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??

Coming To A Close

The O-Levels have been pushed forward by yet ANOTHER 2 weeks for our year, so in response, the school has extended school for the Sec 3s by two weeks.... Not sure its helping too much, since no one really seems to be paying attention in class these days. Ms Lee can't really be too troubled to teach too much, and so we spend most of history watching old documentaries, English lessons are now spent watching Dead Man Rising, and Mrs Ang doesn't really feel like educating as well, so I spend some of Lit class in the cupboard of 201. Ah the memories.... Well, except for today when Mrs Ang didn't even come to class because she was sick, and we got that weird old maths teacher coming in as a substitute. She left us a 100 word assignment to do in groups of 3, but Bryant and Sam couldn't be bothered to write even such a small amount, so we spent the lesson watching Sam argue with Jem who was who's "ho", hear how Bryant's sister dislocated his arm when he was 10 and discuss Dark Crusade, and how Shen Shin has an unnaturally strong desire to see me and Jem play DC against each other. Its like watching a Tech Priest fight with a Gretchin since we're both noobs at it.

Problem was, we hadn't realized that she was actually going to collect the work until she refused to let us go home till we had. Cursing under our breath, the three of us churn, or spat, out a 100+ word, well, thing onto the paper before we could leave. Thank goodness she didn't read it, though Mrs Ang probably will, and chew us out for talking about how ultimate chaos benefits society.

I played a couple of Dark Crusade matches with Bryant after getting back. Since we don't live and breathe DC like some people *cough* Shen Shin *cough*, we just play against AI's together to bring our win rate up, which I really, really need to do if I don't want other people to start kicking me out of games. While we owned the first two Standard enemies (Ork and Necrons against my Space Marines and his Eldar), we lost within ten minutes to the other two (Space Marines against my Chaos and his Tau).....

Micro Lives!!!

Yes, I am back home, in civilization, alive from A.C.E camp. Admittedly though, it was less tough since I was a leader there, which allows me to stone during most activities, cut the food line, stay up all night etc etc...

Day 1
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Despite getting up late, I still managed to make it to school in time to catch the bus. Such a pity... Anyway, I find out I'm in charge of Force S.O.Z along with Jared and Azriel, and since the teachers were probably too lazy to jumble up all the classes, it consisted entirely of 212 students, which happened to contain the sons of some very influential people in the school, namely the vice principal. Bus board at Singapore Customs spelled out "F**K" in nice capital letters for all the public to see. Rest of the trip was uneventful. We arrive at the campsite at around 11, set up and repair tents damaged by inconsiderate bastards from Camp 1 and clear the rubbish left behind by them as well. I stay in one tent along with Khai Sam, Azriel, Jia Lei and Joon Kiat. A.C.E camp involves 6 activities

-Rafting
-Kayaking
-Mountain Climbing
-Rappelling
-Jungle Survival
-Orienteering

Two are carried out on full days, and one is carried out on half days like the first and last day. We drew the worst and most exhausting of the lot, which is mountain climbing. Mr. Arul designated me to the back of the group to make sure no one gets left behind. With the pretty female instructor. Everyone struggles up the mountain in the afternoon heat, and even the instructor looked worse for wear. Three boys, the school counseller and the instructor had to be left behind half way up the mountain since they couldn't make it up. Discovered the local fauna is not very friendly when I broke open a termite tunnel when grabbing a tree for a handhold. Finally make it 20 minutes after everyone else after lagging behind to look after the slow ones, and also because I took some time to interact with my charges. South Africa won the Rugby World Cup 15-6 when they won the final against defending champions England in a tryless

Day 2
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Grateful it didn't rain on the previous night, we go rappelling first. Already an easy activity, made even more so because the leaders have practically nothing to do. Unable to repeat my feat of not taking a dump for 4 days like last year, I am forced to go today due to dubious, but still palatable food served at the camp. In between activities, I was so bored that I slept outside the tents in the noon sun.

Next up was kayaking. Expecting to paddle around lazily with my fellow A.C.E leaders, I was ordered by the same instructor as yesterday to go with one guy was short of a partner since the force had an odd number of people (27) and no one would take him since he was so unpopular (On interaction with the rest of the group, I found out he was a real mama's boy) in the two man kayaks. Halfway through, exhausted and not alert, the son of the English HOD accidentally collided with my own kayak, and since we just happened to be off balance at the time, the force of the impact was enough to knock us over and capsize the boat. My first instinct was to grab my leaders hat, which was one reason I was even at the bloody camp. My second was to flip over the kayak, which turned out to be so full of water already that it was sinking instead of floating, and was far too heavy to float. After bobbing around, Mr. Nathan had us grab hold of another kayak, and we got towed around till the activity was over. It certainly beat doing all that rowing myself. Mr. Nathan takes a picture of me after I capsized as a reminder that I deserve my title of blur blob of the rugby team, and promises to put it on his website. Azriel is so preoccupied with John Foo's Rubik cube he almost forgets dinner and skipped supper all together, preferring to stay in the tent to try and solve the cube while swearing at it. South Africa won the Rugby World Cup 15-6 against defending champions England in a try-less match.

Had a little debate with Mr. Ghazali today

Micro : Mr. G, I had no idea you were here!

Mr. G : What, I was always here.

Micro : But I never see you around.

Mr. G : You don't see God around do you?? But He's around right??

Micro : True, but you can't make sure that it won't rain tonight

Mr. G : Who says I can't?? I just don't feel like it.

Micro : Okay...

Mr. G : This is just turning into a philosophical debate.

Day 3
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The day began with Khai Sam's high pitched voice telling me to get up. When I realized it was only 4 in the morning, my first thought was "Screw you, bloody tree rodent". My second thought was "Why the **** is the tent sagging downward??" It was raining so hard that the tent was in very real danger of collapsing from the weight of the water. Everyone in the tent gets up to help prop the tent up and prevent the water collecting there again. Jia Lei has the wild idea of going to fix the tent from the outside, which is drowned out by a chorus of swear words and the pounding of the rain. All went back to sleep at 5 when the rain lightened a bit.


Orienteering involves finding your way to a certain checkpoint via map reading and clues like the Amazing Race, and was pretty easy for me as well, as I merely had to sit at one checkpoint with the A.C.E leader in charge of the activity. While waiting for a group to arrive, we chatted a bit and laughed at the groups who thought the stamp they were supposed to be finding for the activity was on top of the nearby water towers. Our checkpoint required for the people in the group to link together to form an imaginary creature with only a certain number of limbs on the floor (For example, 3 legs and 2 hands), then walk in the that formation for a short distance while making a common sound. Out of the three groups who were supposed to arrive, only 2 showed up, and the first didn't appear for a good amount of time. Still, they took only 2 minutes to do the task, while the second group took 20.

Jungle Survival was slack for the leaders as all we had to do start a fire for the instructor (Sadly, not the pretty female one, but the male one with a very bad habit of throwing lighted firecrackers at the floor) to keep the mosquitoes away, and unlike the Sec 2s, we were given a lighter. Helped them finish the food they prepared in their mess tins but didn't dare to eat(Sardines mixed with rice, the sardine sauce from the can and half cooked eggs is good eating), as well as half a stock cube that was left over. My night duty was tonight from 1 to 3. Amazingly, I looked forward to this, as all the leaders on night duty report the teachers and instructors bringing back food like Ramly Burgers and murtabak for them.

They showed a slide show of all the photos taken during the camp. My photo was there as well, but the screen quality was supposedly so bad Miles remarked that Oliver "looked Asian". (He's half Australian and English with blond hair)

On my night, it was a fish Mr. Nathan caught himself. 2 actually. While they weren't wonderful, Mr. Soo's magic show was worth the while. Caught some of my rugby juniors (Oliver, Arjun and so on) out of their tents looking at the stars at 2 in the morning. The night sky was so beautiful, the poet in me overpowered the leader in me, and I let them stay up. Though I could bluff Jared by saying they were leaders too, Loy recognized the whole lot of them as our juniors, and promptly sent them all back to their tents. During duty, as I was flipping through the sports section in the newspapers brought from Singapore, I happened to flip to the report on the Liverpool derby when Luu, one of the two the Vietnamese scholar along on the trip as leaders, asked to see the Premier League table. Surprised that scholars did anything else aside from study, let alone watch soccer, I asked him which team he supported. Turned out to be a fellow Man U fan, which didn't go down well with Mr. Arul. (He's a Spurs supporter) Decided to sleep in front of the teachers hut since it had began to rain, I didn't feel like going through a repeat of last night.

Day 4
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Yet another disastrous morning.

Marvin : Cheng Heng, get out of your sleeping bag very slowly

Micro : What for??

Marvin : Take a look at your bag

The bloody thing was covered with flying ants. Not the small kind you find in Singapore, but the ones the size of your thumb. Freaking out, I jumped and it scattered a few of them. After trying to spray them with my insect repellent, which was no use, I had plucked up the courage to wave the bag to get rid of the remaining ants.

The final activity, rafting, is the bane of the camp. Conducted in the puddle/pond that has water that looks like slightly less viscous mud, the campers must cross it in a raft they build themselves out of barrels and rope lashings, which capsize and sink very often, sending the campers into the muddy slop. If one is lucky enough not to capsize, fear not, as they'll force everyone to cross the water by pulling yourself through the mud/water with a rope tied between 2 trees on either side of the bank. To top it all off, the instructor in charge was nicknamed Mr. Hornet.

The cry of "HORNET!!" is a sign to all campers to adopt the Hornet position, a protective posture where you lie face down in the ground and cover your neck, which will minimalize the number of stings you get should a hornet swarm appear, though I'd rather take my chances running for the nearest water, although the instructors have warped it to become a punishment, making campers do it on hard gravel roads and muddy patches or wherever they happen to be standing, so you can guess how Mr. Hornet got his name. We broke a record, with 22 hornets in a single session.

But of course, I was an A.C.E leader, and exempted from punishments and actually doing the activity, since force commanders are only supposed to follow the force, not do all the activities with them. So me and Jared sat on a couple of barrels and laughed to ourselves while they were horneted time and again, and Azriel and Luohan got to go out in the rescue kayak, from which they were given the order to splash as much mudwater on them and slow the force's progress down as much as possible, and were allowed ram their raft with their kayak, and anything was okay, short of actually boarding their raft to enter melee combat and bonk them on the heads with the paddles. They were also asked to rescue people who had fallen into the water as a side order. Sadly, since they wanted to save time on the last day, the instructor had already finished up with most of the raft for them, so it was too well made to capsize.

After cleaning out and un-pitching the tents, we were all given a Ramly burger and piled onto the coach and FINALLY sent back to civilization in air conditioned comfort.

The Great Outdoors.... Can we go home now??

Cramming all the benefits of modern civilization as fast as I can for the next few days, since on Friday, the school will pack me off to be and ACE leader in the wilderness of Kluang. My own experience as a camper there last year wasn't exactly pleasant. On the first night, some idiot slashed a couple of tents, which lead to everyone being dragged up to the big hill where the teachers stayed with a roof over their heads, and being forced to squat for an hour or so while the teachers and camp facilitators interrogated suspects one by one. We all went to back to our tents at around 2. Then blasted awake at 6 for a PT run. Keep in mind, this is the first night, so imagine the rest of the four day camp. Some cracked of course, like normally mild-mannered Tim giving me the finger when I asked him how the rafting went.

So why the heck did I volunteer to go back for round 2?? Well, I didn't, its a package deal if I want to go to OBS Sabah. At least this time, I go as a leader. However, it still doesn't make up for some rather significant losses when I'm away from Friday to Monday.

1. I miss the Rugby World Cup Final (NOOO!!!!)
2. I miss the street party this Saturday (NOOO!!)
3. I don't get to go on flag day with the fencers and do what fencers do on flag day

Sigh.....


I have yet to beat any opponent on Dark Crusade on Standard Level, and almost got killed twice while Barrowing with Gerald. It is a dark day, though school was spent throwing numerous objects at each other since there were no real classes.