I just went to a company trip, a team building trip in Lumut, Perak.
It's a complete "back to nature" training I have ever experienced.
Together with the rules they set, which is no electronic device or any kind of attention distracting object is allow in order to "encourage" participants spending time communicate with each other.
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| I became very dark in merely 6 hours of sailing |
So then the trip was a complete torture to me.
Spending days without gaming is alright with me, spending days without reading and writing,
is really a hard time to me. Every so often, I do reading or writing,
spending days without it caused me keep blaming the "compulsory" system made by my boss.
I passed the 4 days without choice, and left all my reading material and learning stuff behind. All I did was to "enjoy" the torment. Forced myself enjoy the torment by finding out the good from the bad part of this trip. No matter how much I try to escape, the final result would be the same, unless I quit or fall sick before the trip. And so, I took this trip as my "mind travelling trip" for myself, which it's a travel that absolutely away from the exhaustively informative world, to enjoy the other part of my "disconnected" mind.
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| West view of Outward Bound, Lumut |
Outward Bound in Lumut has exists for 55 years in Malaysia.
Let's call this a tormenting trip instead of nicely named 'Team Building'.
I can't see much thing we'd done there, but the only main thing we do in the early four days trip were to prepare ourselves for sailing and the survival camping in forth day.
That's what made me upset on the first two days as I was just wasting my time, and thirst for leaving. What I thought was leaving...
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| At the sailing |
Finally, the sailing day had come. That was the day I find myself feeling happier in the whole trip, I stop crying for leaving deep inside my heart.
I enjoy sailing completely without the help of gasoline powered engine with the great teamwork, and learning hard to adapt myself to the vile experience on sailing to our 6 hours or 20km++ distance to sail.
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| Lecture night before sailing |
We first learned to study how the sea water flow, and what to do as wind direction and sea water flow keep changing all along the way. It depends on luck very much which it determines how comfort or bad is your sailing experience.
For those who can't adapt to the vile situation in boat, with the help of waving effect caused by surge, I just can evaluate the effect with the highest rank of "most serious motion sickness I have ever had in my life"! It's so uncomfortable until I kept think about dying...
Everybody no longer spending anymore energy for any other unwanted motion, every single energy count, as everybody had almost completely exhausted. Energy efficiently spent as the weather was very hot and dry.
As I remember, while we're sailing, everybody's given an apple each person, and that's the most juicy and delicious apple that ever made me so grateful about being able to eat one. That's our only "energy food" we had with us in the boat after sailing for a few hours.
Team members who couldn't stand the motion sickness was keep vomit seriously as the sea wave getting stronger in waving our boat. That's the very first time I've experienced motion sicknesses in my life, and I never think about trying another one again in future. I like adventure, this experience is considered as reaching one of what I am chasing for so far... The feeling of danger while I still can cope it!
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| The while we sail |
Our instructor left us to control the whole sailing boat at the middle of the way, so we could learn to be independent from his command. And that's the time he tested how we teamed up to get something done!!
Finally, we've reached our campsite at 3pm. The rest of time would be busy time for campsite setting, cooking and enough firewood for whole night of burning.
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| Setting up tent |
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| The cooking at the campsite |
All ingredient and utensils were provided by Outward Bound, and the soft-shell clams were collected at the sea side. The only things left to do was to cook.
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| Sunset |
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| Campfire to keep mosquito away |
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Evening time, it's time to take last few pictures before the night go really dark.
We younger group stand awake without sleeping for that night, we spent the night to chat, for some talking game, and sing part of us can no longer stand the sleepiness.
And so, the night just end that way until a tragedy happened...
I felt really pain in at my stomach, I failed to bear the pain, and I must do something... to dig a hole for the business. I was 5th person who queued for the emergency tragedy, and everyone who had eaten the dinner last night had the same problem, diarrhea caused by food poisoning. For 15 of us, we dug nearly 30 holes (one person twice) in the short morning from 4am to 7am, because there's no toilet at all, digging hole was the only way for those 'businesses'. That's a disgusting experience I expected not to be happened, it's really painful until you can't stand it for seconds.
Our departure time was previously planned at 7am, but boat sailing's biggest enemy, the rainstorm reach our campsite. Fortunately, the rainstorm last just around 30 mins, we rush every stuffs to the boat and depart as soon as possible as most of us didn't feel very well of the food poisoning. It's so bad, no photo available for that time, because rain was to heavy to risk my camera for any photo as my gears were all well packed to avoid rain.
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| Badge of Teamwork & Perseverance |
After all, we reach Ourward Bound successfully and landed safe. That ended my enjoyable experience there. Our instructor, Azmin, award us a badge of best team he has ever trained so far, because did good teamwork and we could stand the hard part of the expedition with optimistic way.
With this diplomatic recognition, I would still say "No" to the same trip like this, but I'll enjoy it only if it's just a boat sailing activity. Because sailing is fun...
Sailing with the right team or right persons would be the best!
No second time please... unless you are the right person to sail with, otherwise, it'll eventually ends up with nothing after all. However, it's still a nice trip to learn how to sail and the knowledge of the life at sea.
P/S: No matter how luxury or how tough is it, right persons are the most important element in the whole story, that is the only element determine how you enjoy every moment you being with them!
Finally, best part of this activity:
- You learn how to "survive" without any kind of electronic devices to entertain you and for you to kill time. All you got is to have fun(talk) with your teammates.
No reading material, no music/movie player, no game, no writing, no reading... All you left is a mouth to talk, and how about the topic to be chat about?
It's fun if those teammates have same vision or interest as you do, else, you suffer a lot from being alone deep I your heart.
- To learn how to survive the life at the sea and island without electronic device.
- Test yourself by seeing how long can you stand without doing anything you like or want.
I met a man...
As this age of mine here in my country, who don't has a clear vision about their future. And so, this is the time we try to find out the answer of "what is the meaning of life?"...
The coach, Azman, I met here is the guy who gave me a different inspiration about "life".
He love nature very much until he chose to work as a coach that doesn't highly paid. He shared his life which even he's worked hard enough until he gets sick frequently, the fixed pay of less than RM2k a month, was just barely enough for daily expenses, and no extra money left for anything else.
Though the pay is low, but working as a "nature life" trainer, it is what he really wanted, he said, he is doing it and enjoying it now.
So what? It's his dream, he trains people(mostly people grown in the city) the way to live in an old-fashioned way. He can live by the sea, the knowledge to survive in the sailboat, mountain and forest. It's the life he desired, and he loves it.
Yeah, he knows how he can makes his life meaningful... and not to blame...
Yes, true, he clearly know what he really want for his life.
At the same time, I am still struggling and looking for a meaningful life while I am already 24, how long do I left for this "searching" state...?
