Broga Hill and Brands

Me, Alex and Kel hiked up Broga Hill yesterday :)

Truth be told, the night before yesterday, I went out with my family to catch Pirates of the Caribbean 4. The show was at night, at 8.10 pm so it finished at around 10.30pm. By the time we got home, it was already 11pm. I told myself I was going to bed by 11.15 pm but one distraction led to another and before I knew it, I was watching some laughing dog video on YouTube and it was already 1.00 am :P So i quickly cleaned up, got to bed and slept. Before I knew it, it was already 3.00 am and I had to get up again, all tired, unrefreshed and cranky :( The reason for needing to get up so early was so we could make it to the top in time to catch the sun rise. Keeping reading and check out the pictures below to see if we made it in time :)

So I was at Alex's house by 3.45 am. Kel came to pick us up at 4.00am. After about an hour or so we reach the base of the hill. The surroundings were of an oil palm plantation, to someone who hadn't been there before, the place would've been impossible to find as there were hardly any signs there. The nearby towns were more like 'Malay Kampungs' rather than towns because I couldn't spot a single Chinese or Indian restaurant along the way and the place looked and smelled like a kampung :P

We started hiking about a minute after we parked. This was around 5 am. There were only 2 other cars there at that time. I could tell that the 3 of us were the first few of the day hiking up the hill. We started out relatively quick, the the area around us was still mostly oil palm trees. after about 15 minutes, the gradient got steeper. The surroundings changed from oil palm trees to think grasslands. The pathway was also narrower than compared to when we started out. We reached the first checkpoint/ peak about 20 minutes after we had started. We took a breather here for about 10 min, enjoyed the view(almost pure darkness) for a bit :)

Alex resting.

Kel with his torchlight.

Me with my head lamp on :)

Peace much :)

I saw this patch of grass. I don't think its that clear in the picture(phone camera) but that small patch of grass was actually growing out of a rock!!.....thought it was kinda cool :P

The moon smiling at us :)

The town down below from the first peak.

This is the town from the second peak, a little brighter now cuz the sun was on its way up.

This picture was taken at the highest peak on the hill. No good pics of the sun rise because it was cloudy and foggy. Couldn't even find the big orange circle in the sky :(

On our way back down :) Breakfast was calling :)

Doesn't this picture look like a scene from Lord of the Rings ??!! If you look closely you can see Frodo :D

A piece of rope tied to a tree branch. Needed to be climbed to get to the highest peak.

" Look!! Its Sam and Frodo !! "

These pics so remind me of Lord of the Rings :)

LOTR RIGHT?!!? :D

Camwhore :P

Saw a small durian at the base when we stopped to get some coconuts to drink.

We went to USJ 21 to eat dim sum for breakfast :) Was an exhausting morning. By the time I got back, which was around 10.30am , I immediately took a bath and slept til 330 pm. It was a tiring day, but fun of course :)

Went to Ikea jsut now with my mom and bro. Just walked around carrying the Ikea shopping bag mostly. My mom likes to go to Ikea. She seldom buys stuff, most of the time she goes there just to look around. We didn't buy anything major today, just a small mat and some mugs.

We went over to the curve after that, I bought 3 shirts from Brands :)

Frankly speaking, I'm not the shopping type. I really do think its a waste of time and money. You're basically buying more clothes than you can possibly use. Some people even buy them just for a one time use and then leave them in the depths of their drawers of cupboards, never to see sun light again. I shop practically only once a year and thats for my CNY clothes. BUT Brands is the one and , so far, only store that I'd do my casual shopping at. They have ACTUAL clothes that people would ACTUALLY wear daily and not just chuck them aside after wearing them a few times :P

The shirt I got :) :

Chemistry joke :) Nerds can be funny too :D

2 Thumbs Up!! :)

Thats all for now :)

Energizer Night Race Goodie Box

Just received my Goodie bag from the energizer run :)

For most of you who don't know, about a month and a half ago, I took part in the Energizer Night Race at the Sepang Circuit.

However, the event was poorly managed by the organizers, a one 'Expose Media'. Because of this, the people at Energizer stepped up and took full responsibility for the entire thing. They refunded everyone back in full and they also sent out the Goodie bags that most people failed to collect on the day itself. Read on to find out why me and the 10000 other runners say it was terribly managed :P

Problems of the Energizer Night Race 2011 :

• RM10 parking. Legal/Illegal? Syndicate?
  

People were dressed in RELA uniforms outside, 'selling' parking tickets (blank pieces of pink coloured paper) that cost RM10. Even after some paid the absurdly high fee, there literally wasn't enough space (no not parking spaces, I literally mean ground area) for people to park their cars. And its all the way out in Sepang!! There are no buses that go by or LRT or MRT stations around! How else can some one go to the race if not by car ? And when I say 'people were dressed in RELA uniforms' , you have to understand that getting a RELA uniform is as easy as going into a uniform store and picking it up. How do i know if the people there weren't trying to pull a big hoax ?

• Not enough headlamps

After going through the tight narrow tunnel (picture below), I reached this room literally full of people, pushing and shoving each other, trying to get to the stack of boxes at one end of the room that contained the headlights. There were no personel in charge of giving out the lights at all. How were they suppose to know who signed up and who didn't ? Who paid RM50-70 registration fee and who didn't ? In the end, lots of runners didn't get their headlamps.

• Only one water station functioning instead of two.

Not only was there just one water station through out the whole race, they gave out those 1.5L bottles of water! If you're new to long distance running, picture this : You're tired and exhausted after running for some number of kilometers. You come across a water station that's suppose to supply u with a sufficient amount of water to rehydrate you and moisten you're throat again. Instead of giving you paper cups of water that can be disposed of at a rubbish bin set up near by, they give you a big 1.5L bottle. What are you gonna do with a big bottle like that ? Drink 500ml and throw the rest away? Or drink 500ml and carry the other 1L with you, its not like you're EXHAUSTED or anything RIGHT ?

• Lack of direction by race marshals at finishing line. They were rude.

• Unorganized distribution of goodies bag.

Only 2 collection counters were present during that night. Both with a line of participants each literally (I can not stress this anymore than I am now) taking me 15 minutes to walk to the end of (just one of the lines) . They began throwing the bags out at people after sometime.

Can you see the Goodie bags collection counter ?

At the counter area.

• No finisher medals

From the event's website, it is stated that if a participant finished the race within a given amount of time, he or she is entitled to a finisher medal. When i reached the finishing line they (the race marshals) told me that medals were only for the top 10 runners. Lots of other runners were absolutely frustrated when told this.

• Not to forget, the rude MC

I'll let the MC's post on her Facebook wall speak for itself:

And yes, the English she used then was as sucky as the one in her post. Loads of people couldn't understand half the rubbish she was blabbering on about.

With all that in the past, I was happy to have gotten justice :) And my medal of course :D

The parcel :)

Addressed to me :D (I don't get much mail, so 'syok' a little) :D

The medal :) (front)

Back

The finisher shirt

Some freebies, from the left : The headlamp 'given out' on that night (its because some people didn't get their headlamps that they had to give everyone a new one because they didn't know who got theirs and who didn't), a razor and a battery charger.

Top (the finisher certificate) and bottom (the bag that all the goodies were suppose to be given out in )

Thats it for now :)

Me and some friends plan to climb Broga Hill on Monday, so I'll most probably be posting on that next :)