Yellow Pages Hunt...and the winner is...

It was the largest cash prize on offer so far, in terms of the hunts I've joined in. RM8,888 (!) for the 1st prize winner...waliauwei. The entry fee also cost a wee bit high for an outstation hunt, RM888 per team (which works out to RM222 per person for a 4person team...d'uh).

I had been dreaming about how it would feel to win the prize ever since I saw an FB update on Michael Pang's status. I think it was a couple months ago, I'm not so sure. Unfortunately, my regular treasure hunt team could not join as 1 half of the team is going to Bandung on the same date...huhuhu.

But fate would intervene, as 1 team did not manage to form a complete 4-person team. Apparently, 'someone' had suggested my name to the team members, and about a week before the hunt was held I had received an invitation to join this team.

Thank you, Linda Shamsuddin. Ehem.

This is no ordinary team, it had all the veteran/masters hunters in it before I came along (haha); Hagi Shuhaimi, Ahmad Zahrol and Khairol Nazib. Talk about a dream team, huh?

It didn't start that well. It rained heavily in the early hours of the morning, which made everyone just that little bit late reaching the flag-off point in Bukit Jalil. In retrospect, this is what we call hujan rahmat in B.M. And when we did flag-off, we actually got stuck on the very 1st question. Sounds like what the Macam2 Adaaaa team would do, or is it because of the W.Kamal vibe, I wonder? Hehe...

Anyways, all along the route I felt very2 dizzy. I was one of the passengers sitting at the back with Hagi. Zahrol navigated and Khairol drove his wife's brand new Alza. Quite a comfortable car for treasure hunt. I later discovered on the way back from Penang that if I sit at the left side of the passenger seat, I didn't feel as dizzy as I did by sitting on the right-side during the hunt. Which is weird. I've never felt like that ever before. All in my mind kot.

The questions, in retrospect that is, aren't that hard to crack. It has enough difficulties in it to have us scratch our heads, but not that hard that it would deter any newbies that came in to hunt, IMHO. Apart from the route questions, we also had the usual treasure questions and the JKJR questions; as well as the Yellow Pages puzzle and the E-yellow pages questions. What these 2 Yellow Pages sections requires us to do is to use the Yellow Pages book to solve the puzzle and the softcopy of the YP to solve the E-YP questions. For the puzzle, I had Hagi to thank for helping me out on that. Have you seen how thick the YP books are? It took a lot of patience to go through the book, but you have to know which section to look first before you can find the answer.

Oh, one other thing that this hunt has was the field challenge. It was simple enough, kick a mini soccer ball and knock down as many water bottles you can, and throw as many ping pong balls into the basket.

Okay, here's the complaint: some of the sectors are a wee bit too long as compared to other hunts. For example, one of the sectors has a length of 6km plus. If you didn't see the answers the 1st time, u have to double back and drive again through the sectors. Do that a couple of times and u suddenly have a very high mileage meter displayed on the screen, and much less time to do the hunt. And yes, that happened to us. I think it happened to the other teams as well, because in the end there wasn't enough time to complete all the sectors. After much discussion, we decided to drop the last sector of the hunt and head to the finish point.

At the end point we saw some of the regular teams arriving about the same time as us. I think only Claire's team arrived within the time frame, and all the other teams received penalty points.

We all felt that we didn't have that much hope of finishing among the top teams, much less win anything. I was more preoccupied with how hungry and tired I was as opposed to what the results were. Dinner was served late, which did not help my mood; never disturb a hungry lion as they would always say. Most teams (closed category) had arrived late, as they went thru the tulips/directions and completed the course. Hence the late arrivals and dinner. What helped though was this bunch of happy, jovial people from Yellow Pages that joined our table. They were so friendly that I felt we've known each other for years. :)

Halfway thru the dinner, the answer presentation came on, which spoiled my appetite. I was very2 nervous about how we answered in the hunt, as I was the one who wrote down the answers in the submission sheets. After tabulating the scores, it didn't help our confidence at all seeing the marks on my notebook. It was a whirlwind finish to our hunt and for some reason I couldn't remember what I wrote for the answers, especially for the treasure questions.

As the night went on as the lucky draw closed on the final prize, which none of us won,the YP guys on our table had this to say: "takpe bang, tak menang lucky draw, mesti boleh menang grand prize treasure hunt! team nombor apa?...19? ok, kitaorg jerit nombor tu karang..." To which I smiled my most polite smile.

As the top 6 teams were announced, Hagi was at one corner of the hall, Khairol went to the bathroom and I got up to take pictures of the top 3 teams in the hunt. After Razif's and Claire's team had gone up to take their prizes for 3rd and 2nd placing respectively, it was time to announce the winner. When the MC asked "Who is the winner for the RM8,888 cash prize, champion for the 1Malaysia 1Yellow Pages hunt?", the YP guys at our table shouted in unison our team's number: "19!!!" To which the CoC stopped, look up to see who shouted and took a deep breath.

There I was in front of the stage with my camera waiting to hear who won, and the guy took a looooonnnngggg time to announce it. Or is it just me? hehe. He continued with "Let me announce the name of the driver..." *dup-dup dup-dup* goes my heart beat. "Team Driver Khairol Nazib...." to a chorus of cheers from a group of ladies *ahaks*. My 1st reaction was "hey, I know that name"...with the CoC announcing everyone's name which I couldn't hear and ending it with "...team no. 19!" to cheers from the YP guys at the table. I think it was the loudest cheer any team has gotten in the hall...:)

RM8,888 was ours. :)

I would like to congratulate the team for a job well done: Hagi, Zahrol and Khairol. And thank you so much for inviting me. I had fun with the team, which is so important to me in any hunt. And we received a bonus: we won! Thanx and congrats guys!



Full results are here and here.