Brunei Reflections

-General
-The OC Runner
-EX Nomad
-EX ChillBone
-EX ChillHermit
-Post EX CHillHermit

All in all, if ROC was a lesson in victory and confidence, then Brunei was a lesson in failure, defeat and humility, which i do hope i learn. I set out with 4 objectives, and ultimately only accomplished one, and well.. came starkly aware of my mental limits and my lack of preparation. If anything, failure to get the JCC badge thought me to appreciate my limits as well as to learn to be humble in every aspect and most importantly, to ALWAYS be prepared.

EX Nomad started the sequence of events well, with my detail plus Samuel and Yazid finally being able to get to our feets and work out the best methodology of navigating on the final three, allowing us to find POKE/PULL and NAME/SIGN.. hence getting the highest score of the Wing -- 8 points. I must say though, that it was tough, and the Bruneian jungle was truly the one enemy out there... if anything, the map was pretty much a useless appendage with some many empty spaces around and there being so many hidden knolls, hidden streams, and even hidden ridgelines that standalone... The confusing and terrible terrain stressed out team pretty much especially on the second day where we kept circling round our MP (PANT/SUIT), yet never really being able to find it.. at one point i really blew a fuse when we reached the eastern boundary of the AO and hit the road, and when Yazid told me to shut up when I was commenting it was not a smart idea to take the road, i lost it for a moment... It was really not easy, but the two new members at least brought some perserverence and unrelenting verve to push our pretty much discouraged team one for some moments.

But for one, our team knew our weakness and we constantly tried to improve and learning from our mistakes.

1. We learnt to stop and think, instead of foolishly bashing through 1km of route and then realizing it was wrong, or like going down a knoll before realizing we had to backtrack... that put a terrible strain on us initially. Our strategy ended up being that whenever we reached a spot we were unsure, like a cross junction or whatever, it would be a recce down 200m odd to see whether we were sniffing in the right direction. "One step in the right direction is much better than 1km in the wrong one"

2. We learnt to utilise each others abilities effectively... I was the pathfinder, effectively a navigator who pretty much used intuition, sight and direction to find a way through, and i tended to like to use the nice large trails. Edgar was the direct basher, whom took over on the second day when i got really irritated after PANT/SUIT, and did wonders as he found a much shorter route back to the northern parts of the AO, thou it did require some pretty treacherous climbings and steep drops.(Chiyu had to exercise some Spiderman moves to get up whilst I was like doing a vertical maze trying to hold any tree that was firm to pull myself up... oh well it was fun) Royston, with all his meticulousness, became a superb plotter who paired well with sure footed Fadli as the pacer... (though he did plot us on the wronf knoll the last day.. but whatever).. Aniwez, towards the last part, it seemt that finally that everyone in our team had found their niche and were doing very well...

3. Positivity is THE key... Edgar kept saying "We'll be there soon.. around 300m...".. and though we all knew it most probably was around 1km of grueling bashing or so on.. it did lift our morale... I caught on to it soon too and was saying things like "Come on.. it's only the next knoll!".. (which proved to be true.. haha!)Chiyu being the perenial joker also helped lift our morale through the tough times, like his "I'm swimming in my hammock and trying to bail water with my bottle cap!"... Luke's songs (but certainly not his lame jokes) and our jibes at him about Big Bertha were also great entertainments.. =) ours should be called the singing detail man...

4. Remembering important and prominent objects in the surroundings helped a great deal when we had to bypass the area again.. I remember we named things like Big Bird Trap, Delta Mtg Pt, Foxtrot Mtg Pt, Vine Encounter, Ant Trail, Alpha Symbol and so on so forth.. and it did help alot...

So yeah... it seems the group i used to think was hopeless and wanted to leave finally blossomed... but well.. guess what? Lakiun's ugly shadow soon reared its head and mixed up all our details again.. but thatz another story..(And well... as they always say... u only start treasuring things when u have lost it=( )

Aniwez, it was generally a pleasant experience especially the 1st night where the pressure was still not on and we harboured really early at a nice big clearing at SHAG, hung our hammocks and set up a roaring campfire... then had a nice long talk with Jack whilst doing our 2 1/2 hour sentry (which, in actual fact is the only sentry i really did).. it was then i told him the thing that would ultimately come back and slap me in my face --"JCC's not about the badge.. it's ultimately about the experience".. yeah rite.. sigh

The second night was MISERABLE (but still not as bad as what was to come), where it rained the whole night and we chop-chop harboured at GULF after only finding one miserable checkpoint and worried that we would not be able to find the next 2 in time. I had to face my greatest nemesis again.. the cold.. where this time i refused to get out of my hammock and just tried to huddle and sleep.. but sleeping when water was going to seep in the hammock was like sleeping on an ice-block.. and my hammock shaked through the night... and Jack was really nice to ask about me and give me Milo the next morning, where i was chattering to the max (Milo ranks as one of the most important commodity leh).. yeah... the pampering I got at my this detail was also awesome.. with pple like Chiyu/Edgar/Royston/Jack concerned about my freezing... of course i was going to get a rude shock in the new detail...

The last morning was pretty frenetic but generally smooth sailing -- thank god! A sad thing was that we met Inderjit's detail whilst navigating back to NAME/SIGN and they helped direct us and we gave them directions to their crucial checkpoint CANE/CUBE... we told them the exact instructions, including the tree we had marked that indicated the spur to go down... but alas... somehow Joshua never got the whole message through to the whole team and they consequently had to go for RT and ultimately failed...

For now..
FRaNK