the bittersweet symphony of life

On March 22nd, we, the residents of UEP Subang Jaya, namely, LoreYunKei, ChowShiuKao, AlwynKoayCheeHua and yours truly, kinda surprised ourselves by arriving at 7:45 in the morning for a motor treasure hunt we had signed up for (after the deadline).

That’s like 15 minutes before the designated time woohoo.

Since the gates weren’t open yet, we left our car keys with the super awesome committee members and went to hunt for food at the other side of the building where all the tents were located.

8:11 am.

Oh and there was another year where we were required to wear mickey mouse gloves. Blessed with horrendous coordination of the team, those white gloves (which I’m still keeping) did a great job amplifying our faults. Nevertheless, I still think our uniform was one of the best around especially after it faded to a lighter shade of green

Sorry ya I’m in a very cheong hei mood today cause when you start waking up early, you suddenly realised you have loads of free time in hand. Can’t shop because the malls are still sleeping. Wanna watch tv also nothing interesting on.

Anyhow, each of us were given a goodie bag upon entering and filling up registration forms but no food was found cause everyone was still setting up their booths.

8:16 am
After walking (400+100)m, we went to pose with our car which was right smack in front of the line yeeehaa.

Go Team 16 yo! 31 teams competed.

8:26 am
Since neither Yun nor I want to give away our parking spot outside MPSJ, we decided to just walk across the street to get breakfast from the nearby petrol station.

In Malaysia, it’s a surprise if anything actually starts on time. We weren’t surprised.

8:46 am
We were required to be at the grand stand to be with the orang-orang besar. Some morning exercises (line dance, tai chi and wushu if I’m not mistaken) were being held at the tracks also.

Due to the noise level at the grand stand (what do you expect? it’s a carnival!), we then went to a hall instead for a quick briefing.

9:56 am
All 31 cars! Most of them came with their family. Then, there was the compulsory group photo before the start of the hunt.

10:03 am
While waiting for the questions and treasures to be handed out to us. It’s so unfair because we were the second car to be flagged off but were the last to receive those q&t.

10:03 am
While waiting for the orang-orang besar to arrive after their speech.

10:07 am
Hannah Yeoh flagging us off. I got overexcited and all I can think of is to snap a picture of her. Then I was like wondering why wasn’t Alwyn making any attempt to drive.

*draw speech bubbles around those red shirts* “Hoi wind down your window la!”
I was too ignorant to notice the ‘tulips’ being handed out to me *shy*
credit: http://www.nst.com.my/Streets/USJ/

Being first timers, we kinda underestimated the difficulty level of the treasure hunt. Thought we would only take 1 hour to complete it but omg we were at the first street (the one where Big Bookshop is located) for 30 minutes trying to figure out what the hell the questions were about.

Example; Q: Crazy twain with one of sauron’s minions, A: Winocrat. Then there was one about Marc’s wife lol. Hiyo we put Macy just because Macy sounded very Marc’s wife-ish.

There was also another motor treasure hunt going on at the same time, so Taipan area was really jammed. Not to say there weren’t enough jam to begin with.

On a special note, we all know that ShiuKao and I aren’t exactly the best of friends. However, the both of us worked relatively well together. 

We also heard a lot about the ‘I told you so’ and ’see don’t want to listen to me’ scenarios that happened in the other teams. But at the end of the day, we will think back and laugh at this small little arguments occurred throughout the entire process.

Guess this is what this treasure hunt is mostly about; bringing people together and, I quote, “To bring back those forgotten laughters”.

Anyway, towards the end, our brains went kinda cuckoo due to time limitation. Tembak all the way.

Q: Maxwell above our chairman. A: Eh that shop over there la! Got two floors! ABOVE what!
Q: Panicking, our friend ran. A: Eh that dentist over there cause people always panic when they see the dentist, no?

After 3 hours, we were still pretty far away from the check point. Alwyn drove over the bumps as though they weren’t even there. Yun struggled to rewrite the answers down in such condition which resulted to motion sickness. I had to run to the check point as fast as I could and managed to hand in before the disqualification time.

Time taken: 3 hours 14 minutes. 6 marks deducted. 2 more minutes and all our efforts will go down the drain phew.

We then proceeded to Lorong Seratus Tahun for lunch. Their chicken lobak and char kuey teow quite nice…but I didn’t finish their sago desert. It’s like a bunch of sago sticked together with coconut milk and brown sugar only. I have never tried anything like this before so I can’t make any comparison. At this point, Alwyn started stoning cause that poor guy didn’t sleep the night before. Yin Kong left MPSJ before we get to go back there dsh.

2:55 pm
In the morning, we were wondering why got people so cheapskate bring a test drive car to join. Later on, we found out that they were actually representatives from Proton, one of the sponsors.

At 3pm, the answers were given out and this was like the peak moment of the day. Everyone was just laughing away throughout the whole session. I would say 1/3 of the questions were pretty straight forward, the rest needed some time, brain and general knowledge while a few left us lost even after the answers were announced. It’s a family event so obviously they can’t make it that hard right?

Being the tembak kings and queens we are, we managed to get quite a number of rights. During lunch, “Eh I think we won’t even get top 13 la cause we are only sure of 13/30 questions…some more minus 6 points already”. Then throughout the answers session, “We better get something home wei. Maybe top 5 also can”.

4:00 pm
Tada!!!!!!!!!!!! 4th placing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That’s Mr BK Sim by the way, a super cool guy. Don’t know what’s his position though. Anyway, he was really really helpful. Cause the day before, I was 1 hour late for the briefing. So he took the effort to explain to me what the competition was about and showed me the starting point yada yada. During the hunt, he called us just to make sure we were doing ok and called back again to tell us that question 19 has been dropped. It was very nice of him cause he wasn’t obligated to do so. Furthermore, someone else was in charged of our group who did sms us too.

Also, thank you to Mr Lawyer (sorry I forgot your name) for taking the effort to come out with all the questions. We certainly had loads of fun thanks to you!

4:17 pm
Close up of our hamper

4:33 pm
Cheers to our victory with Sarsi!

Shiu Kao was already looking forward to the next treasure hunt. He said anything less than RM50 per car please call him wor cause he needs to train up before going for the bigger hunts. His sister went for a hunt which costs RM400 per car.

All in all, we had fun and that’s all that matters.

Here’s to those that helped us to get the hamper
Kien Fei, for googling about Hamlet, Fab Four and Sauron.
Daddy, for confirming that Carole King does exist.
Soon Seng, for treasure number 2.
Sue Ann, for watching Friends. He’s an opthamologist.

Sincerely,
Yenli, resident of USJ 2.

Here’s an entry about the hunt by one of the contestants (Team no 8). Click here.
Scroll down to the entry below for the questions. Click here for answers.