During the weekend, I.....

.... watched Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls on Saturday evening. Without trying to give away too much of the movie, I found myself scratching my head somewhere in the middle of the movie. I thought the storyline was a bit too far fetched. Asking Harrison Ford who is in his 60's to be Indiana Jones might be a bit too much. I hope that Shia LaBeouf (he of Transformers fame) takes the role of Indiana Jones in the future. Why him? You just have to watch the movie to find out! I give this movie a 5 out of 10.

.... participated in the First Brunei Climbathon which took place at Tasek Lama in Bandar. On the climbathon part, I finished the course in about 50 minutes. That was twice as long as the first-place winner! The hardest bit was the so-called the Valley of Death, where one would have to go down right to the bottom of the hill and then climb on the next slope which was quite steep. Most of us stopped after a few steps uphill; it was very difficult and it was really hard on the knees and ankles. However, on the organisation (or perhaps the lack of), the organisers would really have to improve in the future.

Goodie bag was supposed to be collected on Friday at 2.30pm. When some friends arrived at the Tasek at the said time, the organisers were nowhere to be seen. When they eventually arrived, the goodies had not been put into the goodie bags. There was one particular item that was not included in the goodie bag; the number bibs. We were asked to collect them on the day of the event.

The first thing that we had to do when we arrived at the Tasek on Sunday morning was to queue for the number bibs. By the time we arrived, the queue was long and it took us half an hour to reach the desk. We got more frustrated as we found out that there was no separate queues for the different categories. At the registration table, the name list would get passed from one person to another as they tried to locate the runner's name. They would then have to go through the pile of numbers to find the runner's number. Since we were given two number bibs, one for the front and the other for the back, you would think that they were kept together. Wrong! The number bibs were separated so they would have to go through the pile again to find the second bib. Considering the amount of time that it took them to sort out the number bibs, it would have made sense that they had given them away when we collected the goodie bag on Friday.

As we got our number bibs, we were given this plastic bag containing a bottle of water, a pack of Milo drink and a pot of instant noodle (don't ask me why; I don't think we were supposed to eat it while running!). We had to refuse ours as it would be silly to carry them around while running through the jungle.

Because of the distribution of the number bibs, the flag-off got delayed for an hour. In the program, it was said that the different categories would be flagged off at different intervals. On the day, all the men, and similarly for the women, were flagged off at the same time. If you were serious runners and eyeing for the top prizes, it would mean that you would have to go through all the other runners in the boys', veterans' and fun runners' categories. That would have slowed you down significantly. And the path along the route was narrow, so overtaking could get a bit difficult.

The flag-off was not done before some performances. It would have been better if the performances were done during or after the race. It was made worse as the MC spent more than 10 minutes going through a long list of do's and don'ts. While she was doing this, you could hear the runners grumbling and wanting to get the race started. Many runners, who had warmed up for the race, had to repeat the whole thing again as they cooled down while the MC was humouring us with the do's and don'ts. One of the don'ts was that no one was allowed to help a fellow runner who stopped for whatever reasons; the penalty would be disqualification for both the helper and helpee. So if someone was dying of heart attack or being attacked by a wild animal, we were not supposed to stop and help!

Throughout the course, we were supposed to collect different coloured ribbons to indicate that we had gone through all the checkpoints and we were not taking shortcuts. The ribbons were loose pieces, so all the way you could see pieces of ribbons strewn around as runners had dropped them. At one checkpoint, I overheard the person who was giving away the ribbon telling his colleague that he was running out of the ribbons. I did not know if it was true, but imagine getting to that checkpoint, told that all the ribbon were gone and arrived at the finishing line only to be disqualified as you did not have the complete set of ribbons. Not good.

We were told that there would be one water station, but it was not to be seen at all. Not even a single drop of water was seen given away. And we were also told that there would be no water provided at the finishing line. We were expected to buy our water from the stall that they had put up. They should have given the water and the Milo pack at the end of the race, not at the beginning. For us who parked a good 10-minutes walk away and left our money in the car, we could not be bothered to go to our cars for our cash. Luckily there was this Milo van which gave away free cups of Milo, but it did not last for too long.

As we reached the finish line, we were told to hand in the complete set of ribbons, only to arrive at the registration table and told that it was only important if you finished in the prize-winnning positions. So we were turned away, while the MC was cheering the other runners as they crossed the line and reminding them to hand-in their ribbons.

The Climbathon was pushed back for more than one month from the original date, but it seemed that extra one month could not stop from the organisers not getting it right.

More story about the Climbathon here.

.... helped out as the Company took part in the Energy Fair at the Taman. Together with two of my staff, we conducted liquid nitrogen shows for the visitors. I could not really gauge the reaction of the visitors, I really hoped that they understood what I was saying! I tend to speak quickly when I get nervous and there were some confused looks in the crowd! Because of the delay with the Climbathon, I turned up late for the Energy Fair, so late that one of my staff actually told me that she felt as if she was being stood up and dumped!

I have no pictures to show; I will ask around if anyone got any pictures to share.