The Drive

We yelled at each other in that compact space. We shouted and exchanged verbal abuses. We attacked each other’s reasoning. We glared angrily and stared furiously at each other. Neither wanted to budge. We stopped short of strangling each other but the increasing volume of voices surely indicated how close we came to that. I questioned his rationale and he didn’t like me challenging his reasoning. Oh yes, tempers were lost alright in that hot sunny Saturday mid-morning.

I told him I wasn’t stupid, that I wasn’t born yesterday (just because I’m a girl – and the only girl there - doesn’t mean that I’m stupid or that I’ll surrender easily and not fight for myself to be heard). He responded by insisting his reasoning was sound. We went on that way for a while, repeating ourselves, holding our respective ground and each stubbornly refusing to give in.

But amazingly, we managed to negotiate, come to a compromise, move on and put that aside. We finally accepted each other’s opinion albeit grudgingly and with scepticism - until the next encounter that had us bickering all over again.

But you know what? I wouldn’t trade that for anything else. I wouldn’t trade in my treasure hunting mates with anyone else. If we couldn’t meet the quorum, we’d rather pull out of the hunt than hunt with anyone else like we did last year. And every time we participate in the treasure hunt, the two of us in the front seats will most definitely and certainly argue and shout at each other, without fail. But at the end of it, there are no hard feelings, no grudges and no dissatisfaction because we’ve had our say. (Probably that’s why we always have that shouting match - to relieve ourselves. Better have it out in the open at the start than bottle up the emotions).

But there were funny moments too like when I showed him a blown-up picture (we also had to hunt for pictures) and asked, ‘Look, we have to find this picture. It looks like infinity with a semi-curve below it.’ He took one look and replied, ‘That’s a bow tie.’ I looked again, ‘A bow tie?!’ and only then saw that it was indeed a bow tie. Heh.

Of course over the years events happened that necessitated us finding replacements. We are hungry for success and we consider ourselves eager beaver treasure hunters who, while still wanting to have fun, want to win (of course everyone wants to win). We definitely don’t participate for the sake of the freebies – t-shirts, hotel stay, meals, opportunity to travel with one’s mates as a change to being at home (they are incentives but I’d give away the t-shirts as they are always short sleeved; staying at hotels and attending the dinner almost always means missing footie; and out-of-state treasure hunts means more time spent travelling leaving you more knackered at the end of the weekend). So when one mate resigned from TheOrganisaton, we had to rope in a new replacement. It took him a while to get the hang of things (and get used to the shouting in the front seats) and we (read: me the navigator and the driver mate above) had to be extra patient with him (our main passenger is a patient chap, too patient in fact. But we need that balance in the car).

This year, our replacement is away performing his Haj so again we had to look for yet another replacement. Admittedly not an easy task but we somehow managed to lure someone who probably hadn’t any clue as to what he was letting himself for. Oh well, he probably found our exchange of words amusing and entertaining. And he was wise enough to stay out of it.

Due to the austerity drive, the hunt this year was restricted to only the Klang Valley (I heard it was initially planned to end in Malacca) with accommodation provided and closing dinner held at our new premises. There was no subsidy (for fuel or treasures) as was common in previous hunts: in fact the treasures we had to buy were all donated to a charity centre as part of our Volunteers Programme. Smart strategy eh. Anyway, probably due to austerity drive (no opportunity to travel out of state and stay at a hotel and no subsidy; God, I don’t like people who do cherry picking like that) or probably because the hunt took place during the long year-end school hols (I heard it was initially planned for October), the hunt this year didn’t attract as many participants as before.

We were flagged off towards the end as we didn’t arrive that early at the starting point (we never did) but we caught up, fell back behind and caught up again. And we reminded ourselves about the potential horrible Saturday traffic (we had to take the notorious Middle Ring Road - couldn’t avoid that as it was part of the route – and were stuck alright but at least the traffic was moving) and allocated time for an anticipated stuck. We also managed to buy our treasures at a pump station convenience store (where we stopped for washroom break and our sugar snack – treasure hunting definitely requires a lot of energy for all that running, thinking and, ahem, bickering) and at a hypermarket (we had to buy a tin of cream crackers bearing the hypermarket brand) where we ran panting up and down the aisles (I couldn’t even remember the last time I ran) and did supermarket sweep. The counter boy was too slow though despite us telling him repeatedly we were in a race.

We also did something which we hardly managed to do before: arrived at the pit stop with more than an hour to spare; we were the first team too and even had to wait for the officials to arrive to clock in/submit our answers. So surprised were we at this unprecedented achievement that we took a while more poring through our answers, trying to determine whether we had everything covered and bought all the right treasures before clocking in. We were more used to poor time management (spending too much time at any one sector) that towards the end, we’d either lose a turning, lose our way or misread our clues/tulips, then we’d start arguing and shouting all over again and had to really sprint to the pit stop. The time we came in second two years ago was the only time we arrived in time with two minutes to spare; we were always penalised for being late all other times. It’s all how you strategise: one correct answer is worth two points while every additional five minutes or part thereof that exceeding your time limit will lose you two points (up to a maximum of 12 points or 30 minutes before your team is disqualified altogether), so you have to decide those points are worth getting or whether you should just skip the answers and head for the pit stop.

Then there are things beyond your control: your car overheats (like at least two cars at the second sector); your car breaks down; your car tyre suffers a puncture (like what happened to a team once); you lose your way; you get summoned (don’t think this has happened to anyone yet and if you do, you stand a great chance of an immediate disqualification); your car get involved in an accident or is held up by an accident; etc, etc. We’ve had our share of funny horror stories like the time when the car air-conditioner refused to work - it was pouring cats and dogs outside so we couldn’t even roll the windows down and in addition to struggling with figuring out our treasures we were slowly suffocating and dying - and the speedometer also stopped working after that (the most crucial part of all) resulting in us having to manually count the distance covered and guess when the next sector began – lose your distance and you’ll lose the subsequent sectors and answers within those sectors and you’ll drop points. So yes you definitely need to have luck as well.

Back to the hunt on Saturday: after clocking in/submitting our answer sheet and treasures, we went back to the last sector to have a late lunch at a Chinese Muslim resto (owned by a Malay couple though so I was puzzled why they called it a Chinese Muslim restaurant). The lunch was good (plus we had by then forgotten all the angry words exchanged earlier) but it could have been a lot better had the food all arrived at the same time and the waiter got our orders right.

This year, again we made some silly mistakes and missed some answers but (despite the shouting that took place) managed to secure fourth place. One more correct answer and we would have been in third place. Oh well. A little drop from our second place position the year before (we didn’t participate last year) but hey treasure hunt is a bit like footie. You can’t score all the time, you can’t win (or be in top three) all the time (in fact one team which was consistently either in first or second place was disqualified two years ago because they lost their way or something). There was even a footie-related question and as I remarked to some, ‘There is a reward for all those footie watching after all!’

And we could proudly say that we did it all on our own, without help from the others.

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Arsenal were held to an away draw at Boro. My hero skipper who was earlier a doubt for the match was back as were a few others. Liverpool were also held at home with dull Hull, even the Spuds held ManUre to a draw and Chelshit also didn’t manage to hammer the Hammers at home. Unfortunately, we dropped to fifth place as the Villains beat Bolton.

And we face Liverpool this weekend. How scary and frightening indeed. Both had won over ManUre and Chelshit although of course Liverpool are doing much better than Arsenal in the table.

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I finally managed to secure tickets for Mamma Mia! You wouldn’t believe what I had to go through to get them. And the amount we had to pay for each ticket was enough to enable me to fly to Jakarta by the national carrier with change to spare for shopping.

I sure hope it won’t disappoint. It’d better be worth it.