2010 March 12 - Hahaha ODA Irau

After 4 days 3 nights working, eating, drinking, driving, flying, boating, swimming, shopping at Langkawi, 3 hours upon reaching Kota Kemuning, we are on the road  to Mountain Trip again. Puffy is showing very sad face to all of the ODA who're preparing, boarding all the equipments to Hilux. If Puffy able to speak, she would said :"huh, you all are leaving again, does it so necessary to be so hurry leaving for next trip even without any rest?" But as ODA's dog, she knows ODA is always in "Proceed" mode.

The 3 hours sitting inside the house, seeing ODAs and Monica running in and out while reminding me to get some sleep, but I'm just restless due to the excitement on hiking again feeling. After 18 years in this activity, the excitement is always remain, always excited with hiking trip cause in every trip, it marks a progress on particular ODA perform as trip leader, how much and how well she/he has learned and developed from ODA, what is his/her ability to perform and share his/her experience with others, how well he/she able to lead, arrange and organize in whole expedition and how spontaneous she/he able to response on unexpected event. Overall, for my personal perspective :- 2010 March 19th - 21st Irau Trip Leader had done a GREAT GREAT JOB!!!! Human Being tends to make mistake, the most important thing is how well we will able to make correction,recover from the mistake counts. 

If there is any mistake that any of us found during the trip, such as maybe meal plan imperfect, uneven ground to sleep, carry too much water, too many jokes, too much fried chicken, too clean, too happy, hike too fast or hike too slow, please take it as an LEARNING EXPERIENCE and hope each of us able to convert it to memorable experience, make your sweats, bruises, dirt and trip fee worth it.

During the 3 days 2 nights moment, there are many times most of us tried very hard to hold on our sleeping worm, try to stay awake to jokes and cook. I remember Alice jumped out from her dome and start to fry most of the chickens, while Sian Seong, Bee Suan, Siu Kat and Chian Nii also half sleep, half holding on torch lights and frying pans to finish the tasks and the rest of us being as audiences or comedians to keep everyone awake to make sure we finished what we have planned to do for that night activity even though non of us actually want to eat after heavy junk food and dinner, just for the sake for keeping each other companion.... A Truly Memorable Moment for Myself After Many Years of Hiking with lots of people, very rare this scene happen in some other trips. 

Another memorable scene which 9 girls + Sian Seong sitting inside the dome, "tornadoing" the junk food majority supply by Chee Loong and always junk food ends up sinking inside those girls stomach while the guys outside just if lucky get a piece of  two only or sometimes the guys even need to share the bites with each other. This scary situation is something never ever happen before in any ODA's expedition..... Irau Female members --- All of you are really INCREDIBLE !!!!

There is an old saying, beauty will get more attention. From what I can recall, the Pretty girl in the trip gets lots of attention from our male hiking members. Such as Jack and Chee Loong 2 on 1 guiding Swee Sim; Kenn and Jimmy 2 On 2 guiding Alice, Swee Sim; Yu and Jai Wong 2 on 2 guiding Swee Sim and Chai Hong; While Sian Seong and Siu Kat 2 on 2 guiding Chu Yee and Monica.....luckily at the last 30 minutes before car park, we saw Chee Loong and Jai Wong waiting to help us to carry our backpack. Finally gained back some confident, at least we(Siew Ting, Chian Nii, Bee Suan + Me) are consider as "pretty" as well - hahahaha. To be serious, thanks to you guys for helping all of the 1st timer gals, you guys have really have given big big help, and I am very glad to see especially Chee Loong, Kenn and Jai Wong are applying ODA objective of "Sharing" their hiking wisdom and skills with all of the new comers.

Hopefully few more years later, we will get to see more and more people who hike along with ODA will carry forward with what ODA has been doing all these years "To Share our Passion with Everyone"

One thing I feel that we can do better and better especially in trip like Irau terrain..... Be responsible to ourself and our belonging. During the trip, we have jokes about burn this and that after seeing a group of Pahang University hikers burning the rubbish at campsite and Siew Ting has even confronted them face to face and urge them to carry down their trash by even providing the plastic bag for them to collect their trash. In the mean time, our ODA hiking members was talking will throw away the shoes, socks after the trip cause it is too dirty to wash.....
Well, one of the reason we want to get close to nature is to learn the Beauty and The Greatness of Nature in the mean time enhance Our Consciousness of Preserving the Nature Environment. I hope with ODA Irau trip experience, we have some Environmental Consciousness which we shall put "Preserving, Recycling, Reuse" as our items usage priority rather than putting "Brand, Beauty" as priority. a) Wash our shoes and re-use them even it becomes really dirty after trip.

b) Label our personal belonging such as spoon, plastic bottle, chopstick, container and re-use it for next trip. 
The scene we get to see during the trip is, most of us choose not to search back our spoon, plastic bottle, chopstick and containers cause they've became very dirty and troublesome to carry back and most of these items end up in trash. 

Keep in mind... By wasting one items, we have directly demanded another natural resources from the earth.  This is one of the reason that ODA requests group members to prepare own rice, salt, sugar, oil from home to avoid wastage rather than every trip we buy 5kg of these items and waste it after trip. Let's make our earth smile(sunshine) more normal to us again rather than cry (Rain) suddenly to us most of the time. 

It's a Great, Great, Great Fun trip, lots of jokes and each of us response in very positive way to each other especially our "Health Minister" , "Cooking Minister", "Siang Kong", always being among the key person of jokes,  Thanks to all of your Big Big Hearts for accepting and responding on the jokes.

I do hope 19 of us will make our best efforts to appear at Gunung Bujang Melaka Expedition and catch up with each other again. 

It's great to know each of you :- Alice, Sim Mei, Grace, Chu Yee, Monica, Rainbow, Siu Kat, Kwan Leong,  Jack and Swee Sim.  

It's truly an enjoyable and memorable trip for me.

Wish each of 2010 March 19-21st Irau Members :- 

Healthy and Happy always. Cheers !!!!