Tuesday, January 13, 2009

CAFE BOTANIKAL HUNT: PLAYING CATCH UP

Due to the end-of-year holiday season, I had accumulated an unhealthy backlog of unedited post hunt narratives of recently ended treasure hunts. The last few days, I finally found the time to play catch-up. And that folks, was just what we did during the Cafe Botanikal Hunt - play catch-up from flag off right up until the end of the hunt.

This hunt took place a little more than three weeks ago, but every time I close my eyes or while pigging-out on a dish of Chinese meat stew aka Bak Kut Teh, the traumatic experience from that hunt keeps playing-back in my head. The only way of putting that to rest, I figured, was to pen about it. So, here goes.

MALACCA 21 Dec 08: This Clerk of Course has a reputation for setting truly tough hunts. Since we enjoyed the occassional torture, credit crunch or not, we decided to give his hunt a go.

And today in Hang Tuah's land, he was in no Santa-mood either. We were dropping questions right from the word go, like wild pheasants falling from the sky (during hunting season). The marrowing experience started from Q2 with the bitter after-taste lasting all the way until the end. The next few questions after the second one, we fared no better. My eyelids drooped when at Q10, I realised that only half of Page 1 was filled. At that point, we pretty much knew that the Fried Chicken reserved for the winners was out of our reach.

Things became slightly better for a few questions after we made a toilet stop to cool off. Gladly, the foul scent gave the smelly medicine away. Then Spidey had to swing-in to spoil things for us. O bama! (pronounced Oh! Bummer).

Realising that time was not on our hands, Vincent volunteered to be dropped to have his fun under the sun while the rest of us rushed off to the finish line! Glad that we had not met a corp in our haste, otherwise we would surely have had to face his books.

Vincent's e-mission was to fill up the many empty boxes in our answer sheet. That he did, picking up a few to add a little more respectability to our end result.

The winning team for the record, not only made the Malay jealous, they left the rest of us 9 other teams in awe too with their close-to-perfect performance in this spicy belacan of a hunt.

The Clerk of Course, all smiles after a successful hunt.


The winners with their carrot. Whatever happened to the promised cooked bird?



Cafe Botanikal Hunt Results
(full score: 80 points)

1st: Alexander Hoh, Claire Chin, Julie Tan, Goh Teck Koon (72)
2nd: Chai Koh Khai, Vincent Woo, Margaret Sha, Chong Voon Kiat (63)
3rd: Ramesh Rajaratnam, Liew Kok Seng, Chong Foo Seong, Lim Kong Yew (59)
4th: Mohd Jai Ahmad, Hanim Zainal, Abdul Haris Ali, Azni Abdul Aziz (46)
5th: Salehuddin Yusof, Ahmad Zahrol, Kheirol Nazib, Sharifah Nur Laila (42)
6th: Mok Cheng Foong, Mok Chiet Shiew, Lim Seng Fook, Sim Pen Nee (42)
7th: Rozita Moksinon, Omar Shariff Hyder, Muhd Faridzul Hakim, Shafiq Hafiz (27)

8th: Wendy Ang, Hoh Jin Fay, Chin Chiu Hsia, Yong Pui Wei (24)
9th: Azrin, Christie Yu, Shiren Jeet Kaur (21)
10th: K Mahendran, Jeegan, S Thangamani, P Jayathi (N/A)

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