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Day 7, 14 February 2014
After a stormy yesterday, today promised to be a beautiful sunny day - the kind of weather we normally associate with a dessert. All the clouds must have dropped their content during yesterday's storm. My watch showed 12.8 degree C and 6:15am as I lazily crawled out of my sleeping bag and out of the tent. The camp site was already abuzz with activity as my team mates were all up and about their morning businesses, preparing for today's tasks. It's amazing how well drilled and organized everyone was these days.
The morning started off with a grudge match between the 2 teams from Day 5's Captain's Ball. The game consists of one attacking and one defending team. Each member of the offensive team takes turn to throw a tennis ball from the edge of the playing field to destroy a tripod of slippers located in the middle. Once the tripod is destroyed, the offensive team will try to rebuild it while avoiding being hit by the same tennis ball, now in the possession of the defenders. Without going into details of the ensuing epic battles, let's just say that the previous losers finally had their revenge. Hey, it won't be interesting if we win every time, right?
After war came peace, and love. Sharon surprised us all with a gift of heart shaped balloons for everyone. Oh yes, it's Valentine's Day. Coincidentally, it's also YuanXiaoJie, the Chinese Valentine's day. The giving of gifts lifted everyone's spirit and secured our Fatimah's place as Team Majulah's "Most Well Prepared Member".
With the morning session over, we proceeded to the day's hike. Unlike the previous days, we had help this time, in the form of 3 camels! Due to, ahem, some concerns, we could not have one camel for each member, so we devised a simple strategy of switching after 30 min on a camel. In fact only 2 of the camels were rideable, with the 3rd one apparently just tagging along so she can munch on the vegetation along the way. Riding one took some getting used to. As a camel walks by moving both legs from one side at the same time in an alternate matter, the rider keeps swaying from left to right to left. When it was my turn to ride the camel, I chose to ride the larger bull. The other 2 smaller females were tied next to mine. While we walked, the other camels started to wipe their drools on my pants and shirt. The one on my right even tried to chew out the hose of my hydration pack. Though I complain, we loved the camels. The team even composed and sang a love song just for them!
We eventually arrived at our final camp site, without anyone falling off. After pitching up tent in extremely windy conditions, 7 of us went on a ride in the back of OBO's Toyota Landcruiser to a nearby Bedouin house for some shopping. The ride itself was like a 4D ride at Universal Studio, the back opening of the truck like an extremely realistic 3D screen. I personally enjoyed the bouncy ride.
The short shopping trip turned into a cultural experience as the lady of the house offered us coffee, fruits and dates. Everyone was taken by the impossibly cute toddler son and baby daughter at the house. They have such adorable, humongous eyes and long eyelashes! We ended up buying some handicrafts from them and to our pleasant surprise, the lady of the house gave each and everyone of us a gift, as well as a big bucket of dates. Now that's hospitality.
While we were gone, our 3 team members who opted out of the shopping trip had a mini adventure of their own. Apparently our youngest member went missing and that triggered a distress call to us. Being happily enjoying the hospitality of the Bedouin, we told them to relax and wait a while to see what happens. After all, it's easy to track footprints in the dessert. True enough, Maurice later found Ming Lian not far away from camp, looking at the farm animals of 3 friendly Bedouin ladies. It seemed like they saw her walking near by and invited her to visit.
Back in camp, Sharon, our residence master chef called in sick today so everyone else has to pick up the slack, with Maurice taking up the role of executive chef for the day. This being our final dinner out in the wild, everyone was fired up and determined to prepare a dinner the stuff of legends. The limited tools and ingredients forced us to improvise, and that somehow became the fuel for the limitless creativity of the kitchen team, which for today, was everyone. An hour plus of messing about yielded 6 dishes: butter rice, mixed vegetable soup, mixed veggie, omelet, boiled beans, and the highlight of the meal - a delicious improvised version of the YuShen for us to "Lou Hei" on the last day of Chinese New Year. Isky said it best as everyone, in accordance with tradition, tossed our big plate of "YuShen" and making a small mess: "home is far away, yet home feels so very near."
Day 7 comes to an end after the night's session of sharing our thoughts on each other's strengths and weaknesses. Tomorrow we will be heading back to civilization, where the comforts of soft beds and hot showers await. Yet I know that I'll be missing this physically demanding part of the journey, even as I look forward to washing my hair soon.
- Lee Chee Wei
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