paddle back again. my partner was jon chan and together we were the fastest man! we used brute force to beat our way through the water plants blocking our canoe and sprinted the boat to the shore and just as we were reaching, we stuck out a leg and slowed down the canoe and upon grounding the boat, we hopped out. it was all in style, haha. on the return journey we sprinted so fast to use our kinetic energy to cut a path back through the water plants without getting stuck. we did so well that i found that i had blisters on my fingers where i gripped the paddle.
the rest of the day was uneventful except for the part where we were clearing up the various stations and i was helping them to dismantle the rafts. i had to carry back the long poles of wood and i asked for them to put
some poles of wood into my hands as i held them outstretched. the girls obliged, but all too willingly. they piled the whole damn pile unto my hands and i could hardly move a step! it didn't help that shufang, tini, cheryl, shan were all carrying either no poles or just one pole in the beginning and were chit chatting behind me. they all took advantage la. hmph. in the end that pile proved too heavy for me to handle and they had to each take 1 or 2 poles each before i could go on. like i was trying to demonstrate how "strong" i was la. my hand was shaking when i queued up for my food for dinner later.
the night campfire was damn cool though, though my team's performance left something to be desired as we told gruesome baby jokes. luckily i took the role of saying the confucius jokes which were actually
funny. after most of them went off to their tents, a small group of us stayed back around the fire to watch the stars and tell ghost stories. it was all very, breath-taking. i won't be forgetting about that part of the expedition in a hurry, lying down on a ground sheet with your friends, looking up into the night sky and seeing all the bright stars. like,
wow. but the ghost story part was pretty funny, with cheryl covering her ears cause she didn't wanna hear! hahah. later, derek, brian, jon chan, tini, shufang and i decided to sleep under the stars. the clouds really cleared then, and we got to see everything! tini, shufang and i talked abit and though we didn't manage to find out alot of so called secrets about each other, i thought it was pretty cool that one could sit in front of a blazing fire with the beautiful stars above and talk with one's friends. with shan's borrowed amplifier we had good music as we watched for shooting stars.
the next day was pretty mundane as we packed up the campsite and visited the musuem where they showed us gruesome acts of how they like, castrated bulls and pigs, and how they dissected rabbits. we moved on to see the rabbits and goats letter. i even held one and took a picture! they were like so cute. from there we took a bus home to singapore and god i can't tell you how relieved i was when i managed to clear customs. i
shan't name names, but if you wanna know more, come ask me, haha. oh and i loved the sight of high rise HDB flats. and the fact there were no more puchis! haha, it's great to be back.
gee i'm tired after typing all this. aren't you tired of
reading all this? lol, if you're still with me, tag me if you're game. if not, shoo, and good night! =)
::echoes::
regarding you: i've had had more good news than i've had in a long while. i'm contented i guess to hear what i hear. but that still doesn't leave me with answers as to what i should do about my feelings for you. maybe if i pretend long enough i can hope the feelings wear off? yeah. i don't know. anything.
anymore.
`donovan. |7:49 PM|
