Welcome to the Wild

Sungai Lembing

Pigs, or rather wild boar, droppings, got my colleagues all freaked out. LOL. We were volunteered (kena jual, as I put it) to spend a night at Kuala Tahan last weekend to survey potential venues for an annual staff program. The boss wanted to have it at Taman Negara. Everybody hated the idea - Taman Negara isn’t exactly a place for everybody - but wouldn’t dare to speak up against the boss, so the five of us were sent to check the place out. “What an expensive way to prove a point!” commented a fellow volunteered colleague. She hated the thought of going through all the trouble for nothing. I had never been anywhere near Taman Negara before, but it turned out just about what I imagined. It’s animal kingdom, so you should expect to find artefacts to that effect.

The all-expense-paid getaway to the edge of civilization was fun (the mobile phone signal was excellent, though), but it did cost me my weekend. I was really looking forward for a quiet weekend after that chaotic first week of classes. This is my first semester with a full twelve-hour workload, which so far has been unexpectedly exhausting that I find myself completely knocked out by 10pm every night, if not right after dinner. Hopefully, it’s just my body adjusting; or perhaps it’s just because I have sleep in mind coming home from work everyday. Whatever.

I did, however, manage to go and watch Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest on Thursday last week. Harta Lelaki Mati, as per the subtitle, was fun. I should have known, in a movie created to promote a theme park attraction, nobody dies; nobody with a named character that is. Is Jack dead? Johnny Depp was brilliant as always. I love sail ships, even merepek ones like the Black Pearl and the Flying Dutchman in a merepek movie like Dead Man’s Chest.

(Interesting webpage on what kind of ship the Black Pearl is, here.)

Great news too with the coming of July is the start of new tenth season of Stargate SG-1 and third season of Stargate Atlantis. The first episodes premiered last Friday on SciFi in the United States. Finally, something to look forward to during the weekends.