Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Peak

I tried to read the Family Law text book i borrowed from Abot (which in turn borrowed it from his roommate, Sabri) but after two chapters my mind wandered. My still aching body revolted against anymore attempts at revising the secular section of the Malaysian Family Law thus this entry. There is nothing much to say, the mid semester break was filled with fun activities of all kinds, there were visits to the various departments of the Police force, the air wing, the forensics department, the armoured wing and the armaments/ bomb defusal wing. Needless to say that all of them are equally interesting and without doubt it was intended as a promotion for us the final year students into joining the blue ranks of them coppers. It was not a bad career option now with the better pay and incentives but hey, who am i kidding? I'm a lazy ass when it comes to marching and obeying orders to the letter.

The crowning cherry for the cake would most definitely be our trip to conquer the peak of Gunung Nuang, the highest peak in the state of Selangor, or so they said, i never bothered to verify that fact. The initial plan was that we were to initiate the climb right after lunch on Saturday but the trip was fraught with many ill omens like us arriving late, the Land Rover carrying our dinner breaking down twice and well, suffice to say that with our time frame in haywire there were talks of cancelling the climb. In fact there was a split in the ranks on whether or not to continue with the climb with all the bad signs flying around, even the coaches mildly disapproved but the determined few resolved to reach the top (though i was in the 'confused' group at first with me not having a proper boot to conquer a mountain but it was then resolved with one of the nay-sayers lending his boots to me) and reach the top we did. After an exhausting, near-vertical climb of 4 hours or so we reached the summit. A quick lunch of bread and kaya most of us afterwards chose to commemorate the event with lots of camwhoring while i and a few others decided to leave a more permanent mark to the trees already scarred with old scratchings of victories celebrated. Abot with his always out-of-the-box ideas i fear, left a more degradeable mark to the peak. No doubt some of the trees will be grateful for it.

Even as we reached the top the weather did not agree with us, after half an hour of lounging and soothing our aching muscles we climbed back down the way we came from. For me the climb up was the best part of the whole journey the climb down was not. By the time we came down it was already around 4 and Abot and me and 2 others were the last ones to reach the base camp at the foot of the mountain, Camp Lolo. The previously silent dense foilage came to life as light faded as if welcoming the night. Around 7, we reached our almost deserted camping ground with the girls already down at the entrance to the forest reserve waiting for us the guys (the climbers were all guys, except for Abot. He's a confused case),climbers and non-climbers. The starving and smelly climbers raided the lunch left for them and after a mopping up operation all of us left the camp ground only to reach the entrance to the reserve an hour later. I was already dead tired by this time and the aches multiplied. We reached Shah Alam around 11 plus and after a fortifying supper with the Missus i called it a night. Which brought me to my current predicament, aches all over. No matter what position i take on my bed the pulsating aches would never cease its annoying beat. Sleep does not come easy for me hence this post. It is perhaps the price to pay for conquering the unconquerable, not the so-called highest mountain in Selangor but my own self. Never once did it occur to me that i am able to scale any elevation greater than 7 stories flight of stairs but i proved myself wrong. The thought crossed my mind that what a great nonsense to have climbed a mountain only to come down again and that the only thing you get is muscle pains but when the pictures we took up there were uploaded one by one onto Facebook it was all worth it. Pain, sweat, bad smell and all.

Next stop, Gunung Berembun. Ayoh semua!!!



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