Last Weekend Revisited

Time really flies. Another weekend has come to an end. Nothing interesting about this weekend and I am sitting here, blogging about last weekend, though a bit outdated. Haha... no choice, weekdays are normally occupied by work and tireness after work. Time is always not enough.

21/09, Friday - Happy Birthday!
Let me begin with last Friday. Went to Ed's place for Dan's birthday celebration. It was another round of gluttony after Yung's birthday party not long ago at Ed's place. This round, I bought some Chinese kuih-muih comprising cucuk udang, angku, kuih talam, kuih sengkuang and a lovely piggy pastry (猪仔饼, made of ingredients similar to mooncake's, but yokeless) with a cute yellow ribbon on its piggy head. KY bought a walnut cake. Ian bought some Teow Chew pastries. Yung bought ham yuk choong. Henry bought Ice Cream. The great host, Ed cooked prawn mee and Dan, the birthday boy brought himself.

While waiting for others to arrive, the hungry quad - Ed, Yung, KY & me whacked partially of the kuih muih and ham yuk choong, destroyed the evidence, be back to our positions, and continued waiting for the rest, as if nothing had ever happened. Haha :D

While the rest had finally arrived, Ed cooked delicious vegetarian prawn mee for everyone. It was then followed by makan-makan of the various food that we bought. Before the pig cutting ceremony, we were betting if the piggy pastry contained any filling (馅) inside or was just a plain pastry. The losers got to wash the dishes. There were 2 votes of from Ed & Ian vs 5 votes from the rest. Guess what, the answer was YES, piggy had got fillng, u know. Haha... Ed & Ian lost!

Apart from the gluttony, it was a happy Friday night filled with laughter. Really love this bunch of people, they rock!

Got home at 12 something mid night. I got to continue with another task, packing for my Berkelah Waterfall trip on Sat morning. When I finished packing and showering, it was close to 3am on Sat morning! Gosh! I was left with 2 1/2 hours to sleep before waking up again at 5:30am.

22/09 & 23 /09 Sat & Sun - Hutan Lipur Berkelah

The alarm clock rang at 5:30am. I woke up with a sleepy head, got ready and headed for Johny Bravo's place to gather.

This was my 3rd trip to Berkelah Waterfall. There were 5 guys & 5 gals going for the trip this time. Except Johny Bravo (1 of my old time outdoor kaki), I knew non of the rest. My car was 1 of the 3 event cars. Johny Bravo and I took turn to drive, with his friend as the passenger in my car.

The Karak Highway was a boring route. Lots of lorries and cars that drove at snail speed and suddenly slowed down, turned left or right without showing signal earlier. It was kinda torturing as I had to stay very focus on driving, with only 2 & 1/2 hours of sleep the night before.

Lost count of how many hours that we had driven till we reached 46KM before Kuantan. From here, we took a lorry ride of about 10 to 15 minutes to reach the starting point to hike up to the waterfall.

It was a 2+ hours of hike with slippery rocky paths. The weather was god damn hot and the sun was burning. When we reached the wider and flatter camp site, it was already occupied by a group of people. We proceeded to set up our tents and kitchen nearer to the waterfall. After the set up, it was about 3pm. After biting some bread with tuna and some junk food as so called lunch, I wanted to take a nap but it was just too freaking hot to do so.

Some had already jumped into the waterfall and cooled themselves down. I can't really swim, thus I was just wandering around to kill time, kept asking why was the sun not setting yet. It was god damn bloody freaking hot!!! Finally I couldn't take it anymore and went to soak myself into the waterfall at the shallow edge, with legs still able to touch the ground. The water was damn cooling. After a while, I came up and proceeded to the kitchen to help out Johny Bravo for our mega meals for dinner.

I thought my role was merely the assistant cook as I promised him earlier. Who knew, he asked if I could cook the dinner. Well, since I had never cooked during any hiking trip before (I only cook in the kitchen), I took up the responsibility as the chief cook. It was actually quite fun and challenging though as there were only a pot and a spoon instead of wok and spatula. I had assitants helping to cut and wash the ingredients, passing me this and that, holding the cooking pot and rinsing the pot. Ahahaha... I felt like a queen, as I could just focus on cooking, the most enjoyable part from the entire process of cooking, skipping the preparation and the washing parts.

Guess what? I had no idea what Johny Bravo had bought and what to cook. Thus, like movie making, he acted as the director and gave instructions on what dishes to be cooked. At times, he even forgot what was supposed to be cooked with what. Ahahaha... Well, that was not really an issue. With my experience, that was easily solved by cooking the ingredients in the right combination. :)

I spent 3 hours sitting on the rock, cooking 7 dishes altogether! It was tiring till I stood up at intervals to exercise my knees and buttocks that were getting numb. While I was busy cooking, an unanticipated accident happened. while I was trying to reach and grab something infront, my left hand accidentally touched and got burnt by the gas canister, with fire just off! It formed a wound of cooked skin near the curve between my thumb and the second finger, with a dimension of 2.5cm x 2.3cm x 1cm. Damn it! I just fell 3 times within 60 seconds and injured my left wrist, with the bruises still on my butt a weekend before and here came another injury 1 week later.

OK, back to the dinner cooking. It was getting dark. I passed the baton to the assistants to complete the last dish as I needed to shower at the waterfall before it got too dark. You know, I can't really swim.

It was dinner time. Let me present to you our mega dinner comprising the following dishes:
1. Scrambled eggs with tomato, union and fried garlic
2. Japanese tofu with minced chicken
3. Potato with minced chicken
4. something with minced chicken (Aiikkss! Can't recall what this dish was, cooked too many dishes till confused. I remembered dividing the minced chicken into 3 portions.)
5. Oyster sauce mushroom
6. Mixed Vege
7. Sardin, sausage and chilly in 1 pot

Don't play play, probably more luxrious than you normal dinner at home. Haha...

The moon was so bright and we were having real moonlight dinner by the waterfall. Romantic, huh? hehe... Too bad, there were not many stars seen.

After dinner, they rest played game while I, who almost K.O out of exhaustion went back to the tent to get some rest. Initially thinking of getting some sleep and then got up for yuba barley dessert (fu chook yi mai tong sui), cooked by Johny Bravo. I was just too exhausted that I decided to let go the dessert.

After dessert, it was bed time. Some went to sleep in the tents while some decided to sleep outside to enjoy the gentle breeze by the waterfall.

Not knowing what time it was, it started to rain, HEAVILY! Those who were sleeping outside started to stampede back to the tents. Johny Bravo who was already wet decided to sleep outside in order not to contaminate the tent. I was 1/2 awake, hearing him walking here and there, making sure everyone was OK.

It wasn't over yet. Some tents got flooded a bit, including my tent but with the lightest extend. Some mentioned that they were like sleeping on the water bed. Haha... I was sleeping at the side, could felt the wind blowing and some rain got splashed into the tent. My backpack got wet and I found my hair got wet a bit the next morning I woke up. I wonder how Johny Bravo slept outside alone and stood the cold.

The morning had broken, and it was Sunday morning. The waterfall was so misty as a result of the heavy rain the night before. I could even feel the water breeze blowing towards out camp site.

Guess what we had for breakfast? We had pan mee soup, luncheon meat and fried anchovy. We had coffee and tea too, courtesy of Serene, the 'tea lady'.

By 10am, we finished packing and got ready to descend. The sun wasn't that hot as compared to the journey up. Due to the heavy rain the night before, the paths were getting more slippery. A guy actually slipped and fell a few times, fortunately with no injury.

We kept going and going and finally we reached the starting point. Lorry was already there awaiting us.

Guess what? On the lorry ride back, when we were a few meters from the destination of where we parked our car over night, a branch fell from the tree and knocked right on my head! It was more accurate than hitting jackpot! No worries, no injury as I was wearing a cap.

Sometimes I really wonder why the hell are all these unfortunate incidents happening to me, in a roll. My luck has been on roller coaster. I can strike a small fortune of 4D (not much but enough to give friend a not bad treat, hehe...) 2 weeks in a roll and can also 'pok kai' (luckily minor) and got my hand burnt and branch hitting my head the week after. Sometimes, it's too much for me to take it. Can anyone tell me how to control luck and get luckier?

We headed back to KL using the East-West Highway, with much better condition than the Karak Highway.

Sorry, no pictures to share at the moment. Will update it here later if I manage to get some pics from others who brought cameras and snapped some shots of the trip.

That was all about my last weekend.