Trip to the Summit

The next time someone tells you Mt. Kinabalu is a trip through Hell. Believe them. Except this hell is a freezing Hell.

So I've actually been back from my Mt. Kinabalu Trip for quite some time now. It's just that I was too tired and uninspired to blog anything about it yet.

As Sabahan's, I bet nearly everyone of you have been asked the question "Have you climbed Mt. Kinabalu before?" at least once. And from now onwards, I'm proud that I can actually say "YES!"


So what's so special about this Mt. Kinabalu, for those who HAVEN'T climbed, you might ask. Well, first of all, the peak is 4095.2 meters high; the journey to the peak and back down would take you 2 days and 1 night; it cost me a bloody RM550++ (price as of 2009); and lastly, if you ain't from some country that snows.... lemme just say you could keep your fruits and veggies perfectly fresh all the way up to the peak if you brought any.


My trip however was a 3 days 2 nights one. That very morning on the 21st before I left my house... I looked out my window, and saw

and I looked back at my 12-kg packed backpack and double checked my jackets....... and I said... "nah... It can't be that bad"... ... ... I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

The first night was a stay at the renowned Kampung Mesilau!! Where we spent most of afternoon time having a foot-massage in the blisteringly cold river....

which made your toes feel like they were missing, and your feet feel like... cold penguin feet....

But of course... us little children couldn't care less about having our feet frozen and kicked off our shoes to the side.

Owners at Play

Just to take pictures...

Well... after about an hour and a half of getting our feet numb, we trotted back for a cold shower 0.0 ... .... Cold + Cold = Hot ^^ just like negative + negative = positive ^^ ... ... ... okay... nevermind me...

The cold shower after a cold leg dip was seriously a WRONG idea. Having a 10 degrees celcius shower would practically make girls scream and guy's balls shrink into nothingness.


Having paid more than 500 bucks to freeze our asses in some wet river though... there IS... of course... something good that comes out of that. And that is buffet meals~! We had a filling steamboat dinner that night, and an even more stuffing breakfast the next morning. I have to say that the most enjoyable thing about this trip I had...... is that I did not have to worry about FOOD!!

Even the squirrels had to take the chance to have breakfast with us.


At 9:00 am of the 2nd day.... locked and loaded, we headed off

The first day's walk is an 8km walk uphill.... I have to admit that the road climbing up is actually very EASY.... especially for a person like me, who only did serious training 1~2 week prior to the climb.... and who usually sits at home only playing COD and O2Jam.... all it takes is 1.5 litres of water, 1 bar of chocolate, 1 lunch pack, and LOTS and LOTS of REST along the way... ... You'll feel as if your brain was going to explode and your heart would stop any minute... and if it rains, bravo~, you just got yourself some natural air-con that's pre-set to 12 degrees C and cannot be turned down.

But don't sweat it =) because there's always a resting hut within an hour's walk from where you are. And if you EVER happen to run out of water along the way.... and you're like in the middle of the whole journey and nearly half dead from thirst, and you expect to re-fill your bottle on the road... there's always this:

It really does make soOooo much sense when you're in the middle of nowhere and somewhere... with no water left... to be informed that you should've brought more water doesn't it? Thank you for your Understanding... Oh sure... I DO understand... ~.~


Anyway... it's a good thing I didn't run out of water myself. But pity the other people who thought they could get some water along the way... uh-uh.... too bad for them.


Honestly though. If anybody were to ask me where was the Best place in Sabah to have a photoshoot. In all honestly, my suggestion would be: Mt. Kinabalu.

Besides the challenging surroundings and backgrounds to take photographs with, there're still much insanely beautiful scenery to take pictures of. If you're not so interested in the scenery, you could even try some of this.... ....

Looks like some kind of album cover page if you ask me ^^

Of course... for serious photographers.... carrying your full set equipment, tripod, and lighting could break your back in 101 places. You'll need so many lenses from wide angle to telephoto to macro to cover the whole heavenly sky to the tiny squirrels and spiderlings which made Spiderman spiderman.

Cutting off from photography talk... we arrived at mid-mountain... or so-called Laban Rata in the evening.... 8 hours of climb, rest, eat, talk, photo-shoot..... I guess we did fine ^^ But the worst was yet to come....

That night. None of us bathed. We stayed in Gunting Lagadan, which didn't have a heater... so the water was like... ... 5 degrees?? But it seemed that Laban Rata wasn't doing much better =)

We continued our climb at about 2:30 am midnight. Climbing in pitch-black darkness. The darkness was one thing... the steepness of the mountain is another!! and the COLD WIND is the worst part~!

Unfortunately, since my camera flash is out of order, I don't have any pictures of the climb T.T

To cut the long story short... we climbed 3 hours in the Cold Night... walking on without a clue where we were going (of course the only clue was.... the peak)... all we did was walk along a the white rope which our whole journey depended on. In the middle of the night, 50 Meters LOOKED like a 100 meters!! But FELT like 500~!!!

Your Life Line

It was more of a test of Mentality that physical fitness I'll tell you:

"Your Body is about to collapse... your lips are nearly frozen... you are 2 kilometers more to the peak. You can choose to walk 500 meters downhill back to your warm room... or you could walk uphill till your eyes froze for another 2 kilometers... Which do you choose...."


Somehow... I managed to make it in to the peak in time for sunrise ^^ But I was already too tired to be taking photographs... so I just watched... while my face was blown dry by the icy wind.

To sum it all up... I'm pretty satisfied and proud of myself for actually reaching the peak... because it wasn't only once, that the idea of turning back and just giving it all up came to mind.... but I thought that if so many others could've made it, I can too, and I pushed on...

**I'll give a hint to those intending on climbing and haven't climbed before.. Looking at the photo on top.... and all other photos taken by people at Mt. K's peak... it seems small doesn't it?? I'll tell you that... from the place I was standing when I took that photo, to the tiny person walking there.... is about 100 ~ 150 meters of downhill walk.... which would take you about.... 4~5 minutes to walk... ^^


If you asked me if I'd want to climb again.... my answer:

I'd love to. But with better camera equipment, a flash... and a tripod.
When? Not anytime within a year's time, haha.
And this time I'm gonna train harder and further so that I won't have to be bothered with being tired while making my way up...
Oh.... and if I didn't have to worry about the price =.=.... RM600 a year.... no thanks... that's gonna blow my pocket.

The Climb's Eve

Actually I had a few things to update and talk about. But lately have been a little more busy for me since we were busy 1. Preparing for Mt. Kinabalu, 2. Yam cha and yam cha, 3. Left 4 Dead 2.

So right now it's after my midnight shower, sitting in front of the computer, with a cup of warm honey drink, and taking a rest after packing my backpack for tomorrow's Mt. Kinabalu climb =)


Considering that I've been in Scouts for 6 years and gone through all the journeys necessary to actually become a 'King Scout' (though I didn't actually manage to become one due to time limitations T_T), I'll consider myself quite experienced with packing for hiking and going on journeys. Except THIS time, it's going UP.

Of course this isn't everything...

And as I was packing.... I had a dilemma choosing between this....

and this

Well, I was thinking that the Desa's Finest milk could help fill my stomach.... while Mr. Walker could help keep me warm.


But in the end, I brought neither =.=

2 weeks into December

So... it's 7:30 in the morning... and why am I awake?? Because I got "put aeroplane" for my morning training for Mt. Kinabalu session. And I'm pissed!... ... Okay... maybe I'm not, thanks to years of training from my classmates where half of them are good "pilots". And I wouldn't wanna go back to sleep after trying so hard to wake up at 6:00 in the morning would I??

**put aeroplane, translated literally from 放飞机 in chinese, which in chinese... is used when someone decides to say "Hey! Sorry, I can't make it, you guys will have to do without me~ =)" sort of thing.


It's past week 2 for December.... and slowly, things are picking up it's pace.... And life have been starting to get 'meaningful' (whatever meaningful means to you, hehe).

They're 2 simple things that make life fun and meaningful for me.
One, Games... with friends of course.
Two, Friends... with food and drinks =)



So I've been trying out the new game Left 4 Dead 2 a couple of times with my friends~!! And find it just as good/bad... as its prequel.

Gameplay is overall the same if you've played Left 4 Dead.... What this part 2 gives you is a couple of fine new weapons and zombies ^^ Zombies look much cooler in part 2, with much more variety of clothing and funny faces, haha, yea... I like to pay attention to the funny detail. The Computer controlled zombies are much more cleverer this time too~~

So I wasn't planning to write a full review on it. You wanna know what this new game is like? Let's meet at Cyber X and we'll show you how it's like, haha.


On to the 2nd fun and meaningful things in life, I've been hanging out with friends lately... in the morning... for jogging, always followed up by a nice and filling yam cha somewhere nearby. I won't be posting photos of this yet, since I decided to upload them all up along AFTER I finished my Mt. Kinabalu trip.

Yesterday though, we had a casual outing and my first attempt at a photoshooting session T.T

To be honest, I learned it ain't easy having a shoot with people as subjects, haha. Especially the setting, make-up, poses, design and stuff. I'm more into... shooting natural stuff without having to set-up or pose or choose a spot especially for the photo. But anyway~~~ For my first photoshoot, I'm somewhat satisfied with the results ^^ although there's many places I realised I could've done better when post-producing the photos.

Lot's of OOF (Out of Focus) and undefined subjects... busy background and stuff. But hey.... it's okay I guess.... considering it's not even a year I've started photography yet, hehe. My camera isn't even a year old yet ^^

There weren't many pictures that managed to pass through my 'filtering process', but to view all the pics anyway... they're in my Facebook Album.




My favourite photo for the day:

Sorry Jo. I seriously like this one. Haha~

Small Talk

So, when do you remember the last time someone started small talk with you? Well, actually small talk happens so often sometimes that I don't even realise it IS small talk. But today, I'm gonna be talking about the LAME Small Talk.


Ever sat at the canteen, quietly eating lunch with a couple of friends, and have a classmate or coursemate walk past and say "Hey there, having lunch?"..... "No? I'm examining the food?!?" .... Gosh... I don't know what it's like in other countries... but I get these questions ever so often that sometimes when I come to think of it, I realise how stupid they sound.

Okay, maybe that example wasn't as bad as it sounded. But there were actually times when I had someone I know come up to me while I'm having my meal in a restaurant... and going like "Hi! What are you doing here?" And of course... I'll politely answer him the obvious... "Ehehe, nothing much, just grabbin a meal~". Or, I actually at least once... or maybe more than a few times... while coming out of class from uni, bumped into a couple of friends... and they go "Hey~ Just finished class?" =.=" .... .... ....

Well, I appreciate it if they're trying to start up a conversation... or... if they ask something more 'informative' like... "How was class?" or... "What are you eating?" or... "So how did you do in your exam?"... But stuff like "Shopping?", "Going to the movies?".... c'mon, gimme a break... you know the answer already.

As for myself, I really only do ask such question when I REALLY don't know what you're doing... or mostly I'd ask them just to confirm. Most of the time I don't say anything at all. Usually just a "Hey there" or "Ui~" is more like me.


The Award winning small talk so far though.... was something I heard a couple of days ago when I was jogging around Tun Fuad Stephens park as training for our upcoming Mt. Kinabalu trip.

"Hey Bert~ What brings you here? Jogging?"

(Duh~ I live here?~)

It's December~~!!

A year has once again passed, and December is back~! Ah... December December, the month to Remember. December always comes with memorable joys and all kinds of events going on all month. So is this year's. Seems to me that this December is gonna be a busy month (I hope ^^).



It's been 5 days into December, and so far... okay.... I haven't been doing much... yet. But there's plenty of plans up ahead, such as training my ass off.... for what? for conquering my hometown's 'peak', Mt. Kinabalu... getting wasted at parties (if there are any...) And of course looking forward to see what will come out of this year's New Year's Celebration!!


Well, as I said, I haven't really done anything so far for this month, but for starters.... I got myself a new Lens for my camera ^^ Namely the Nikkor AF-S 35mm F1.8 DX.

That's the sucker. Looks small? Think again. It cost me a whooping RM800!! But what can I say... I sure have an expensive hobby eh... it took me more than 6 months to save up the money for it. Sigh.

Anyway, in case you're wondering what's so goody about it. I'll give a short explanation. The F1.8 means it's capable of a larger maximum aperture (hole) size, compared to my previous kit lens. Meaning I'm gonna be able to shoot at faster shutter speeds, and also have a better "blur" effect. ... .... .... .... Okay =.= maybe I'm just talking to the wall. But anyway, just put it simply, I won't buy something that won't benefit me.

This is my actual lens. Taken using the new 35mm F1.8 Nikkor. Look any different? ~.~ okay... maybe it doesn't look so different here. (Well, but if you really wanna compare, compare the 'blur' of my laptop with in the 2 pics, notice that the first pic has more detail, 2nd pic is blurer). I guess you'll just have to wait and see the difference from my new photos from now on.


The Lens turned out to be pretty interesting so far. Fast and silent auto-focusing, nice 'bokeh', small and lightweight.... and I'm satisfied with all but ONE.

I just wish Nikon could've been a bit less 'cheap' and stuck to creating their products in Japan or countries that had better reputation in their manufacturing quality.... ~.~