Thursday, October 30, 2008

We're on Michael Pang's Blog...!

Hey...what a pleasant surprise today....our treasure hunt team was featured on Michael Pang's blog. He is not only a regular treasure hunter, where we often see him joining hunts (and winning it!), but have organized treasure hunts as well.

Check out what he said about us here.

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Lil Shaggy

Continuing on from the 3 lil kittens' story, there's only 1 surviving kitten. I guess God had plans for the lil dude, and it was my wife who found it alive and well amongst her pots of flowers and plants. That I think, soothes her pain and shock of finding the dead kitten a few days before. She wondered what to do about the surviving kitten, and I told her that we might as well keep the kitten inside the house, to make sure that at least the lil dude will get a fighting chance to grow up stronger.

When I got back in the morning, as soon as I saw the kitten at the pots, I took the lil dude inside. Since we didn't have any cage or proper place for safekeeping, I barricaded the lil dude inside the bathroom. I know it's a bit uncomfortable, and he didn't like it, but it's for his own safety.

The mother, unfortunately, has a lot of...er...admirers...haha...Yeah, the male cats seem to be waiting in line to get a piece of her. She's a pretty cat...haha...like a cat version of Erra Fazira, as I described her to my friends. We're worried and suspected that it was one of the male cats that killed the 2 other kittens.


We finally bought a cage for the lil kitten, just so that he has a place to sleep in, and to keep him from roaming around the house and leaving his...er..presents... :-) And we keep him in the house, so that no other cats can bother him except for the mother. We let him out whenever me or my wife is at the house. And the mother does come by to visit, whenever she's not with one of the "boyfriends"...haha...She nurses the lil dude, although I'm not sure if there's still milk left in her...How do I check that eh...??

Anyways, the lil dude is kinda thin, which worries my wife. So she bought some kitten food, and more food for the mother as well. At least if the mother is around, she can keep the lil dude company while he eats. Which she does, regularly...I think she's beginning to understand why we keep her kitten in the house, so she waits for her "visiting time", and when it comes, she uses it fully.

The kitten, we nicknamed Shaggy...after the character in Scooby Doo...When the others were around, he was the most scared of them all. Always hiding behind something either a pot, wall or even behind my shoes. So that's why we named him "Shaggy". But now, we noticed that he carries the traits of the other 2 kittens as well. Explorer like the kitten we nicknamed "Indy", always going around the house, trying to climb up the stairs to follow my wife, but can't since he's small. And he also carries the "space out" look like the other kitten, which we nicknamed "Putom"...It's kinda funny looking at him running around the house, and since he's so small, we keep reminding ourselves to look at our feet as we walk, as he tends to follow us around the house.

Hope he survives...Here's to Shaggy...the lil dude...

Sunday, October 26, 2008

Pintasan Travel Raya Hunt

It was our first treasure hunt after Raya 2008. I was a little bit rustier than the rest as the others had been able to join one of the walk hunts in One Utama. So at least their minds were a bit fresh on answering the lateral thinking, anagrams, and general knowledge etc questions. I’m on the other hand, had one of my formal replies to a question ready: “D’huh?” :-)

The day started well, we were very relaxed. I took my time to drive us over to the Padang Utara P.J.; I even had time to stop for fuel and checked my tire pressure (I was lazy to do it the night before…). We were among the first to arrive there, and the C.O.C. was already busy preparing for the start of the hunt.
A total of 22 cars/teams were involved in the hunt, where there are a lot of regular hunters around. Of course, those with the status of “Masters” are there too. Because of this, we did not expect to win, and just hoped that this will serve as a refresher and a warm-up hunt before the big hunt, i.e. Sun Hunt (!), to be held on the 2nd November this year.

The hunt went well; surprisingly we answered the first few questions with ease. We usually have problems at the start, stuttering in the beginning of the hunt. Not so this time, and we thought we might have an easy hunt. Zahrol (the C.O.C.) did warn us that there would be some easy questions, and a few hard ones, i.e. “kaw-kaw” punye. So we were waiting for the hard questions. Didn’t find it in the route questions. It hit us in the treasure questions.

Man, we were just stumped by the questions, and I must say that part of the treasure hunts were always tough on us, we usually struggled a lot on treasure questions. It cost more points, so it was a bit more pressure on us all. However, most of the time we would have some idea on what to target, but this time around, there would be no such luck. It was upsetting, and we didn’t manage to submit the treasure at Location 1@Tulip no.32 to get the extra 2 points. We decided to wait till the end, and solve the route questions first.

The treasure hunt route took us through P.J, Damansara and ended in Kota Damansara. I disliked the Kota Damansara area, because the area is almost always are jammed packed with cars, and it’s only wasting our time there, waiting for the cars to move. One of the pleasant surprises was when we were in PJ Section 14, where we bumped into my auntie and uncle going for their routine breakfast outing. I was focusing on looking for the answers through the window of the car when I realized someone was looking directly at me on the other side. Lo and behold, my auntie was pointing at me! She was as surprised to see us there looking around the shops for answers.

It was fun overall, lunch was good as well, or is it because we were hungry? :-) With the exception of the treasure questions, it would have been a good hunt for us. It was another learning experience nonetheless; "think outside the box" as they would always say. In the end, on hindsight, the answers were right there in front of us, we just didn’t realize it. Except for treasure question 5, we are still debating on that. :-)


On to the next hunt...!

Friday, October 24, 2008

Horny's 3 lil kittens

About 2 months (?) back, we found that the stray cat which we nicknamed "Horny" (I'll get to the nickname as soon as I can...) has given birth to 3 lil kittens. This is the 3rd time she gave birth to kittens, the earlier 2 times the kittens didn't survive for reasons unknown to us.

This time around, we were determined to make sure that the kittens survive, at least until they can fend for themselves. So, at first we put them in my shoe box (since it was the biggest shoe box that we could find), but then thought it's so uncomfortable for the 4 of them, and we moved them to our tv set box (!). Wah, it's like living in a big house for them. We didn't want Horny to leave the kittens for long, so we started feeding her with cat food. Which actually works, because she started to spend her time nursing her babies rather than go out finding food for herself.
So, the kittens grew stronger each day. When we left for the Raya holidays, we were worried that they might not survive, but lo and behold, when we got back and look inside the box...the 3 lil kittens are alive...! We were so excited, and hopeful that they would survive until they are strong enough to go on their own...But, the kittens didn't like the box...and ventured out (by way of their mum) to my wife's flower pots...oh dear...
Unfortunately, the lil kittens didn't survive. At least, not all of them. A few days ago, my wife found one of the kittens died (by this time they had moved to the back of the house...), and Horny was washing off the blood. By the time I got back from work in the morning, there's not much left of the kitten (!), I wouldn't want to go into details on that as my wife is still having nightmares about it. Up until today, we still didn't know what happened. I took it upon myself to clean the place up, dug a grave for the lil kitten, said a lil prayer and buried her.
We managed to find one of the surviving kittens yesterday, and we're hopeful that this one might survive until she (?...i still have problems identifying their gender) is a bit bigger. Keep your fingers crossed...

Thursday, October 23, 2008

That "Raya Card" we sent out...


Realizing that we didn't have time to send out Raya cards to everyone; me and the boyz thought of taking a picture of all of us (or most of us, that is) and send it out to everyone...A hasty picture taking session ensues... :-) And with a little bit of help from modern technology (d'uh...it's the email...), we managed to send out Raya greetings to friends, colleagues and some of our clients. A little touch of "pantun" made it even more special:

Anak Dolah makan lepat
Makan lepat sambil melompat
Nak hantar kad raya dah tak sempat
Pakai e-mail pun kira ok what?

:-)

This is a first...

This is the very first time I've ever tried to write and post something of my own on the web, other than a comment or two on other people's sites. Whether or not I'll continue, not even I would know. So, here's to blogging...! :-)