life has never been this great!
i just got back from the best 5 days of my life!
Thursday 22sept2005
departed from my condo at 8.45am, picked up my president from sect 17, and went to dataran merdeka to pick up dinesh and kelvin. while waiting at dataran merdeka, there were a bunch of youths waiting to be loaded into the bus and to be shot off to ryla (rotary youth leadership award) at outward bound school, lumut.
upon arriving in lumut at about 2pm, we stopped by a petrol station to fill up and check my car engine. filled up water in the correct holes, we continued our journey, only to discover that the signal lights were short circuit-ed and not working. shit! shit! shit!! but we were near and so we just made sure we didn’t make any sharp turnings.. we arrived safe and sound at 2.30pm at obs, lumut.
after registration, we were ’stripped’ down of our belongings for anything ‘pleasurable’. our handphones, ciggarettes, ipods, walkmans, wallets, cash, and etc were consficated. deprived of the luxuries of civilization and urban-ation, we carried the rest of our belongings to our dorms.
you can prob feel the disappointed vibe in all the participants as though we have been sent to the room without dinner for doing something wrong. the few of us smokers were wondering how we were gonna survive for the next 5 days without ciggies.
we were split into 6 groups : tahan, bubu, korbu, gading, trusmadi, and ulu sepat (my group).
ulu sepat members : dinesh (captain), kelvin (mike), charmaine, eunice, jack, kheng wai, rezal (super commando!!), jestin (dilbert), hun pin (sweeper), stephanie (mummy), gary (bitch), dhaya (slut), niza (chibik) and myself (chubuk).
nite came, and we went nite walking in the jungle. we were not allowed torch lights and had to depend on our sense of ‘touch’ and hearing to get us through the trek. though it was scary, but it was a good feeling when we got out of there. a feeling of a small achievement.
Friday 23sept2005
getting up early in the morning is just not my forte.. but for the camp, we had to get up at 5.30am, and sharing 3 bathrooms with 20 other gals is not fun. at 6.30am, we were expected to group up, those who were late, push ups.. no prizes for guessing whether i was late or not :p
after the opening ceremony, there was a full day of discussion and talks arranged by the rotarians, speaking bout leadership, presentation skills, confidence, ethics and mannerism, and even whats next after ryla. for the guest (non-rotaractors), this was an introduction to the rotaract club. though officially i’m not yet a rotaractor, yet i stood proud with the rotaractors when we were asked to ’show’ ourselves to the guest. this tingling feeling told me that rotaract is in my blood.. this was my calling..
in the evening, we had a briefing of what’s gonna happen the next day. we were scheduled to camp-out for the nite and we had to start preparing our equipment and determining the roles for the members. and also we had to discuss the group presentation which we had to present on our ‘graduation’ nite.
Saturday 24sept2005
this time i got up and was early for the morning session at 6.30am. i am proud of myself for this 
we had belays intro, which was also an intro to rock / rope climbing. i was excited as i always wanted to try this. niza and i managed touched base at 60 secs, considerably faster that the rest.. :p though can’t beat gary’s time of 20 secs. sheesh!!
after lunch we packed and washed up and got ready to move out. our bags each weighed approx 20kg +. having just recovered from a broken collar bone, i was extremely worried bout the weight on my shoulders.
we moved out at 2.15pm. we walked for bout an hour to the foot of the hill that we were gonna hike up. from there, we started hiking up the jungle trek, climbing up 300 ft above sea level to reach the peak was our check-point. we arrived at 5.30pm at 300ft. there were complains, there were prima donnas, there were sissies, there were parts where we had to support each other to climb / jump across. but all these were nothing compared to what we had to go through after we passed the check-point.
everything literally went down hill from where we left off. slippery and steep, we were all carefully helping each other to get down. we bump into another group, gading, and travelled together. it was getting dark, as nite came, the treks were steeper, we’re talking 60-70 degrees steep. needless to say, this was the time when u actually get to know someone.. the attraction was in the air, the tension was so thick, i could poke my staff in it and it’ll stick. some tried to ‘cut line’ with the gals.. it was half a catastrophe..
we finally touched camp base at 11.30pm. after 9 hours of walking, we were all exhausted. i’m considerable a weak person. throughout the whole journey, i had difficulty breathing, therefore i took my strides slow and steady. at 1.30am, after we had set up the camp and had our dinner, we found out that trusmadi was still stuck in the jungle, they had just arrived at check-point 300ft. omg, we were worried if they were gonna make it at all.. they ended up camping in the jungle.
the gals and guys slept in diff tents obviously.. i was chilling with gary and dhaya, talking cock singing song while gazing at the stars. it was beautiful, as u don’t get to see that many stars in KL cause of the haze :p the 3 of us were lying in the tent when slowly each of us dozed of. that’s the end of sleeping in the gals tent. dinesh woke gary n i up at 4am for nite watch. an hour per pair, we watched till 4.30 and went back to the tent and slept.. we tried waking dhaya up at 5, cause he was suppose to watch and cook us some really good food, which proved fruitless, though we did get curry chicken breakfast (tin can)..
Sunday 25sept2005
we got up early to pack and head back to the school. the hike back was only 3hours, shortcut.. some of the bags, which we stuffed with all the heavy stuff, were sent back by jeep. we reached the school at 10.30am.. after chilling with the guys sommore, i went back to the gals dorm and took a leisurely long shower and scrub myself till i was satisfied.. did i mentioned that the gals had to share the toilets with 20 others, while the boys, only 6. wat bull!!!
after lunch, we went out to sea. my fav!! i just love the water!! went kayaking, which was totally fun, and got a great tan as well.. dhaya and dinesh took a kayak together.. it was hilarious, cause the both of them kept capsizing.. we did a rescue exercise to ’save’ the both of them.
dinner was our showtime.. we sang a few songs where we changed the lyrics to show what a great time we had. the rotaractors performed our ‘rotaract spirit’ and wished happy birthdays to the september babies.
Monday 26sept2005
during the forum in the morn, we shared our thoughts and wishes during the last few days. the energy in the room was just blazing. everyone was just feeling absolutely high. although the last couple of days have been vigorous, we were still full of spirit and energy..
after the closing ceremony and lunch, we walked out of the school to have our ciggies, which were returned to us just after breakfast. we began our journey home and arrived in PJ at 7.
my president and i were still bursting with energy, we went for a community service meeting with our members at 7.30 together with dinner..
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during the whole time, i was so afraid that i’m too weak to handle anything, with all the shit that my body was going through, but i got through it with full of energy and spirit, i came back feeling relaxed, revived, and rejuvenated. it was definitely the recharge that i need. the partnerships build, the friendships made, the brotherhoods / sisterhoods formed was the best gift anyone can ever give me.
guys, if ur reading this, thanks for making my ryla experience totally unforgetable and the most memorable days of my life. some pix are up, check out the photo album.
