That Hunting Weekend - Part 2

The Sun Hunt 2008

This is the biggest event of the year for the treasure hunters. Simply because the prizes are bigger, and the competition is tougher. And I do mean big, they have 255 teams competiting in the open category, and I think this time around there's an even bigger number of Masters team competiting in their category - 20 teams overall. The prizes for the open category goes up to 145th placing, so there's hope for all of us. And for those who didn't win any prizes in the competition, there's the lucky draw event to pin of more hopes of winning prizes.

The beginning...

I'm used to waking up early for work, but for treasure hunts...Sun Hunt has usually the earliest start of all hunts. I did tell my wife that the problem with us in the Sun Hunt is our brain is not awake yet by the time the hunt starts and that is why we have problems answering questions at the beginning....hahahaha...This time around it was the Sime Darby Convention Centre which was chosen as the venue for the start and finish; i.e. pre-hunt briefing, final briefing, starting line, finishing line, and dinner/result event. I think it was the best choice of all the other Sun Hunt that we went to, the place is huge, ample parking for all, and the halls even better.

As usual, we struggled at the beginning of the hunt. They wanted to "disperse" all the teams, since there was a large number of us and so they directed us to Kota Damansara (oh dear...). There's 6 sectors out of a possible of 8, and to find the sector you have to "crack"/find the logo from the picture given. Man, the area was jam-packed within the first hour that we were there. It was compaunded by the fact that people were coming into the area to have their usually Sunday morning breakfast. I pity the people there who stumbled upon us that morning. Anyways, we struggled with the questions up until to the point where my wife asked for a switch of tasks, with her driving and me navigating and finding the answers. Apparently we improved a lot after that. We thought later that we might want to keep this configuration for later hunts.

Breakfast & lunch was provided by McD, and for lunch we went to the one beside the Sunway toll on LDP. We had to submit our 1st leg answer sheet there, pick up the 2nd leg questions and buy 2 calendars which was the 2nd treasure hunt item. The calendars were part of the charity drive for the Bethany Home in Teluk Intan, Perak. Bethany Home is an E.L.C.M. training centre for the epileptic and intellectually disabled children and adults. The charity drive was a nice touch to the event, although I wish I had more time to ask questions to the guy in charge there about the home. I had by this time felt that my kidney was going to burst since I had been holding it since the start. Hahaha...

Next was the Puchong area, where by this time there's a lot of cars in the shops' area. A lot of honking were heard during this time. There was a polite short honk, a double/triple honk, and an angry long honk for the hunters to move aside. My wife had managed to remain calm all the way through this sector, and this is the part where the driver plays an important part in the team. DON'T BLOCK THE WAY WHEN YOU'RE HUNTING. That's the rule I try to keep to, and I told my wife to pay attention to all around us. She has to be able to position the car so that we can find answers as well as keep the road clear for the other users. I wouldn't want to comment on what the other teams did, as I would only want to concentrate on what we're doing during the hunts.

By the time we got to TTDI, we had 2 things against us: one was time, the other was rain...oh dear.Fortunately for us, that final sector was the easiest sector of all. Straight forward questions, and we didn't even have to stop to find the answers. We knew that we had to find time to rush back to the finish line, and before that find the treasure items! For this I have to thank DQ & Farid. We weren't sure what the items are, and DQ had said that she will only know for sure once she sees the items with her own eyes. We couldn't find any 7-11 on the way back (there was a lot earlier, but we didn't manage to figure out the answers at that time) so we stopped at the first petrol station that we could find, Caltex. Got 1 item there, and we're still missing 1 last item. And I remembered that there's a Petronas station just before the Mont Kiara junction, which is actually the last place you can buy stuff before reaching the finish line at SDCC. Lo and behold, when we got there the item that we were looking for was in abundance! In the end we managed to reach the finish line on time.

I think by the time we submitted the first leg answers, we knew we wouldn't win the hunt, hehe...So, the 2nd leg was a bit easier for us as we didn't have that "pressure" to win the hunt and were only aiming to finish the hunt and improve on our standings as compared to last year. The dinner was excellent, the food was okay for a big event and the hall was very comfortable as compared to previous years. When the results were tabulated we scored 101 which won us 42nd place out of 145 teams, which was a jump from our previous year's position which was 88th. The Masters category was won by Farid's "good friend" (hehe..), Michael Pang and his team. The results can also be found here.

We enjoyed it, even though we didn't win big. It's all for fun and we just love the challenge. On to the next hunt...!