Monday, June 19, 2006
This is like Part 2, where I shall dwell on more mundane things and attempt to remember other stuff, after browsing through other people’s blogs.
The first day, as I have mentioned before, had been spent in a plane, a bus and at some mall, before going over to our hotel.
It was Anthony’s first ride on an aeroplane. Someone very tactfully said ‘Your first time was with us, Anthony’ or something along that lines, which, when taken out of context, had many, many meanings.
Simply put, he was very excited.
In the end, he got used to it after the plane took off and spent the rest of the time moaning and groaning about his bridge game, and putting the breakfast label on his forehead, which meant that he was, very briefly, against all laws of physics, an omelette.
When we landed, we had to walk to the airport, like all presidents do, someone very smarmily remarked. We spent a while queuing up to register or whatever or to check that our passports were really passports and not bits of paper, then went on for a bus ride to some high up hotel.
Anthony spent the first bit of the ride going ‘Whoooa!’ every time the bus swerved, which was many times, before everyone got severely irritated with him or he just got bored. Either way, he stopped because of those two reasons, or he got motion sickness, which explained why he stole the airsickness bags from the aeroplane earlier on.
The bus ride consisted mostly of sleepy people (Anthony and Kenneth really, really look like each other when they nap), talkative people (I remember an eye-opening session when we talked about ghosts) and mischievous people with a camera (Meiying. I rest my case. Okay with me included).
I remember taking a picture of Yuanhan poking Agapera, who was sleeping in a most interesting manner.
We played minor games, slept, slept some more, in which afterwards we got out, breathed a bit of air, went back and slept some more.
When we reached the hotel, it was pretty late already and we were supposed to eat dinner. We waited a bit, served everyone tea, talked a lot, was bothered by the thought of foreign food but they served something so wonderfully mundane that it was almost boring.
They gave us fish in green curry, rice and… pineapples.
The beginning of the Pineapple Saga.
We ate, talking and laughing, and then we had musical entertainment! Fascinating. This two people took out their guitars and begun strumming them, playing songs that we knew. I remember they played Survivor, This Love and finally this famous Chinese song.
He was quite good, he got us all to sing together with him (or we just sang together with him) and we gave him applause later yay. What a nice person.
After dinner, Fariha, who cut her hair, was asked by Myra to do a Sadako impersonation. Fariha just flipped her hair forward then started walking around slowly with her walking stick, and Myra was sent screaming. Droll!
Okay for the first night, we were split into two hotels. Almost all the JC1s and Chee Yong went over to the other hotel, including me, while most of the JC2s and some JC1s stayed at the hotel in which we ate dinner. We took the little beloh (I think that’s what Mr. Chin said) and went over to the other hotel. The ride was fun and fast. Yeah!
Our hotel was nice and cool and the ambience was really, really nice. We had lots of greenery and the lighting was great. Our room was just this big bed, a connecting section with a cupboard then the toilet. Which was big and scary and pink.
And had only one light bulb. The horror.
We rotated bathing times, screaming and looking-at-the-wall times. It was mostly like gasping and cleaning yourself really quickly then washing it off then gasping some more, grabbing your towel and then drying yourself then changing.
Ah yes, before that, we had check-ups from the teachers on the weight of our bags. Me, bringing the heaviest of course had to pack the most, until we were reduced to the bare essentials and happily, my bag weighed as much as Fariha’s or Rachel’s. Fabulous stuff.
So it was to bed, after bathing. We slept with Fariha in the middle, and by the morning, which was around 6am but we in fact had been woken up 3 hours earlier by some insane chickens we felt that their territory was in constant threat by their neighbours, (i.e they kept crowing and crowing and crowing and crowing for three whole hours) and thus we were not in very good moods.
Fariha sleeps most wonderfully. She moves, she snuggles up to you, she kicks (according to Rachel) and when we woke up, she was snuggling up to me in a most lesbian way.
But I still like her. And she still DARES to say that I molest her. Hahaha.
We woke up to nice noodles.
Apparently the other side had hideous pancakes with weird bananas.
I never did like bananas.
We tried on our gaiters after breakfast! They were nice and fun but not really effective.
Of course, Mr. Lim would put that down to us not being gaiter-friendly and give us a good solid kick.
Trekking was tiring. Can die. Only can remember Jonathan and Chang Tai singing songs when we were trekking to up our morale and also to do wonders for our stamina.
It is one thing to sing pitch perfect on stage, it is another to sing pitch perfect while climbing over rocks, tree roots and holes while carrying a bag.
So we went up the hill, and up the hill, and Chang Tai was generally annoying or amusing people with his repeated exclamations of ‘Oh my gawd we are in the CLOUDS!’
Yes we got to our first campsite at aroundish 5pm, just as the sun was setting. Here we introduced each other to the campsite and had lots of fun.
The JC2s all crammed into one tent and had a very rapid discussion while Mr. Chin, Jia Chang and Jonathan went around loosening their tent pegs.
The tent was wobbling like jelly and the JC2 guys came out and were quite angry about it. They tracked down Jonathan and tortured him, most horrendously I must add: Death By Tickles/Pinching/Worrying In General is not a nice way to die.
Worrying in this case means random poking, tickling whatever on the body. Apparently it hints of violence as well. JonP is still rather badly scarred by that.
They tried to get Jia Chang to be tortured as well, unfortunately, Jia Chang when cornered like a rat by snakes, fights like a mongoose. A fierce… desperate mongoose.
The only reason why I cannot remember much of the second camp site is because I didn’t take much pictures of it. Yes. No wonder.
The lake was nice. I like the lake. It was big and cold and had fishes. I think. At least the shirt in which the map of the National Park is printed on says that it has fish. And ducks.
Liew wanted me to swim in it. I told her gladly, after she jumped in of course.
There was the cute baby volcano by the lake! It was really adorable!
I like it. I call it… Anak!
The second base camp was pretty uneventful, other than the hot springs visit and the crossing the waters of the river which was super fun and I would like to do it again and again even though some people fell but still it was-
Okay. Stop. Right. After that, we edged the lake for a few steps, walked up and down some more on hills and then reached the third base camp.
It was pretty.
Okay there isn’t much to type here because everything else is in the previous post. I shall just expand a bit on the last few days. Ah yes, Mr. Lim kept whistling some ‘Don’t Worry Be Happy’ tune. It was really nice to hear that jaunty tune whistled over and over again when trekking. By the end of the trip, Teck Hao had mastered the song while I was still stuck at trying to get the pitch right. Hahaha.
Okay after coming back from the mountain, which was super nice, contrary to me losing my little hat and all other posts, we had our first bath in 4 days. There was sand in my ear, gravel in my pants and our bathing water turned brown.
Sand. In. My. Ears.
The INSULT!
The second last night, we went back to the hotel we had for the first night. However there was a switch; whoever had stayed in the hotel that served noodles (easy reference for my readers hahaha) stayed in the banana-serving hotel and vice versa.
We had this extra empty room and some senior guys moved over.
Ah yes… Clement came over, together with Teck Hao and Jeremy. Everyone knows what that means.
That meant that I woke up to the very abrupt sound of him sneezing.
When he was not next to our room, but one room away. And I could hear him very clearly.
Indeed, Clement’s sneezing has become sort of legendary within the ODAC groups. He sneezed once on the plane back, severely embarrassing every one of us who knew him, and still very nonchalantly said ‘What?’ when we all looked at him, laughing.
Jeremy said they spent the next morning monitoring this huge spider in their room. When the spider crawled to this part of the room, they scuttled over to the other side.
Which brings me to another point. Our rooms were bug infested. It was like they were a bug haven. The bugs flew towards our pretty lights (ahhh that explains it…) and then hit it and predictably fell onto the clean white tiled floor, spasming vigorously. It meant that leaving your shoes outside the room occasionally meant that you had to tip them over to see what unfortunate insect got stuck in them. And that our floors were like a bug cemetery. You don’t want to step on a wriggling bug when you’re only wearing socks. Or not wearing socks at all. It’s… weird. And I could have sworn I saw chrysalises (ah, such is the plural form of chrysalis) hanging in Anthony and Jia Chang’s room, who were beside us for the second last night.
I think this bit of the blog post gets weird. We came back to this hotel, which was the hotel we stayed at during our first night, around the evening. Thus all my observations on brown water, insects banging into lights and all what not, was made at night. The night we played bridge until 2am. The morning that Jeremy said that he saw the huge spider happened the next day.
Oh. I made the changes already. Oh well.
When we woke up that day (thank you, Clement for waking me up in the most abrupt of ways) it was the day we were going to the waterfall. Fariha had injured her knee, thus she couldn’t go and thus she spent the whole day sulking. Well the whole morning anyway. She could enjoy a long luxurious bath while we were away playing in water, albeit her bath would be in cold water, like us.
All of us promised to bring back some waterfall water for her.
We walked there, got lost, found the seniors again and finally the waterfall itself. There were some pretty rainbows, and we could really see that the rainbows were actually round, instead of the arc that we always see them in, as I remember seeing this rainbow that was almost a circle, even though I was being splattered at by 10-degree water and all, at more than the normal decent acceleration of gravity would allow, which is around 9.81 kg/ms-minus two but whatever. I don’t study Physics.
I walked around barefoot as I didn’t bring sandals and every step was torture.
Went underneath the big waterfall and the other bigger waterfall and screamed a lot. The guys were running around half naked which I, sad to say, didn’t see much of as I was too busy wincing about my feet and closing my eyes in general.
But hem, hem, it was indeed an eye-opener during the hot springs session…
And don’t look so scandalised, all you ODACian girls.
So yes, after this, you know, we buzzed off to the Mataram Mall again, for one hour of shopping (more like walking around and enjoying the $1 plus Swenson’s ice cream) and then back to the other hotel.
We spent the bus ride sleeping. My camera died on me on alternative tries. I think it was getting bored with defective batteries.
The hotel in which we spent our last night in seriously creeped me out. It was dark and there wasn’t much lights and the rooms were all separate, like a little semi-terrace, two rooms under one hut, with paths leading every where else. Fariha, Rachel and me shared one side of the hut. The other side was empty. And we were provided a map. For goodness sake, a map.
We went to our rooms, set out who was to sleep where and waxed lyrical about the bathrooms as usual.
‘Do you know? There’s hot water! And the toilet actually flushes! And there’s a sink! Oh my gawd!’
Mr. Chin said later that we were deprived children.
Dinner was quite a fun affair. We had to walk to this funny café thing near the beach, where they had a buffet spread out for us.
First we celebrated Jia Wen’s birthday with a huge cake. They took pictures of the cake and her, and remarked that there was this picture of her cutting her cake with a most interesting of expressions. Caught somewhere between really wanting to kill the cake and scrunched up with the difficulty of doing it.
Then it was dinner, which was a sordid affair. The food was okay but it was the portions which got Anthony annoyed.
Ah yes, Joyce had this brilliant idea to take some of the people in amusing poses taken from movies. She took Journey to the West, in which I have the picture of, and King Kong, in which I saw the picture but I don’t have. She had a hell of a time trying to get that picture. It was the traditional picture of Whatshername in King Kong’s palm. She was doing Whatshername and she had to stand quite far behind Chee Yong, who was acting as King Kong (good choice haha) so that perception vision would do its wonders and that she would actually look as small as Chee Yong’s hands. Then the problem of not having enough light arrived, for which she employed the usage of many cameras to provide flash on her as she was quite far back and thus quite dark. So people stood out of the way and took pictures of her with flashes just as the person standing in front of Chee Yong took the picture, so that it really looked like Joyce was sleeping on Chee Yong’s hands.
She wanted to do another one; I heard there was a Lord of the Rings one, with Chee Yong as Legolas (I like Joyce more already) but I never knew what happened to that.
Whoo, four pages!
She took this other picture, with Kenneth and Stacy (our reigning president and vice) as some sort of patriarch and matriarch to some family (hence fuelling more scandals) with servants serving them drinks and fanning them.
It was really amusing.
After dinner, the guide, John and his porters tested us with mathematical tricks using match sticks. He was actually doing some sort of magic trick with the teachers using some stones, in which the stones would be laid out in two rows and he would walk away. We were supposed to touch one of the stones and he would come back and tell us which stone we touched. He was quite good at that, able to accurately deciphering what the stones were telling him, using his sense of touch, smell and hearing.
I remember the one with the glass upturned on a plate of water, where we were supposed to get all the water into the glass without turning the glass over.
Physics again, simply put a burning match stick into the glass and cover it quickly and the burning matchstick will use up the oxygen in the glass and thus the water will enter the glass by vacuum.
Trust Mr. Lim to come and flummox all of us with the talk on cigarettes and how the chemical nicotine actually worked its way chemically into this trick when a cigarette wasn’t even used at all…
There was one also with making the matchsticks into seven squares and we were supposed to make the seven squares become five squares. Clement solved that one quite easily.
I think there was one about the cow, and how to make it turn around by moving only two matchsticks. Anthony contributed with his own question, that there was a cow and a speeding bullet and we were supposed to move 2 match stick so that the cow dodged the speeding bullet. Amusing answer. And there was another one with the match stick where John would burn it then put out the fire and ask us how we can make the match stick burn again. The answer to that was pretty stupid.
Anthony solved one too, where the porter arranged two triangles next to each other and asked us how we were going to make two triangles become four triangles of the same size.
There was also another one, where he used Roman digits, that IIII + I = III. We were supposed to solve that equation to make it equal, moving only one stick. The answer is to move one stick, such that it became I + I + I = III. I think. Erm. A bit hazy here.
The final trick the porter showed us was pretty dirty, where a woman was involved in an accident and had to be hospitalised. Her husband visited her and stayed in her room for three hours when he was told he could only stay in her room for ten minutes. The question was what they were doing in that room, which was pretty obvious when the woman, which was actually a catapult made from matchsticks, worked and sent the man on top of her flying. Hem, hem.
John showed us one trick, where there were two cars and there were going through this tunnel. And they were going in opposite directions when the tunnel only allowed one car to pass through. How did the two cars pass through then? The answer can only be done with a matchbox.
Another trick he showed was when he supported a match box with three match sticks, with a rupee note being underneath it all. He asked us how we were going to remove the rupee note without causing the matchbox to drop. The answer to that was rolling the note really slowly.
Then there was another trick, where he said he had to remove a coin underneath or on a matchbox without touching the match box or something. I remember only contributing to pulling the tablecloth as the answer but I can’t seem to remember what the actual problem was. The solution was that since he couldn’t touch the matchbox at all, he got his friend to do it for him.
Argh.
Yeah I think that was it.
We slept pretty well that night, though I was a half-frozen banana by the next morning. Bloody-single-sheet-of-blankets…!
The last day was pretty boring. We went to the airport, had a little… debriefing (ahem, ahem hahahah) from Mr. Chin while waiting for our delayed plane. We might be going to Taiwan at the end of the year. Oh boy.
I think I pretty much got all of the nice things here in my blog already. Yay!
Posted by norbert at 6/19/2006 10:46:00 PM
Friday, June 16, 2006
Everyone! I have not died! I have just… let this stagnant blog breed pretty dragonflies.
After the Rinjani trip, I have discovered that ODACians are a bunch of camera whores.
Seriously.
Hold up a random camera, count ‘1, 2, 3…’ and everyone automatically freezes into a pose and waits for you to click the camera!
… Of course, then my temperamental camera will die on me and fuzz out just as I click the button to take the picture. Then everyone will say ‘chey!’ in that loud voice and happily pose for another camera.
It’s very amusing.
Overall, Rinjani has opened my eyes to a new world out there. There are many pictures but I am a lazy bugger and refuse to put them up on Shutterfly or flickr or any other weird online thing. I might burn it in a CD though, only if you ask nicely.
But! Meiying our photographic woman is compiling everything for us! Lovely.
I will give her everything and let her drown in the evil, evil depths of digital photographs.
Mua hahahahaha.
I will forever remember the winds up there, how they aren’t any tiny breeze, how they aren’t little gusts, how they rip and tear, and try to flatten you to the gravel that’s slipping underneath your feet anyway.
I lost my beanie there. It flew away just as I was reaching the top.
Jonathan said he saw something fly away. I wave goodbye to my little hat.
Which brings me to my next point.
Why are all Jonathans bloody tall?
Okay, knowing two Jonathans who are tall isn’t much of a statistic point, as our Biology teacher might say, but you get my point.
And I like the sock that we got there.
It’s this really cute tortoise on a baby sock, which Jia Chang will never understand how cute it can be as he is a guy, and it makes a rattling sound when you shake it!
It’s very adorable and has lots of symbolic meaning.
(Ah! Literature!)
But it’s cute. It has blue eyes.
Okay, fine. Literature symbolic meaning is that, we are like the tortoise, we carry our heavy packs and climb the mountain, and we’re also bloody slow in obeying orders…
(Like that means anything to you, as a reader. Hahaha)
Okay. XL demands a four-page long post. I will try to fit in her demands.
Let’s talk about… CAP.
The Creative Arts Programme was vaguely interesting. I found many new friends there, like Shaun- the guy who fell into the toilet when he was five; Louise who loves England because they’re hot but loves Brazil because they’re good; Nicholas, who had a shower with five guys before (Don’t ask me. I don’t want to remember why and how); and many other people, like Michele, Hong Chuan, Kexin, the obnoxious Judith (only joking dear), Davina who was in Anderson for first three months but traipsed over to Anglo-Chinese instead (wonderful Douglas Adams fan. I love her), Xi An, Bing Qian (Adeline says hello); Kegan who joined late and such fun and scandals we had.
That’s practically everyone in our group right? Ah yes, Victoria.
I miss them. Most of the time.
I remember my room. I did an essay on it. Perhaps I will type it out, for my portfolio.
‘It was bare; like how a mad man was bare with his clothes thrown off as he laughed down the streets…’
(Crap la, I’m only at the end of the first page and I’m typing in size 12 font! I’m also running out of Japanese songs to entertain me.)
Right. Size 10 now. More to write.
I thank heaven that I listened to Sherilyn and brought my blanket. I have never been so grateful to see such a big piece of cloth before. Also, curiously, opposite my room was a guy. Beside my room was a guy. Teacher in fact. I still remember his high laugh. And on my right, was another guy. Odd isn’t it?
And at the bottom left of my room (think… you can imagine…) there’s this guy who brought his guitar.
I hear his guitar at night, and it stops me from going mad.
Wait… okay let me rephrase that, it stops me from becoming sane.
CAP itself was nice. We had lectures, which I drew in, workshops, which I panicked in, and food, in which I just ate.
I met Chengyi there, who happens to be Gerard’s friend. Interesting coincidence. I recognised a vague name of Bensen Koh but unfortunately he ponned all prose workshops for poetry because it was what he wanted in the first place.
He sent in a very interesting poem for the aCAPpella issues that we get everyday in which our councillors bitch and laugh at us, mostly complaining about the lack of sleep that they have.
At the end of the five days, you could see it in them. They were literally zombies.
I want to be a CAP councillor!
Chengyi had a very interesting experience at the prose workshops. I want his short writing on ‘Maybe, Maybe, Maybe’. And I’m not the only one. Suffice to say, I think he is sufficiently traumatised.
Poor dear.
What I find really amusing is that Chengyi can write perfectly well, in cursive that is almost a flourish but when he signs his name, he writes ‘hello this is cheng :)’ in a childish scrawl, like my usual handwriting.
It sort of reflects Gerard’s entire secondary school class. During the period of prose workshops, the main thing running through my head was the thought that he should be in Gerard’s class.
Yeah, I like the CAP booklet things. It was like this whole book of blank pages (okay it had the weird CAP emblem watermarked on every page but still…) for us to do ANYTHING we wanted with it!
Surprisingly, the first thing I did was NOT to fill it up with drawings.
In fact, there are only two drawings there.
And they are, I might very happily add, in ink and nicely shadowed.
I think CLAMP has a big effect on me.
There are some things in which I have to relate. I do not understand why on practically every out of school trip in involves XY chromosomes in general, I have to chase somebody. Usually of the XY persuasion. It was like that in China, with some guy who couldn’t stop calling me ‘Yang Gui Fei’. It soon became ‘Okay, stop, STOP! Not there!’
It was like that again in CAP, only this time, it was more irritating.
Shaun did it, the evil bugger. He stole my hairband, my ONLY hairband, just before I waltzed into the shower room. That’s one thing good about having plenty of guys on your level. The female bathroom’s always free.
He pulled it off my hair just like that, and started running.
I was wearing slippers, had a tight schedule to meet as we weren’t supposed to be bathing but I can bathe in ten minutes if I really tried, carrying a plastic bag with all my worldly goods when it came to bathing, a towel slung over my shoulder and was hot and irritated.
Naturally, I chased.
Chased him down the stairs, through the corridors, down this weird lawn thing, through the corridors again of Block D, (I was in Block E) past this bunch of guys (who mercifully got out of the way) and through this HCI secondary two guy who DIDN’T get out of the way.
In fact, if I remember correctly, he stood right in the middle of the corridor with his hands outspread, yelling ‘Stop!’
What the hell, I was the one shouting ‘Stop!’ to Shaun who was merrily disappearing. I mean, seriously. You see a mad woman with her hair flying everywhere and she’s obviously not very happy and running down the corridor and the first thing you do is to yell stop?
So I did the first instinctive thing when Confronted With Guys Who Obviously Do Not Think, I took my towel from my shoulder, yelled ‘Get out of my way, you idiot!’ and gave him a good sound whack just as I ran past him.
Thus I applaud Douglas Adams when he said that what a hitchhiker really needed was his towel. Indeed.
All I remember hearing was ‘Ouch! Damn!’ from everywhere.
The boy is now meek. Of course, I apologised to him. He said that he has learnt his lesson, and will never do that again.
Shaun said later that he remembered a lot of shouting from behind and was like ‘Ohhh….’
In the end, I chased Shaun until he cornered himself in the male washroom. I spent an interactive ten minutes there alternatively threatening and coaxing him out of the bathroom, while he amused himself with thoughts of stealing my other things and random stuff.
In the end, a very bemused male councillor walked out of an adjacent room and gave me a really long stare.
Shaun then came out and returned me my hairband.
Yay! Joy to females!
Ole XL it’s the end of the second page!
Overall, CAP was very nice. Everyone there was younger than me. I felt quite old, and kept forgetting that I was in JC. Ah well.
Indeed I have fond memories. Now if I want fonder memories and my NYAA skills portion to be filled, I should do up my portfolio and hope that I get the mentorship.
Us Group Six people should have a meeting together!
I remember the last night, we were playing Truth and Dare, and they got some girls to go into the guys’ bathroom. It was vastly amusing.
Ah yes, CAP was mostly dominated by Hwa Chong and Raffles kiddoes. I was the only person from Anderson there. Sad. I’m not the only one though; there were lone wolves from Yishun, Pioneer, and some other JCs as well…
Ah yes, that reminds me. I am now officially Lenin. It is for dyslexic people, and people who cannot remember my names. Emma, for example, form my Art workshop now only remembers me as Lenin. I love that girl. We bully Crystal so well.
Memories that will last forever…
Rinjani was really fun. I remember waking up at 4am to be early, but had cramps until like 5am, in which I became late. Changed money at the airport which was at our loss (and I still have the notes, argh) and traipsed off to Indonesia in a big bouncy plane.
Landing rating: 6/10
I learnt to play bridge on the plane, which hence makes me comment that ODACians are huge gamblers and camera whores. Got my new camera the day before, had fun taking (clear) pictures of everyone, pictures that were MASSIVE by the way, can’t remember the size but huge anyway, but the battery life reminds something to be improved upon.
I brought my pack of cards, Anthony did the same and so did Wynee I think. Quite a few people brought cards. When we got back, the number of pack of cards had doubled.
I brought too many things to Indonesia as my bag weighed a whopping 11.5kg.
Carrying it up would be a chore; hence we spent the rest of the night repacking our things.
The first day was spent on the plane, in a bus and at Mataram Mall.
I lost my orange itinerary sheet to Kenneth. I wants it back. I don’t know what to type.
I shall talk about more mundane things then.
One of the main problems we had to handle was the currency. There were too many zeros. In the end, we decided, to hell with it, and dropped the last three zeroes each time we were talking in rupee. The thought was just too terrifying. In Indonesia, you could be a millionaire and still feel poor.
We spent our first night at some two-star hotel. The ambience was great, it was cold and everything, with great plants and weather, which was at a comfortable 20-plus degrees. Who knew that this was going to be the warmest we’ll ever feel in the next four days or so.
The bathroom was a scary place. Indeed I remember our neighbours, Joycelyn, Yuyan and Xiangfeng exclaiming how cold it was when they bathed. The rooms were scary. They were lit with one bulb, which was supremely helpful at night and only served to marginally brighten the surroundings during the day.
There was no heater. Bathing was a combination of guts, grit and sheer screaming.
We were to be checked upon; hence Rachel, Fariha and me packed our Denalis first, making sure that they were as light as possible.
Chee Yong, our current president came to check on us, telling us that the teachers were coming to inspect our bags. We thanked him and he wanted to go over to the last room, where the two guys, Jia Chang and Anthony were.
Here Chee Yong did something very stupid. I will not say publicly what he did but I have pictorial evidence and I laugh every time I see it.
We spent the night sleeping. Fariha was in between me and Rachel in this big queen sized bed.
In the morning, by general agreement, Fariha was never allowed to sleep in the middle again.
Trekking was tiring. I’m eternally grateful to Chang Tai, as I remember mentioning in my journal, that I am merely a few days away from loving him. Figuratively.
He has been a most patient buddy to me, when I was slow and lagging he helped; Clement the Orange Balloon helped too, by standing in between me and the front of the group so that we wouldn’t get lost.
Clement reminds me of a balloon. I have no idea why. But he’s a nice balloon. And he does this really amusing pose every time he takes a picture; it’s a sort of mild smile and a victory sign.
It’s always the same pose.
We entered the clouds, were very cold during lunch-
Oh that reminds me, we had porters. I am in awe of them. Seriously.
They are powerhouses. They can carry everything of ours, communal items, food (remember the nice pineapples?), water, sleeping bags, tents, mats, backpacks that we ourselves couldn’t carry, and still dance up Rinjani!
They can run up there in slippers and in tee-shirts and shorts while we huddle up in our trekking shoes and fleece jackets! There were even some that went half-naked!
I am completely in awe of them.
And the thing is that they don’t take the usual paths, they climb up practically vertical walls and don’t break into sweat!
I imagine that they were laughing at how miserable we were.
And they cooked great food. Every meal was accompanied by tea (sweetened by our own hands, that is, very sweet), pineapples and bananas, which everyone grew used to and contributed to our massive bowel movements every time we camped.
I miss tea. They put flowers in the tea…
And here, one would be able to see the curious eating habits of Homo sapiens.
Anthony was always the first to finish up his meal, at any time, place or temporal distortion. He would always ask for more just as everyone was starting their own meals or halfway through them. Kenneth was counted on never to eat his vegetables, balancing out with ample fruits. Jonathan was our resident trash can.
Indeed guys are weird and curious creatures.
My batteries are temperamental creatures. Indeed I shall henceforth consider getting rechargeable batteries no matter how backward the place that I am going.
Our campsites were fantastic. I love the view we got from each one of them.
The first campsite had a great spot for sunrise, and it was dotted with grasses and enjoyed great wind. I remember the first night I was sleeping in the middle, and for subsequent nights as well- Fariha said that she heard a rumour that Nigel was handsome.
I cannot remember laughing so much for a very long time. The only comparable time was when I laughed up four storeys with Agnessa in Anderson.
The second campsite was at the banks of the crater lake (which took a hell of a time to get to) and was near a cute little hot spring and a great roaring river which was almost a waterfall. The third and final base camp boasted a huge view of the exterior of the volcano and the valleys, which were unfortunately obscured by clouds the moment I took out my sketch book and pencils.
And yes, it IS possible to get a sun burn, even though the temperature is like 10 degrees.
We saw a great many things while trekking. Going to the crater lake for example, took an extremely long time. I believe it was around 5 hours, when we were expected to take around 2 or 3 hours to get to second camp. The falls were treacherous and steep, practically vertical; Kenneth lost his faithful walking stick by merely dropping it over the edge, where he was aiming for the outcrop below the edge but it overshot it and was lost forever to Mountain Man.
(Man I had to add that.)
Mr Lim took a rather violent tumble somewhere here. He’s alright!
I took some pictures to show how separated we were but they will only be seen if someone teaches me how to posts pictures on your blog. I am a hopeless internet allergic person, like Orlando Bloom, who is afraid of technology.
My shoes died out somewhere here as well. Mr Lim duct taped them back.
In the end, we reached the base camp, where we rested for the rest of the day after lunch and visited the hot springs.
Ah yes, we crossed a river here.
It was really cold and we had to remove our bags and shoes and walk across the river, holding onto our guides for sheer life. The current was insanely strong, thundering down the rocks just behind us.
We crossed that river again going to the hot springs which were frankly small and dismal. Still with friends around and memorable quotes like:
Fariha: I really envy you guys, you know. You can take off your shirts just like that!
Jonathan: You can take off your shirt too. No one’s stopping you.
The everlasting battle between men and women.
The hot springs were enjoyable and great as we had friends around who talked and laughed together with us. Of course, going back would be hell with the cold weather and the cloud moving in, but we managed it in the end.
The male seniors became the ones who stood in a line in and across the river and helped us across. They ended their service with a resounding yell of ‘Where got cold!’
The third day was going to the third base camp.
It was a fast walk, we took the whole morning but the rest of the day was free. I remember this day was the day The Omen came out, 06.06.06.
And thanks, Liew for making us watch that movie.
Sitting beside Adeline was okay, except for the occasional scream, grabbing-of-sleeves and huddling towards you while covering her eyes.
We spent that day lazing about, taking pictures, playing paper bridge (consisting of taking paper, making cards out of it and playing bridge – yes we were that desperate), enjoying the view and toilet facilities.
I took this picture of a section of our campsite, with Keith at the foreground looking thoughtful and with a full cloud behind the camp.
Keith didn’t know I took it, hence the pensive look.
I think it’d do very nicely as wallpaper. And most of our pictures are wallpaper-ish sort of material, with the sun rising and fantastic greenery around.
I was very put out by the cloud, which prevented me from doing a decent sketch.
Ah and we had monkeys following us. They ripped a hole in Mr. Chin’s tent, which made him pretty angry but all agreed that Jeremy was pretty much at home with them.
I saw Alan doing this very amusing video of his keychain abseiling down a very tiny drop. I want that video. I can’t remember who taped it; it was either Clement or Keith.
Ah yes. Sleeping early was very important. We were told to be out by 6pm as we had to be up by midnight to get up to the summit on time. Up on the mountains, the sun sets at 5pm and rises at 5am.
The temperature drops right down after the sun sets.
On the fourth day, we wrapped up at around 1-plus-almost-2am and went up the summit. It was cold, quiet, windy and sandy.
Slips were common and we halted many times to pass essential items down the row, like batteries for our headlights or eye drops.
Halfway through, we stopped at this outcrop of rocks, just as the wind picked up and refused to stop. It was howling and throwing sand into our eyes as we huddled together, sharing warmth and comforting each other for about ten minutes, which is a very long time when it is very dark and very cold. Here two people were sent down, due to them shivering uncontrollably.
We pressed onwards, shivering against the wind, wanting it to stop but forever hearing the whistling in your ears, feeling the chill in your fingers, and the ice you know that is forming on your nose. Heck I couldn’t feel my nose. Or my face.
The last part of the summit climb was the worst. This time both shoe soles had completely died on me, which meant that I was constantly flapping around.
It was like walking on water. The sand slipped beneath you, the wind blew you back and the only way you held on was lying as close to the ground as possible, which was bad as the wind was blowing sand into your eyes and you still slipped even if you were standing still…
One step up, two steps down…
I was at the end; Chang Tai had gotten into a spot of uncontrollable shivering and had to be sent down as well. I was exhausted and Mr. Chin and Lim were at either side encouraging me.
I remember this time when I was completely exhausted by the cimb and had slipped and fell. I remained lying down, hoping to catch my breath away from the wind, only to hear Mr. Chin saying in my ear:
‘Nellyn? Are you alright?’
‘Mmph.’
‘You’re not shivering right?’
‘Mmph.’
‘You’re just tired right?’
‘Mmph.’
I think I ‘mmph’ed too softly here for the next thing I knew was that he was bellowing.
‘Nellyn? Nellyn!’
‘Mmph!’
‘Good.’
In the end I made it up, and enjoyed the view for a while before heading back down.
It was great. You could see around you for miles… and you feel like you’re falling… forever and ever…
We were taught a very interesting way of getting down, as since it was so slippery going up, we could now use it as an advantage to go down. We went down sliding and slipping, which was very fun, only if I hadn’t been worrying about my shoes.
I must say here that I was very, very slow, as I was a paranoid woman and I currently had no friction on my soles so Mr. Lim and Hazel led me down for the earlier part while later, Tai Yong and Jeremy joined us when we caught up with the whole group.
After we reached back to base camp, it was packing up time and we had to descend all the way down, which meant that since we trekked from 2 am to 11am (breakfast!) we had to continue from 12.15pm all the way to around 7 or 8pm.
At least 17 hours of trekking.
We managed it in the end. It was rather enjoyable, I know as I had my pack removed as I had no friction on my shoes and had switched shoes with the guide to prevent me from holding everyone up by being so slow. We walked over the same things, hills and savannahs, with a dash of mist here and there. The weather was cold and brisk; the sun was not shining that much as it was quite cloudy, forever threatening to rain but never raining.
ODACians have a very interesting problem. Everywhere we go, almost everywhere, it will rain. I believe that this has to do with our rain making abilities, as each one of us has a chance, a relatively low one to make rain come, however when you join up the ODACians, the combined effect of all our chances must be relatively high as rain clouds just love us.
The only reason why it didn’t rain in Rinjani was because we were above the clouds practically all the time.
We were behind Agapera and Jia Chang, who was an amusing pair of trekking buddies.
Agapera stepped in cow dung. Chang Tai never allowed her to forget it.
Jia Chang went behind me as we sort of switched partners. He and I had a very enjoyable talk, ranging from theme songs to anime to movies to food and drink. I believe that Chang Tai and Agapera had a similar conversation, except that it was peppered with Chang Tai’s teasing of Agapera for stepping in cow dung.
Fariha injured her knee here. She was carried by a porter, who carried another back pack and ran all the way back to town in the fading light. Mr. Lim saw that and since I looked like I had problems with going down this small slope, he asked me:
‘Nellyn, do you want me to carry you down?’
My immediate reply: ‘No.’
‘Wa! Straight away say no! At least give me some face la!’
I was thinking. My first thought was hell no, I’ve got pride; the second was you’re a guy, don’t be stupid and I can’t remember the third thought.
We walked through a bit of jungle and then some rice fields and were pretty freaked out by the scarecrows in the rice fields.
At the end of the trek, we were welcomed back into civilisation with soft drinks in glass bottles!
Wheeee. We went back to our hotels, bathed for the first time in four days (the water became brown. I swear) and then played cards till 2am again.
I had three blisters on my left foot and two on my right.
The next day, we went to a waterfall somewhere near the hotel and played there. It was painful for me but I managed to get under the thunder of ice cold water that was simply pounding the rock. It became worst when the wind blew.
We had lots of fun there; we walked around, splashed water, sat down in the rapids and pretended that it was a Jacuzzi while Kenneth and Jonathan washed their hair for the first time in five days.
Go figure.
After the refreshing bath, we went to change and left our hotel, visiting town for a spot of shopping. Only having an hour, we obviously didn’t buy much, only food and little things.
In the evening, we reached our other hotel, some Sengigi Reef hotel if I am right, that was dark, and creepy and well… dark.
See even here I have to chase people. The lights were yellow and thus we were severely creeped out. The rooms were separate from each other, like little huts on their own. Fariha, Rachel and I were innocently relaxing in our rooms when someone tapped very hard on our windows and made faces, shocking us silly. Fariha and I jumped up immediately and chased the rascals down.
They turned out to be Kenneth and Jia Chang. Fariha went after Kenneth while I went after Jia Chang.
Kenneth had a very interesting way of defeating Fariha. After she got him cornered at the balcony of one of the rooms, Kenneth told her to take three steps back before they played scissors-paper-stone using their left hands (which Fariha won) and she moved in for the kill then Kenneth told her to move back three steps again and play scissors-paper-stone again using her right hand and she obeyed and he jumped over the railing of the balcony and ran off.
My chase with Jia Chang could be very simply summarised in this conversation:
‘I didn’t do anything! Kenneth was the one who knocked on your windows! I just stood there!’
‘Then why did you run?!’
‘Because you were chasing?!’
We had lots of fun at the last night. There was supposed to be this party for Jia Wen as it was her birthday but we didn’t go as we were too tired. I didn’t sleep well, the air-conditioning was freezing and I only had a thin sheet to protect me from the cold. Okay and my clothes. But that was all!
The next day, we had to get ready to leave for sunny Singapore. I was the first to awake, getting the least sleep of all as I kept waking up throughout the night. we had our last breakfast, I did some last minute shopping with the resident hawkers, not buying much again (argh), getting a shirt at 30,000 rupee, which is about $6 while Mr. Chin, who brought before me, brought 2 shirts at 70,000 rupee.
His face was quite amusing.
In the end, we packed up and bid farewell to Rinjani and its beauty, trading it all back for sunny weather and technology. The airport was rather quaint. We played a lot of bridge again. Actually I slept. I had lent my cards to people who wanted to play.
And when I came home, I stayed up till 3am, being online and sending my pictures to Meiying, who fell asleep at around 5pm. Technology works wonders for the mind.
This trip has really been insightful. I’ve become closer to my friends, I’ve found out stuff about people that I never knew about, and generally discovered myself once again. Indeed, there will be many memories of Rinjani, whether they are happy or not. We shall treasure them, like how a pearl is carefully polished until it shines.
This is just a starter though. Mr. Chin says that we might be going to Taiwan at the end of the year to climb a Jade Mountain or whatever. Fantastic. I can almost see Detritus coming after me. And Mr. Chin says that it’s going to be colder and harder than Rinjani…
I’ll have to say, seven pages! Almost twice of what XL ordered. I am happy.
I believe I can write a little more if I tried but it’s close to 4am it the morning now and I started this at around 1am in the morning, which is wonderful for 3 hours worth of work.
I shall moan a bit more though.
Oh man I haven’t done much of my homework, I haven’t started studying in the first place and I will die a terrible death! Eeeeeeeeeeeeek!
And I have 20 newspaper reviews to do.
Excellent business.
But I am currently wasting my time on Howl’s Moving Castle, having finally watched it on Youtube.com and I can actually understand the story, which is ‘dead charming’ I quote from a writer in fanfiction.net.
Howl is hot, man. He almost replaced Dark Mousy. But Dark shall forever have a place, as I shall remember him with a sort of fondness.
Together with Sesshoumaru-sama and everyone else! I am currently mad about the Howl’s Moving Castle theme song, which is called the Merry Go round of Life or something, and it really sounds like a merry-go-round in the movie!
I watched the English version as the person hadn’t finished loading the Japanese version up on youtube.com. Howl was voiced by Christian Bale. Oh man…!
But the story still was very nice. I liked the way Hayao Miyazaki put in Howl’s ability to change into a bird. A big, fluffy blue-black bird. Ah Hayao rocks. No wonder he had so much success with Spirited Away, with a long big dragon like Kohaku flying around.
And the art! Oh man. The animation was flawless. Ah I am practically inspired to write a Howl and Sophie ficlet.
But I have lots of work to do. And today is a great big fish. Wish me luck in my mid years, for I shall need it. More so than you.
It’s 4am, XL and I’ve done just 8 pages. Be grateful. And ditch your problem. It’s hopeless.
And to all who lasted this long: your reward would be my 300+MB worth of pictures. Rejoice!
Posted by norbert at 6/16/2006 04:12:00 AM