Eco-Challenge

Date: 16th of April 2010

As usual I was early in the office and was waiting for someone to open the door. While waiting, I flipped through the morning papers and came across an interesting cover on something called eco-challenge. Reading on, it was about the 2009 Challenge which was held in Tioman Island and the one this year was to be held in about 1-months time!

The write up was interesting enough for me to google them up and upon gathering more information, I was already keen to sign up. Registration fees was only RM30, location in Tioman, and hey why not! Firstly I was interested to be part of the race, secondly, I wanted to visit Tioman since I have not been to an island off the coast before. In the excitement, I rang up my good girlfriend (gf) and asked her if she was keen. She was having her holiday break at hometown then.

Her initial response was - no... I've got a meeting at my centre the next day and I have to register for my next semester by then. Ah well, got to do it alone then, I thought. Continued on with work afterwards and applied for my leave the very same day!

Sometime later the same day, my gf calls and asks if I have found someone yet. I said no. Told her that i've promoted it to my office mates by then but no one seems to be solid keen to take part. So I was probably going to do it myself and she said she can come with me afterall, given that the trip was to return the same day after the race. I thought for a bit and said, yes. Why not. The actual race is on Saturday morning. Scheduled to finish by 4:30 pm. And we can take the next ferry back and catch the next bus back to KL. See, that does sound do-able right?
If you are not already laughing at me at this juncture then you must still be clueless as to what exactly we were looking at. Well, read on & in the next few entries, you will know why the wish-ful thought was not so practical after all.

So all agreed on, I went online to register for both myself and gf to go for the eco-challenge the same day during my lunch time. It was too much excitement to contain and without wasting any more day, I decided to start a jogging-routine for at least thrice a week.

We held off the logistics arrangement until we had a black and white confirmation from the organizers that our participation is confirmed. Confirmation email came in 2 days later. By then our exercise plan already took off and we were already scouting for a hotel and to confirm other details.

As usual, the procrastinators that we are, confirmation of hotel, transport and all other details we only done 4 days before the race day - 3rd of May!