barghers.com

finally! i am freshen up after a good night sleep and ready to write this post — the post about lang tengah island you bargherians (readers of barghers.com) have been dyin to find out.

it was a 30 minutes wait on last friday night before our buses decided to show up. we departed from usj 21 around 11.30pm — a long overnight journey, before reachin kuala terengganu the next mornin at 7am.

kuala terengganu chinatown

we had a long breakfast there before movin on to taman tamadun islam. this was where we stopped awhile for photos before continuin our journey to merang fishin village.

outside masjid kristal

inside masjid kristal

merang fishing village

as though 8 hours on the bus wasn’t enough, i have to tolerate with another 1 hour on boat. man, i hate travellin. it isn’t fun i tell you.

lang tengah island

at last, i could see the island! it still consists mainly of undisturbed flora, and i couldn’t wait to get on it.

when we got there, those who took the speed boat have already arrived and were wavin at us. each of us were given a paper bag filled with a programme booklet, some goodies, and a cap. the colour of the cap represents the group we are allocated in, as before we got here, the organizers have already divided us into 4 groups.

lunchtime

organizer

after lunch, the first event of this team buildin module was team branding (check below for explanation).

yellow group, named bob (best of the best)

green group, named tiger

red group, named red devils

black group, named… coco crunch?

don’t ask me why my group chose that name. it wasn’t my idea, and i was against it!

team brandin was supposed to be followed by bivouac bash, but this activity was cancelled due to unforseen circumstances. after dinner, we jungle trekked to the other side of the island (just a few beaches away actually). when we got there, we were briefed on survival cook-out and then given enough utensils to proceed. this was when we cooked what we catched. i couldn’t include any photos here as the camera which took the pictures for that night was with a staff who is on medical leave today.

huge lizard for dinner, anyone?

the next mornin kicks off with mornin exercise, followed by breakfast. after breakfast, we had 4 activities in place; vessel viability, jungle jangle, treasure hunt, and olfactory challenge. alas, these activities didn’t turn out well. water went into our vessel, which short-circuited the remote control car, causin it to malfunction. as for jungle jangle, we missed a checkpoint and couldn’t find out where it was. treasure hunt was lead by me, and we made it fairly well the last event for that mornin didn’t turn out well either, as it was a little borin and all of us were already exhausted from previous activities.

our blue vessel

checkpoint for compass reading

preparation for treasure hunt

in the afternoon, around 4.30pm, we went out for snorkelling. for someone like me who couldn’t swim, i had to follow closely to a group member for dear life! i swore i could’ve drown if it wasn’t for him (although there was life jacket, i find it hard to balance when i’m inside water). snorkellin could’ve been more fun if it isn’t because i couldn’t really see what’s beneath me (my specs power is very high, and we weren’t provided with powered gorgles).

at night, we prepared again for shadow charade, where we have to act out behind a cloth (like wayang kulit) based on 3 idioms we obtained durin snorkellin.

then came the moment where everyone enjoyed themselves; the presentation and singing. even our mascots had fun!

they cheer,

drink,

smoke,

and pose

everyone had fun that night. the 3rd mornin was welcomed with the activity 1 teapot 2 many.

everyone (a total of 42) is required to tie their string to 1 kettle, and together control to pour water out of the kettle into a bottle located in the middle of the “ring”.

noticed the yellow string?
that is the border of the “ring”, shaped as a square with a bottle in it’s centre

after that was team evaluation and prize givin ceremony, where each group won a hamper, distinguished only by its size. by noon, we arrived at merang jetty and depart home. i only reached back shah alam at 8.30pm. more photos can be viewed on our photos page.

team branding – with unique names, war-cries, insignia and even customized ditties, teams get to fortify team spirit, identity and develop commitment towards mission goals.

bivouac bash – construction of makeshift shelters along the beach to test teamwork and ingenuity.

survival cook-out – preparation of simple food in a minimal, survival situation.

vessel viability – a challenge for making ideas work practically in the wet!

jungle jangle – get to know how to navigate in jungle situations using a compass.

treasure hunt – no treasure to hunt here, but teams go through 5 stations, solving riddles, answering quiz sheets and look for objects. there’s even a shootout at the last station.

olfactory challenge – simple game to test listening skills, promptitude and adaptability to unfamiliar communication.

snorkelling – relax in the soothing embrace of clear blue waters and marvel at the beauty of nature while salvaging pointers for the night’s performance.

shadown charade – teams perform sketches in a unique presentation mode that’s sure to bring out creativity and ‘tak-boleh-tahan’ laughter.

1 teapot 2 many – a consolidation exercise to streamline mission perceptions for the whole organization.

Today marks the release of Dungeons and Dragons (DnD) 4th Edition. For the uninitiated, DnD is currently the most popular role-playing game (RPG) system available. Pencil-and-paper role playing began in the 70s and exploded into mainstream popularity in the 90s. It is a game where people gather around a table and forge their own adventures. There would be a storyteller (called Dungeon Master) and a few players. The Dungeon Master is the creator of the adventure and the players are the participants in the story. All of the ‘adventure’ actually occurs in one’s imagination.

I remember playing pencil-and-paper role playing game with my cousins back in the 90s. I was always awed by the polyhedral dice that my cousin own and had always wished that I had a set of my own. However, they were expensive (at least to me that time) and I couldn’t afford them.

I don’t really remember what rule system that my cousin used, but the adventures that we had was sure fun. Being a young child, my imagination was very well alive (most of our imagination died when we enter adulthood). There are many unexplored dungeons, unvisited towns, unmet people and unseen things. My cousin would build a world where magic and monsters are common and me, being an adventurer in that world, would try to forge a legend of my own. I would hack monsters down, discover magical items and meet beautiful princesses.

Sometimes, there would be fights between my cousins. Being too engrossed in the game, it is very easy to get emotionally attached. The Dungeon Master, my cousin W, was the elder brother of J, a player like me in the game. Both of them would fight whenever J felt that W was picking on him by steering the story against his advantage. It is quite funny as even though the fight usually ends up in tears, we would always plead W to play again whenever we met. It was truly addictive, as it provides an outlet for our fantasy to come true.

Being 21 this year, I think I have lost some of my creative imagination. I was thinking of restarting RPG but I cannot seem to find people who plays them anymore. I never really had a proper group that I get to play with throughout my entire life, apart from my cousins. Now that I got the money to buy the relevant books required, I cannot seem to find players. Lol, life sure is funny.

Anyway, if there are any DnD players out there, perhaps we can meet up when I’m in Malaysia to have a game or two. I’m a total newbie that really wants to play. All the sweet memories that I had, I wish that it will come back to me once again. Do leave a comment here to let me know if you play RPG.

p/s: Pat, remember the other meaning of RPG? Come to think of it, sure had fun teasing you back then. Hahahah… But I think it is really inappropriate to utter it now that we’re adults….. *sigh, being kids is still the best…..

first, passengers on new buses are compulsary to wear seat belts, now this?!?

moments after 5pm today, prime minister datuk seri abdullah ahmad badawi announced the new fuel price of rm2.70 per litre effective midnight tonight, a 78 sen hike or 40 percent increase. now instead of rm70 to fill up my tank, i’ll need rm100 -.-”

as i’ve promised, lang tengah~ a place to remember…

don’t be fooled by this bare piece of land. it still provides a breathtakin view on other side. trust me, my colleague was overjoyed when he finally stepped on that soil.

i told you he was overjoyed, didn’t i?

jungle trekkin wasn’t as easy and fun as i’ve expected. although there were existin trails, part of it was covered by long grass and tall trees, makin you wonder if a snake will suddenly slither out of nowhere and attack you.

we even trekked in our formal wear! how hard that is you know? at least we don’t have to trek at night.

i wonder what kind of animal lives in this hole

honestly, if you are not suspectin anythin at the moment (like why isn’t there photos of the beach or resort), you must’ve really trusted me on everythin i’ve wrote in this post, which is not entirely true =P

first off, the above pictures are not photos of lang tengah, but a soon-to-be developed usj onecity. i followed a site engineer, an architect, and two more civil engineers to “survey” the site terrain. the picture of a hole is an example of a borehole drilled to investigate the properties of the soil. this is very important for cost estimation and design of a proposed development.

trust me, it isn’t fun bein a site engineer. when it comes to inspectin a site, you have to endure the heat from the sun, make sure everythin turns out accordin to plan, and be able to manage people. okay, that ain’t so bad compared to a civil & structural engineer. a structural engineer has to design accordin to architectural drawin, bears all consequences resultin from any failure of his/her design (judgement), grows alot of white hair at the age of 30, and the “best” part is he/she is gettin lower pay compared to an architect.

phua chu kang boots?

life isn’t fair eh? nevermind. this weekend should be fun with a company trip to lang tengah!

today, my visitin supervisor (lecturer from my uni) paid my workplace a visit. accordin to my colleague’s friend, this lecturer has just entered my uni 2 months ago (when my semester break begins) and therefore i have absolutely no idea what to expect from him.

when we first spoked, i realised his powerful indian accent. true enough, he was born and raised in india. what annoys me most is the fact that he kept babblin about staadpro (a software made in india) bein a very good design analysis software bla bla bla…

my host supervisor wanted to tell him that staadpro is a horrible software because it contained half the world’s design code standard crammed into one, and is totally not user friendly, but he just kept quiet. i too wanted to tell my visitin supervisor that our locally made esteem software is much better in terms of ease of use and local parameters practice (like usin size of reinforced bars available in local market etc).

throughout the “visiting” period, i just sat very still, starin blankly at my visitin supervisor’s face while he talked about the current construction industry with my host supervisor. bein personally involved in this industry before his teachin days, he seemed to know a thing or two about how stuff works within.

after a dreadful 40 minutes of boredom, my visitin supervisor finally filled up a form, looked through my entries in my industrial trainin logbook, and bid us goodbye.

i sure am glad that he didn’t ask me for the form i filled up earlier