OB Sabah, A Summary

Day 1 - Arrive at the OB Sabah Base Camp late at night, meet the other 11 people in my group for the next 11 days. The 46 of us are split into 4 groups and bunks. Sorted into group Hang Tuah, from what I gathered, its a Malay folk hero. The other groups are Kingfisher, Mat Salleh (Jin says it means "White Man") and Kinabalu.

Day 2 - Have ice breaker games and all that. Trek through nearby hill and beach, informed of 2 expeditions we would be sent on, Jungle and Sea, last 3 and 2 days respectively, 2 groups going one course at any one time.

Day 3 - My group sets off on the Jungle Expedition. The expedition consists of climbing up a 1.5km hill, reaching the top, and camping there for one night,climbing back down another route, and staying in a nearby village, before trekking back 10km to the Base Camp. Dropped of at the starting point in the rain, the way up is extremely muddy, wet, slippery and miserable. Slip and fall numerous times on the muddy slope, and having to resort to crawling up in the mud since there were no handholds, and all the footholds had dissolved in the rain. Coupled to a 10kg backpack, the climb is a real bitch. Rain continues as we set up camp. Robert, our native instructor, brings out his machete, chops a tree down with it, carves out four sticks, gets a groundsheet, makes a canopy, chops another tree down, and starts a fire out of wet wood, all in 15 minutes. Tent is out of space, me and Matthew (Not the rugby one) decide to stay under the fireplace canopy. Gets dark at 8, almost fell asleep when it rained at 9.

Day 4 - The night officially takes the "Worst Night Ever" title from the night I had a migraine on a night flight from Shanghai back to Singapore. Rained the whole night, and my bit of the canopy leaked. At 18 Celsius, it was a wet, frozen hell. Started hearing things, like Ievan singing, and someone saying it was 2 in the morning, but Matthew says no one made any sound, and that it was 11 at night. Slip in and out of consciousness, shivering in a pool of water. The creepy bamboos creaking in the wind didn't help. Rain finally lightens up enough for Matthew to call the instructors at around 5. They order everyone else out of the tent and send me in. Still had to trek down the hill to reach the village and medical attention. Thank goodness the way down was far easier. Once at the village they send for a van to bring me to the doctor. Usual doctor is closed, so they bring me to another one. Bill is ridiculously high at RM150, all the instructors were expecting RM40 tops. Steven, the OB Singapore instructor there and Helse, my other instructor, have me sent back to base camp. Spend the rest of the day asleep.

Day 5 - Spend most of this day asleep as well too.

Day 6 - Recover in time for the Sea expedition. Instantly regret going, get seasick in the sailboat. Lionel and Ray, both sailors, do all the sailing for us, and since the wind was with us, we got to the island we were supposed to camp on in just over an hour. Felt more like a day though... Spend rest of the catching crabs on the beach. Rains once again, but this time, everyone makes sure there's space for me in the tent. Wasn't exactly dry inside either, but compared with the outside, I wasn't complaining.

Day 7 - Storm clouds gather and we are towed back by the rescue boat since it is deemed too dangerous to sail. More casualties from seasickness, Nat and Sam Koh getting it the worst.

Day 8 - Finally, we set off for the main reason why most people come to the camp, which was to climb Mt Kinabalu. We are driven by bus to a hostel a kilometer above sea level to acclimatize. More people are falling sick, Luohan catches stomach flu, Ian gets AMS (Altitude Mountain Sickness) and Ievan gets an eye infection. Everyone is betting that Kingfisher will reach the summit first, since more than half the group were canoeists, Ruizhi among them.

Day 9 - Start the ascent of Mt Kinabalu, which is to be done in two phases, the first would be to climb 6km up to a checkpoint 11000 feet above sea level, stay there till 2 in the morning, climb the rest of the way to the top to catch the sunrise, climb back down to the checkpoint, then climb back to the bottom. Way up was torture, with leg cramps and an even heavier backpack.

Day 10 - We start out to the top in subzero temperature, and with even more people down with AMS. Kingfisher has the most casualties, with 4 people unable to even start climbing. Interestingly, all 4 were canoeists. Climbing the sheer rock faces in the middle of the night is nothing short of exciting, as well as downright scary. Clung on to the support ropes like my life depended on them as the cold wind lashed at us, and it did. The mountain guides that were tasked with looking after us just walked around like they were going around for a stroll at places where I magnetically attached myself to the rocks. My head was pounding, and I felt like collapsing many times, but eventually with help from Luke and Khai Sam I crawled to the top. I blacked at out the top (Second time they said I could have gotten killed) after seeing the view. With the temperature around -5 and winds going at around 60km/h, I think they were right... Khai Sam wakes me up after an unspecified amount of time and tells me I should catch up with the rest of my group.

Have no idea how I managed to get down from the summit, much less reach the foot of the mountain, but I did it. In fact, I dashed down the last 3.5km of the hike down. It all happened like this. We had to reach the foot of the mountain by 3 in the afternoon in order to have enough time to go to a nearby town and souvenir shop, but Eugene was going down as slow as he was coming up, after he held up the group for a good 15 minutes since he wasn't done packing. Jin, Sam Koh and Ray, among others, had already gone down with other groups. With Lionel egging Eugene and me to move faster the whole while, I got so fed up I threw the group's policy of slowest guy in front to hell and dashed all the way down, overtaking Ray, Nigel Sing, Ruizhi, Ben Chin and the rest of Kingfisher on my rampage down.(Third time they say I could have gotten killed if I had taken a spill and fallen)

Day 11 - Half the camp pretends to be sick to skip the last activity, rafting. We depart for home at around 6, and I reached home at about 3 in the morning.
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Overall, it was an okay camp. Some people were nice, which is amazing, and some people were bad, but I'll try not to hold it too them. It was a tough camp after all. I'll get around to posting the photos of the peak sooner or later.

What The Heck Just Happened?!?!

Just got back from OB Sabah a couple of hours ago, and believe me, do I appreciate civilization now... Camp was plenty of fun, although my group claims I nearly got killed a few times, as if spending 10 hours sleeping in the rain at 18 Celsius and 3 hours trek from the nearest settlement was going to kill me. Okay, it might not have killed me, but it certainly takes the title of Worst Night Ever from the time I spent an entire night flight from Shanghai back to Singapore with a migraine the whole time.

I'll elaborate more tomorrow, Micro requires that comfortable state of mind we call sleeping...

School's Out!

School is finally over for the year, after being delayed for two weeks. My biological clock has been refusing to accept that the delay, and I couldn't really be too bothered with doing any of my homework. Life is good... Holidays have begun, OBS Sabah is in a week's time and my new glasses have arrived. Only thing problem here is that I damaged my leg in training.

Started the campaigns for Dark Crusade with Space Marines, so far, the heads of Farseer Taldeer and the Tau Commander serve as rather interesting wall art at the moment, Pavonis mine to use, and Warboss Gorgutz is now trapped between the Demes Northland and the Necron Army.

Random conversation
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Sam : Just take a look at Cheng Heng, he's perfect for a Warboss!! He's slow on the uptake, likes to break things, has no table manners whatsoever....

Bryant : You should had seen him have lunch when my mum was around, he was an angel

Sam : Yeah, invite everyone to your house for lunch but me, thats right, leave Samuel out of everything..

Micro : There was salad Sam. Salad. Fresh plant matter.

Sam : Thats just cruel man, how could you make Cheng Heng eat salad!! How can you make anyone eat salad!
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To the one whose struggle still continues, I wish you the best of luck, and may the Tome of Adeptus Mathematica aid you in your battle, and a gentle reminder that if you are reading this before two days past today, you should be back reading the Tome and absorbing all it can teach you.

Almost there!!!

Three days left till our holidays begin. The days have become so long... No, must look on bright side, most of the days are shorter than normal.. And no Chinese.. Anyway, my Dark Crusade career looks grim. The matches I played with Bryant were dismal at best. We lost twice to 2 standard enemies, and only beat one hard one because the silly A.I left all its forces away from its base after their Guardsmen decimated my Space Marines, and stayed there, so it wasn't hard overrunning their base with my Dreadnoughts soaking up the damage while my remaining Marine squads and Bryant's T'au fired from behind. Deepstriking is a lot of fun, dropping pod after pod of Dreadnoughts into someone's base!!

I must note though, I am becoming rather concerned with the RuneScape economy. (Laymen, bear with me) With the opening of the Great Exchange, stuff becomes alot more convenient to buy and sell, which means it would be far easier to find people selling a certain commodity at a much lower price than the norm. (eg ranarr weeds, sharks) Which would, inevitably, lead to a price plunge in just about everything. Which obviously, cannot be good. Geez, now I know how it feels to be in an economic crisis. I've already have had to lower the prices of my ranarr weeds from 8k to only 7-7.5k, and with the Great Exchange, it will probably exacerbate. I can only hope Tim's prediction that the market will stabilize again will be an accurate one.

Lam shocked the whole class went he stated he was an average human being. Most of us expected him to be a demonic prince or something of the like, you know, the kind who pop out of occult stars that suddenly form on the ground like they do in Doom 3.

I've realized I've been neglecting my writing for quite a while now. I blame the Goh Sin Tub thingy, bloody drained my creativity. Might just consider starting up what I did in Sec 1, writing nutty little adventures for the class. Okay, I admit, I copied that idea from Kevin.... Well, what better way to spend the next three days in school??