An interesting hunt clerked by Time Out Solutions. This was meant to be a training hunt for me and some KL friends in preparation for theSun Hunt which is scheduled for 02 November. I have hunted together with Julie during the Kiwanis Hunt a little over 2 months ago, but this was the first time I hunted with Claire and Wong. As in the case of the Kiwanis Hunt, I had a lot of fun in this Lexis Nexis Hunt. I think the four of us can work well together; there was no bickering or pointing fingers at each other. In fact we had lots of light moments laughing at, and with, each other.
I flew over to KL on Friday afternoon and checked in to YMCA hostel. I had insufficient sleep the night before due to the excitement of this hunt, so I had intended to sleep early. I went to the shops across the street and noticed a number of massage parlours. It's interesting to note that they're manned by blind people. Since my legs were still aching, I went up to one of those parlours. A blind man by the name of Yong gave me a good foot massage for an hour at a price of RM40, but I gave him a RM10 tip too.
Then I walked the street and found a stall selling some durian kampung. I was pleasantly surprised when told that the durians were selling for only RM4.00 per kg. I stood there and then eating durians and paid RM6.00. If only durians are that cheap in KK. Then I walked over to Sentral Station to check out the morning LRT service in preparation for my journey the next morning.
Later on I had some fried rice for dinner and I finally went back to YMCA. A quick shower and then some TV. I went to sleep at around 10.00 pm. But the whole night there were some people banging doors and talking loudly in the corridors. There was also a 24-hour Indian restoran closeby and people were making all sorts of noises throughout the night. Not to mention the sounds of vehicles in the street. I could hardly sleep.
At 5.00 am, my cellphone alarm rang. That is followed by my wrist-watch alarm a few seconds later. And then shortly after that, I got the wake-up call from the reception desk. I had to make sure that I wake up for the hunt. Paranoia and kiasu is a terrible thing, you know!
I freshened up and walked to the Indian Restaurant, Restoran Kevari. As I passed the main entrance of the YMCA, I saw a security guard busily sleeping on 2 plastic chairs that he had arranged to become a make-shift bed. I ordered roti telur and Teh-C ping (which tasted more like sugar water). There were only two other customers then.
Then quickly back to YMCA again, checked out and rushed to Sentral Station. I was just in time to catch the 6.00 am LRT service and then found myself at Taman Jaya Station about 10 minutes later. A little wait for Claire. We went for a joy ride making several wrong turns here and there before finding our way to Julie's apartment. When we reached there, Julie and Wong were already waiting. We then headed to the flag-off station closeby.
There were already so many people at the start station; and there were so many familiar faces too. Among them I bumped into Teck Koon and Michael Pang. Even Jayaram, too, came all the way from Penang.
Some minutes for the final briefing by Dominic and then it was time for the flag off. Everything went smoothly. There were 2 categories for this hunt; closed and open. But the bulk of the teams were in the open category. Each team had 5.5 hours hunting time plus 30 minutes penalty time. 40 route questions; 4 treasure questions; 5 road safety questions. Total maximum score of 145 points.
Overall it was quite a mild hunt. It was certainly not as tough as I had expected. The thing about this kind of hunt is that there is no room for any mistake. One silly mistake is all that it takes to fall several rungs in the leader board. It takes a perfect score to reach pole position. Otherwise all the rest will have to fight very, very hard for all the prized positions. Second to fifth positions were all tied at only one wrong answer of the entire 40 questions! Then sixth to eighth positions were tied at 2 wrong answers. Unfortunately my team lost the tie-breaker and got eighth position. Just imagine how competitive the field was; only 2 wrong answers and we got eighth!
I thought the hunting time of 5.5 hours was also sufficient. However, teams still needed to plan well, as the final homestretch was a killer bumper-to-bumper jam. Nonetheless, we managed to reach the finish control with 6 minutes to spare.
Having had what I considered a somewhat lousy experience during the KK City Tourism Hunt last February by the same Clerk-of-Course, I must say that the quality of the questions in this hunt was a big improvement. I still did not win this time, but it was more satisfying.
Having said that, however, that is not to say that I don't have any comments and discussions on some of the questions (it wouldn't have been me!). I shall follow up with my customary comments and discussions on some of the very interesting questions.
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