It’s already midnight. “Happy
Birthday, wahai!” I received a voice memo from Pan on whatsapp.
And more voice memos. I had to
sleep early, because I had to be ready by 7am as TNB bus would leave ILSAS at
730am to Outward Bound Malaysia in Lumut, Perak. What a way to spend my 25th
birthday.
The fellas, 40-ish of us took the
bus together and they’re kind enough to sing a happy birthday song for me and
khairul. We share the same birth date.
It took us 3-4hours to reach OBM,
and as we reached there’s welcoming ceremony before being divided into 4 watch
– Kinabalu, Mulu, Liang and Ulu Sepat. I was grouped into Ulu Sepat together
with 12 other YEDP fellas – Ieqa, Charlene, Amira, Chucky, Adam, Muadz, Eddie,
Ucop, Aqeel, Aiman, Aking and Amzar. Our facilitator is Abang Arief.
Before checking in to our hostel,
we had to gather at the dining hall, listening to briefing by Abang Arief. My
first impression of Abang Arief was he’s such a serious person, my OBM days
will be doomed..
At OBM, we were expected to serve
our own food, do the dishes and everything. They only cooked for us. Before
lunch, we had to surrender our personal belongings – phone, wallet, keys, food.
We had a list of prohibited stuff.
After lunch, we checked in to our
hostel, all the girls stayed at Jerai Hostel. The hostel is made of wood, it’s
just a basic accommodation and not everyone can enjoy staying there. People did
complain about it till we had to do some other tasks that made us appreciate
the hostel haha.
That evening, we had to do water
testing activity after some games – the instructor taught us the right way to
wear life jacket, how long the jacket will be functional per use (in a case of
drowning) and how to swim. Thank god for my swimming skills – can’t float
successfully though but I can swim haha.
That night, we played another
game – everyone needed to say their name and favorite food in a circle. The
next person needed to remember everything the previous person said. I
apologize, I don’t remember everyone’s name for now even I successfully
remember them that night. I could remember some people’s fav food though – Ucop
likes mee kicap gopeng, Charlene likes lamb chop with kentang, Aking likes
keropok lekor, Chucky likes udang sambal petai, Ieqa likes tomyam, I like laksa
johor, Amira likes sushi okay that’s all I remember sorry gang
One of the best things about OBM
was that all activities end at 1030pm. We had ample time to rest. Before going
to sleep, I prepared the attire that I needed to bring for tomorrow’s activity
– it’ll be kayak activity for two days and 1 night.
In the morning, we had to attend
morning roll-call at 630am – we had to sing the national anthem, OBS song (we
were clueless because we weren’t taught yet at this point of time) and TNB
song. We jogged a bit after roll-call and we learned how to kayak after that.
We also learned what to do if our kayak capsized in the middle of the ocean,
how to remove water from the kayak. We listened to the briefing on our kayak
route, what should we bring etc.
All the girls, we dressed up like
ajumma, with a big hat, sunscreen, gloves, just do not get sunburn!
That afternoon, we had to kayak
for 5km from OBM to Pantai Teluk Segadas. It took us around 2-3 hours to kayak.
We were mostly warming up, got the jinx of kayaking, before tomorrow’s kayak
session for 8 hours. It’d be a 25km kayak journey, we basically had to kayak
around Pangkor Island.
As we reached Segadas, we had to
setup our tents, find woods to make bonfire and for cooking and prepare our
dinner. Oh yeah, the highlight of this trip was we were welcomed by monkeys and
caterpillars! What a nightmare!!!!
We’re given canned food, so we
basically just reheated the food. We had to cook the sayur and nasi though.
Kuddos to the team for cooking best nasi manually! I would have failed cooking
rice without rice cooker lol. That night, after dinner and solat, we had
drinking game. This is how the game works. Everyone needs to think of one
number, ranges from 1-100. Then, once a number is called, the person needs to
respond with this one buzz word, followed by a few other buzzwords to be
responded by a few people on the right. Everyone sit in a circle. If someone wassn’t
paying attention, or made a mistake (often people were calling their own number
which they shouldn’t), they had to drink a cup of water. You may think it’s
just a cup of water, but it’s making some of us super bloated.
In the morning, we had to be
ready to leave the beach by 730am-8.00am. Ieqa and I woke up as early as 4am to
prepare the team’s breakfast and lunch. For breakfast, it’s just bread but for
lunch, it’s rice, sambal sardine and sayur. We had to make sure everyone got
enough nutrition for the day as it’d be 7-8hour of kayak journey. I prepared
sweet drinks for everyone’s glucose supplement and making sure the biskut gula
was brought along inside our kayak.
Ready for kayak? So not! But the
view was awesome! The ocean was crystal blue, so pretty, I hardly saw any ferry
passing by at some of the route, with that I’m blessed with this kayak
opportunity.
I partnered up with Muadz, because he’s fit to
carry the unfit me but in the middle of the kayak expedition, I had to switch
partner. Naimah experienced seasick while her partner, Faiq couldn’t carry her.
Therefore, we switched. Muadz partnered with Naimah, me and Faiq. Do you know
that if we wanted to do business (pee pee or poo poo), we had to jump into the
sea and do it? I had stomachache, because I’d usually do my business no.2 in
the morning, but I couldn’t do it that morning. Obviously, I couldn’t do it at
the sea!! We stopped for lunch at another beach, which I couldn’t recall the
name of the beach, I wanted to go to toilet so badly. There were abundant
resorts nearby, so me, Ain and Mimah went to find for toilets. We found the
toilet, with water supply but oh too bad, the toilet couldn’t be flushed (sorry
not sorry, my stomach couldn’t handle it). We later continued kayaking and made
it to OBS by 3pm. We took lesser time to reach OBS compared to previous groups
because we were following the tide, thank god! Also thank God for Faiq because
he’s like a radio that I needed, he would sing and tell stories and ask me for
relationship advice, all of that kinda buy the time.
If it’s only just kayaking that
we had to do, it’s fine. But no the pain didn’t stop there. We had to clean up
everything, the pot we used for cooking, the tupperwares we used to tapau the
food, wash the kayak, the tents, lifejackets. No one was paid to do all that
stuff for us. #redha
But team work was key!
That night, we were taught OBS
song, some other war cry and cheers, basically not a heavy activity because boy
we’re damn tired.
The next morning, we had our
morning assembly and followed by learning how to read compass and map. It’s
truly an important surviving skills. We later got the task to go for jungle
trekking and needed to gather keywords along the way. Little that we know, the
hill was quite steep, not necessarily an easy trek. But most importantly, I now
know my nike sport shoes aren’t meant for hiking. Thank god for mama’s hiking
shoe that she bought ad never wears lol.
After trekking, we had another
expedition of building our own boat, made of poles, tong air and ropes. I
volunteered to be the leader and I learned my lesson. We took so much time to
even design the boat as we tend to overcomplicate everything and it’s also my
mistake for not using the authority given to speed things up. But I think I was
good at negotiating, which we were given extra 30mins to finish up building the
boat. The challenge was, we had to race to reach the mother boat and row back
to OBS.
It looked not as hard but as soon
as we were actually on the boat, with lack of stability and balancing, our boat
broke in the middle. So we had to swim back, fix it and row again. There were 4
watches in total, but with every challenging phase, we still managed to get 3rd
place!
Lesson learned – there should
only be 1 leader in a team. Ideas are welcomed, but someone needs to take the
responsibility to make a decision. There’ll be a hard-headed person in a team,
wanting to do his own thing, but in the end, someone needs to be a bigger
person, reminds everyone that this is a no one-man show. It’s all about
teamwork.
That night, we had to prepare all
the stuff for our hiking expedition.
I was always worried about
hiking, because I had an experience of fainting while hiking. I had minor
asthma, so hiking and I we don’t get along. I hiked when in Canada, the
satisfaction of reaching the top and safely made it to the ground were driving
me to finish the hike. This time, sun wasn’t a limitation, but all the stuff we
had to carry. The tent, gallons of water, water bottles, cordial drinks, food
for lunch, food to be cooked at campsite. To hike for 5.6km wasn’t the only
challenge, to hike while carrying 10kg of weight, that’s the real deal.
I just dislocated my knee two
months ago, so I couldn’t carry a lot of weight. Plus, I had my asthma, so the
team was kind enough to let me carry less weight. Because I carried less
weight, I became the radio of the team. To sing and to ask people questions
that they had to answer along the way.
After a long hike, we finally arrived at our camp side and we're the first to be there too.
We set up our tents, cooked for dinner, had dinner and chilled. The most memorable part of that camp night was the shower experience. It was my first time taking a shower using water from well. It's cold but refreshing. The toilet experience was something else too. We would go for toilet break in group because there's no light at night, we all depended on our torch.
That night, we had to take turn to do the night watch, but something more significant happened that night. We all shared our darkest and deepest secret. I was glad that I got to know these people, who were once strangers to me because we're not from the same batch.
Oh we also drafted our group performance, that was cool!
Secrets that will be sealed, will be remembered. They changed my first impressions on them, they're definitely friends to keep. After all that we'd been through.The next morning, we walked back to our base camp (the hostel area) and we had to clean and return our hiking stuff, and prepare food for BBQ night.
My watch had to be in charge of the chicken. Others needed to be in charge of setting up the hall, cleaning. Oh we also practiced for our performance.That night, during the BBQ night, it got pretty emotional because it's like the last night we spent time together away from the worldly distractions, and just connected with each other. The performances were funny! Everyone had fun!
That morning, before making our way back to KL, we received a batch that showed we're OBS survivor. Then, we got our phone and at closing ceremony, we got our certificates, took pictures with everyone and made our way home. I'm glad to know that we could come back and visit OBS anytime we want. Looking forward to go back there too.
We've learned so much from each other, I know I did. I made a lot of friends, I got to know more about others and most importantly I got to know more about myself. I know that f I push my limit, I could achieve whatever I want. Deep down I've always known of that facts but I need to consciously remember that fact about me, so I could be more successful in my future.
To my dearest YEDP14 friends, thank you for an amazing experience and memory. We may not be working in the same department, we may not cross paths again in the future, but I hope this connection will last. And Abang Arief, he's super fun and sporting too!
I'm gonna end my long blog post with our Dikir Barat lyrics, that we performed during the BBQ night.
Kami Ulu Sepat datng untuk dikir barat,
7 hari di sini macam-macam kami dapat
Instructor kami Ajak Shiro orang sporting yang amat
MLM, Ironman dua-dua dia rembat
Petang Rabu dapat tahu ada lawan lumba rakit
Masuk air, dayung sikit, rakit pecah, hati sakit
Terjun balik sambung dayung, slow-slow kami bangkit
Sampai pantai tengok balik Kinabalu masih rakit
HAHAHA
Pagi Rabu belajar bearing, pagi Khamis pergi hiking
Mula-mula baru hiking kami semua sudah pening
Dengan team work kami hiking sampai tekak jadi kering
Sampai first tunggu Mulu sempat lagi guling-guling
Itu saja dari kami dari Watch Ulu Sepat
Silap salah dari kami susun jari rapat-rapat
Terima kasih OBM jumpa lagi kalau dapat
Esok phone dapat balik harap-harap masih rapat
