The event was organized by the Buddha's Light International Association (BLIA). The event was in Chinese and the title of the hunt can be loosely translated to "one-day peregrination through the streets, treasure hunt on wheels 2007" ("2007 穿街走巷汽车寻宝一日游"). Well, that's quite a mouthful and so i just cut it short by using the organizer's name in the title.
The hunt started at 8am and lasted for 7 hours. Any teams that submitted the answers later than 3pm would incur a 1 point per minute penalty, and those that were later than 3.30pm would be disqualified.
The estimated distance for the whole journey was 90km. It would bring us from Taman Sutera to Taman Univesiti, Skudai, Taman Daya, Taman Johor Jaya, and then back to Taman Perling and Sutera again.
There were some variations in this hunt compared to the others i had participated before. The game had 5 sections (here's the treasure hunt booklet):
- The hunt itself, which consisted of 40 clues with 5 points each
- Two riddles that would reveal two items to be bought as treasure, with 20 points for each treasure
- Merdeka questions, which consisted of 10 questions of 2 points each about Malaysia, as a celebration of our country's 50th birthday
- Three tasks to be completed by the participants with the total scores of 50 points
- Some personal information of participants from two other designated teams, with 10 points each
There were about 38 teams in total. I attended the briefing the day before the hunt and found out that it was the first treasure hunt for quite a number of groups. I was thinking to myself that our team would have a good chance in winning since all the four of us had participated in treasure hunt before.
Our team was number 20. The other three persons in my team were Sui and two of her colleagues, Angie and Loh. Angie was actually quite sick and almost couldn't make it on that day, but then she was the driver (even though the car was Loh's) and despite her illness, she was one lady who could really drive.
Angie brought along her laptop and we were thinking that with my Celcom 3G connection, we would be able to search for the answers from the Web. But the battery only lasted for less than 2 hours, and in the end, Sui gotta call her cousin for help, especially on answering the Merdeka questions.
Lucky for us, even without the Internet, we were still able to solve most of the clues. There weren't a lot of general knowledge type of questions like the Foon Yew treasure hunt. Most questions were anagrams of the Chinese words and with some creative thinking and eye for details, it wasn't too hard to crack the clues.
For instance, Question 2: "楞楞杪杪". It doesn't matter that we couldn't pronounce the words or didn't know what it meant. Just look into the characters and play around with the words.
How? Split up the last two characters "杪杪" and you will get "木少木少". Applying this to the first two characters "楞楞" means the "木" should be removed. Then break up what's left and it will give you "四方四方", which adds up to "八方". With the direction on the tulip map, there was a shop called "八方广告牌业" within the vicinity and hence that was the answer.
Another example, Question 32: "湖中上斋配香片". Pair up the first two characters and it says "湖中". So you get the middle character of "湖" which is "古". Then pair up the next two characters "上斋" and you get the upper character of "斋" which is "文". Lastly, 香片 is a kind of Chinese tea. In the area was a restaurant called "古文茶餐厅" and bingo, that was what we were looking for.
So once you get the drift, it wouldn't be too hard to solve the clues.
However, we totally floundered in solving the riddles for the two treasure. We couldn't figure out what the things were even though we spent some time in the supermarket and grocery stores, hoping to find the things that we didn't know what we were supposed to be be looking for.
The other four sections of the game saved us though, and we scored 215 points out of the total points of 330. That put us in the 3rd place, while the 2nd prize winner scored 250+ points and the champion (a team formed by 4 uncles) scored an impressive 299 points.
The 1st prize was RM1K cash, the 2nd prize RM600 cash, and the 3rd prize RM400 cash. Aside from the cash, each team also got a bag of 10kg rice from the sponsor. We donated the rice to BLIA for their charity.
After the winners were announced, there were also 20+ lucky draw prizes to be given out. The lucky draw was for individuals and not on team basis. Some teams have almost all members winning a prize from the lucky draw. One of such teams was the one that had won the 10th consolation prize and the other was the champion team.
And our team? None of us won anything from the lucky draw. So we concluded that the 10th prize winner won the game by luck; the champion won the game with the combination of luck and capability; our team won the game by true capability.
I always enjoy participating in treasure hunt. Other than such events are always for charity and it's good to help the needy, i also like brain-teasers and it always feel great to be able to solve the clues and find the answers. Of course, it feel even more wonderful when i actually win something.
And this time, i feel superb.
Labels: life
