Oh What a hunt—a wonderful 5.5 hours of challenge in the Master Category. 35 route questions, 4 treasure questions and 5 Road Safety questions spread within a total distance of about 62 km. I thought the clues were well-crafted—a couple of debatable issues in some clues; and Treasure 4 which was of course not meant to be solvable, but otherwise the hunt has lived up to its expectation.
As usual, I shall discuss—as opposed to kutuk—some questions in separate threads later. But for now let me give an overview of the entire hunt.
About 2 weeks ago, shortly after I was promoted to the Master status, I had decided not to hunt in theSun this year. That was a tough decision I had to make so as to be fair to my other friends who wanted to try winning the Open Category. They quickly found a replacement for me. I was still feeling sorry for myself when I was pleasantly surprised to receive a call from Dominic of Time Out Solutions, the Clerk-of-Clourse (CoC) for theSun Motor Hunt. He introduced me to a master team which was lacking of a hunter. I was doubtful at first, for I did not think that I had it in me to contribute much to the team.
Well, after some exchanges of emails, text messages and phone calls, I decided to “go break a leg”…
About 2 years ago, The Jackals happened to be in KK one weekend when we had our Kiwanis Hunt. They took the opportunity to join the hunt and then went on to win it, beating our local champion, Main Tembak, by a margin of just 1 point. The Jackals also won the Open Category of theSun Hunt that year. However, 2 of their team mates have since retired from hunting. The remaining 2 original team members took on 2 new hunters in last year’s theSun Hunt and ended up last in the Master Category. Up to 2 weeks ago, they were still looking for another hunter. I was lucky to get the help of Dominic. Anyway, I finally met Kok Cheeng and Kah Sing for the first time at around 9pm on the eve of theSun Hunt 2008.
On the morning of the hunt, Kok Cheeng brought us for breakfast—Bah Kut Teh in State, PJ. I think that was the first time ever that I had Bah Kut Teh for breakfast. We arrived at the start control when the final briefing was about to start. It was a mass flag off.
We immediately stumbled upon a dead end on the very first question. The question was relatively easy and straightforward, yet it’s strange that none of us saw the answer. Things like that can happen sometimes; the kind of things that should never ever happen to a master team, yet they still happen mysteriously, you see. Actually, I don’t know which is worse—not getting the answer at all, or getting the answer and then wrongly copy it onto the answer sheet. Apparently some grandmaster teams suffered the misfortune of wrong spelling! Like I said, it happens.
I was happy to see a marked improvement in the quality of the clues when compared to those of the recent LexisNexis. I was told that the clues were slightly easier this year, but I thought the level of difficulty was just ideal considering that the top teams scored just slightly over 100 points against the full score of 130 points. A fair number of teams also got the time penalty and paid heavily for it.
I was pleasantly surprised that I was able to blend in easily with The Jackals. They were such friendly people who I don't mind to hunt with again in the future. There was not an instance when I felt like an outsider, which was a good thing. But if I had to do the whole thing again, the only thing I’d like to be different is to have a bit of control on how we manage our time. Kok Cheeng is not one who’s readily willing to drop a question, and in my opinion, that is not exactly a good thing. The net result was that we practically had to abandon the last third of the questions because we had no time to attempt them. I’m sure the CoC must have been surprised to see lots of blanks or obviously tembak on the last pages of our answer sheets.
As for the treasures, well, what can I say—we found ourselves having to choose between several items for each of the clues:
“So which is it, is it the Cocktail Nuts or Ayam Brand Tuna? Nah… both are very, very weak, but let’s go with the Tuna.”
“And what’s the story with this treasure which is ‘Turn it to shine a treasure…?’ There’s this yogurt with the word ‘Shine’ on the bottle. Or should it be the Twister?”
And so, to make the long story short, we got 2 treasures correct. But one was a fluke shot!
Because of time shortage, Kok Cheeng dropped us at the last sector of the hunt while he rushed to the finish control. We were therefore able to make full use of those few minutes to work on the remaining questions. The plan was to supply the answers, if any, through text messages to Kok Cheeng who would have by then been waiting at the finish control.
All 3 of us were given a sector each. It was at the eleventh hour when I saw a very appealing answer to one of the questions within my sector. I couldn’t really explain it, but I was 90% sure that was indeed the answer. So I quickly sent a text message to Kok Cheeng for that precious 3 points. Little did I know that Kok Cheeng somehow thought the hunting time was up to 2:00 pm. Actually, the full time ended at 2:05 pm. I sent my answer to him with some minutes to spare, but Kok Cheeng had by then submitted our answers and treasures. That’s why it was so painful when it was later revealed that the answer I sent him was indeed the correct one!
Well, a satisfying but humbling hunt; my very first theSun Hunt. That night after all the answers were revealed, we counted and found that we only had 81 points. I was fairly certain that we would get last. That would have been an unpleasant debut in theSun Hunt for me. So just imagine my surprise when it was announced that there was another master team which got only 46 points! Another at 57 points! And a few more teams. In the end we got 15th. Obviously nothing to shout about but I am nonetheless happy with the result.
I enjoyed the hunt and wish to congratulate the CoC for a job well done. But of course that is not to say I don’t have any comments on the questions. I would disappoint all my fans if I give no comments at all on the questions!
Let me post this, and then we can go into the question analysis in a new thread, hmmm?
As usual, I shall discuss—as opposed to kutuk—some questions in separate threads later. But for now let me give an overview of the entire hunt.
About 2 weeks ago, shortly after I was promoted to the Master status, I had decided not to hunt in theSun this year. That was a tough decision I had to make so as to be fair to my other friends who wanted to try winning the Open Category. They quickly found a replacement for me. I was still feeling sorry for myself when I was pleasantly surprised to receive a call from Dominic of Time Out Solutions, the Clerk-of-Clourse (CoC) for theSun Motor Hunt. He introduced me to a master team which was lacking of a hunter. I was doubtful at first, for I did not think that I had it in me to contribute much to the team.
Well, after some exchanges of emails, text messages and phone calls, I decided to “go break a leg”…
About 2 years ago, The Jackals happened to be in KK one weekend when we had our Kiwanis Hunt. They took the opportunity to join the hunt and then went on to win it, beating our local champion, Main Tembak, by a margin of just 1 point. The Jackals also won the Open Category of theSun Hunt that year. However, 2 of their team mates have since retired from hunting. The remaining 2 original team members took on 2 new hunters in last year’s theSun Hunt and ended up last in the Master Category. Up to 2 weeks ago, they were still looking for another hunter. I was lucky to get the help of Dominic. Anyway, I finally met Kok Cheeng and Kah Sing for the first time at around 9pm on the eve of theSun Hunt 2008.
On the morning of the hunt, Kok Cheeng brought us for breakfast—Bah Kut Teh in State, PJ. I think that was the first time ever that I had Bah Kut Teh for breakfast. We arrived at the start control when the final briefing was about to start. It was a mass flag off.
We immediately stumbled upon a dead end on the very first question. The question was relatively easy and straightforward, yet it’s strange that none of us saw the answer. Things like that can happen sometimes; the kind of things that should never ever happen to a master team, yet they still happen mysteriously, you see. Actually, I don’t know which is worse—not getting the answer at all, or getting the answer and then wrongly copy it onto the answer sheet. Apparently some grandmaster teams suffered the misfortune of wrong spelling! Like I said, it happens.
I was happy to see a marked improvement in the quality of the clues when compared to those of the recent LexisNexis. I was told that the clues were slightly easier this year, but I thought the level of difficulty was just ideal considering that the top teams scored just slightly over 100 points against the full score of 130 points. A fair number of teams also got the time penalty and paid heavily for it.
I was pleasantly surprised that I was able to blend in easily with The Jackals. They were such friendly people who I don't mind to hunt with again in the future. There was not an instance when I felt like an outsider, which was a good thing. But if I had to do the whole thing again, the only thing I’d like to be different is to have a bit of control on how we manage our time. Kok Cheeng is not one who’s readily willing to drop a question, and in my opinion, that is not exactly a good thing. The net result was that we practically had to abandon the last third of the questions because we had no time to attempt them. I’m sure the CoC must have been surprised to see lots of blanks or obviously tembak on the last pages of our answer sheets.
As for the treasures, well, what can I say—we found ourselves having to choose between several items for each of the clues:
“So which is it, is it the Cocktail Nuts or Ayam Brand Tuna? Nah… both are very, very weak, but let’s go with the Tuna.”
“And what’s the story with this treasure which is ‘Turn it to shine a treasure…?’ There’s this yogurt with the word ‘Shine’ on the bottle. Or should it be the Twister?”
And so, to make the long story short, we got 2 treasures correct. But one was a fluke shot!
Because of time shortage, Kok Cheeng dropped us at the last sector of the hunt while he rushed to the finish control. We were therefore able to make full use of those few minutes to work on the remaining questions. The plan was to supply the answers, if any, through text messages to Kok Cheeng who would have by then been waiting at the finish control.
All 3 of us were given a sector each. It was at the eleventh hour when I saw a very appealing answer to one of the questions within my sector. I couldn’t really explain it, but I was 90% sure that was indeed the answer. So I quickly sent a text message to Kok Cheeng for that precious 3 points. Little did I know that Kok Cheeng somehow thought the hunting time was up to 2:00 pm. Actually, the full time ended at 2:05 pm. I sent my answer to him with some minutes to spare, but Kok Cheeng had by then submitted our answers and treasures. That’s why it was so painful when it was later revealed that the answer I sent him was indeed the correct one!
Well, a satisfying but humbling hunt; my very first theSun Hunt. That night after all the answers were revealed, we counted and found that we only had 81 points. I was fairly certain that we would get last. That would have been an unpleasant debut in theSun Hunt for me. So just imagine my surprise when it was announced that there was another master team which got only 46 points! Another at 57 points! And a few more teams. In the end we got 15th. Obviously nothing to shout about but I am nonetheless happy with the result.
I enjoyed the hunt and wish to congratulate the CoC for a job well done. But of course that is not to say I don’t have any comments on the questions. I would disappoint all my fans if I give no comments at all on the questions!
Let me post this, and then we can go into the question analysis in a new thread, hmmm?
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