Wednesday, May 30, 2007

crazy routes!

so the comp yesterday didn't turn out as well as i expected it to be.

the day started with caroline sending me an sms at 7:30 am.

here was whats in the sms.

good morning noel, are you awake yet?

and i replied

sorry, im still asleep. Zzzzzzz

she replied again

haha, good one. see you at 8am


well then i, being be, had to stay in bed for another 30 more minutes before waking up.

when i finally opened my eyes, i looked at the time.

and i jumped straight out of bed to get washed up and stuff.

luckily caroline was late too :D

she arrived at about 8:10-ish and i had to make her wait another 5 more minutes before i got into the car. when i got in the car, guess who was in the front seat? WILLIAM, caroline's little but not so little brother.

so anyways, we headed over to gifford's to pick him up and later off we went to the sports complex (rakan muda) place.

apparently it that day was suppose to be the phase 2 launch of rakan muda.

what does it mean?

well it means that rakan muda was having a relaunch of their brand or something like that. they were probally going to die out or something. but anyways, it was quite a big launch. loads of people and stuff. more on this at the end of the entry.

so anyways, we met up with shahpur who took a cab there and was wondering around aimlessly.

after locating shampoo(shahpur), we headed over to register.

i joined in both lead and the speed competitions, and so did caroline. gifford joined the lead, and shampoo, was too freaked to join lead that he only signed up for speed.

i was surprised to see some really good climbers who have represented the country in competitions before. cuase as i was told, there was not going to be any national climbers in the comp. after asking around, it turned out that it was only not opened to those climbers who represented the country in the Asian X Games which was held in Shanghai. so much for being able to win something in this competition.

so anyways we waited and waited and waited for the isolation period to start.

when the isolation finally started, we quickly gathered under the little tent which was set up away from the view of the walls. luckily it wasn't such a long wait. but never the less it we had to wait about 20 minutes. after the wait, we were all called out for the 5 minute observation period.


observation period, note all of the hands flying everywhere as if they were climbing an invisible wall.






*observation period - when we get to look at the route for the first time and plan our route.

the mens route wasn't so bad. was about a 6b route. according to caroline, the womens route was also kinda easy.

anyways, once the whistle blew, marking the end of the observation period, all we climbers were herded back to the tent like sheep.

guess what, there was MORE waiting back at the tent. we had to wait for the preparation and also for our turn to be up.

everyone was getting all psyched up and was stretching and stuff.

there were people who were sitting around after stretching















sleeping,




giffy pretending to be asleep for the camera.











and yes, some had to make funny faces in front of the camera.



shahpur making faces at the camera.










so yeah, finally our turns were up and me, and caroline actually did quite well for the first round. i managed to finnish like 3 quaters of the first route.

well not to boast to much, but i could have actually finnish it. reason why i didnt, didnt get to warm up. so i got a flash pump.

*flash pump - this happens when you climb a hard route without having a proper good warm up.
*pump - when your musles fell all hard and tired out, due to exessive levels of lactic asid in the muscles.

well after all that climbing, it was lunch time. there was a stall there that surved rice with different kinds of other dishes which you could choose.

and guess what, they look like


shit











i kid you not. they seriously look like they came outa some rhino's ass!

well thankfully, beside that stall, there was a ramli burger stall. so yeah, back to the old high school days where i ate burgers every day.

so yeah, cuase we had like another 10 million more hours to kill before it was caroline's turn for the womens finals, we headed off to the skate park, which was right beside the climbing wall.

most of the skaters and bikers were kinda sucky. always doing stunts that they could never ever land in their lifetime. but besides that, there were a few of them who stood out.

didnt get any photos tho. but just imagine someone on skates doing a back flip, etc. well they weren't super good, but they were better than the rest.

well after a long wait at the skate park, we headed back to the wall for the womens finals.

can you imagine, the ladies could climb the exact same route for their finals and semi finals. only difference was that the finals was on lead and the semi finals was on toprope. never the less, all the ladies made it to the finals cause there was only 9 of them all together.

here is a picture of caroline falling.

hahaha... cool eh?

well she was kinda pissed when she fell, cuase alittle more higher and she could have gotten third place, i think.

well after the womens finals, it was the mens finals. they gathered us all in the tent for the isolation, while the route setters went up the wall to set up the route.

so what did i do?

well i stretched, sat down, stretched somemore and finally, i fell asleep.


yes, the isolation was freaking hell long!

had to wait for about 1 and a half freaking hours doing nothing!

well while i was sleeping, shahpur said that i was actualy grinding my teeth really loud.

yes, i do grind my teeth when i sleep. no idea why.

when my turn came, i was so freaking happy to be able to get outa the tent and out to the wall.

whats the first thing i did when i got out? well i pretended that i was climbing an invisible wall!

must really look like a dumbo, doing that infront of everyone.

yeah, so the route was real confusing and i only managed to get up 5 draws.

*draws - a.k.a quick draws, runners, clips, clippie thinggies. these are the things you clip your rope into as you get higher, it is important you clip in, as it keeps you from hitting the ground.

so yeah, i fell at the 5th draw. was so pumped that i couldnt make the move that i eventually fell from.

after all that lead climbing, it was time for the speed climbing.

*speed climbing - as the name says, this type of climbing involves people racing up the wall as fast as they can. the ones with the fastest time wins.

well i'm not one of those who can speed climb. but i decided to just join this category for the fun of it. anyway its free ain't it?

well first the ladies went, caroline only made it to 4th place. missed 3rd by 2 seconds.

when my turn came up, at first i totally forgot that it was speed. when i ran to the wall i was climbing kinda slow. it took me about 2 seconds to realise that this was a speed climbing competition. anyhow i realised that i was gonna loose and was smiling to myself as i was climbing. well thats what shahpur said i was doing.

in the end it was a cool day. very little climbing in a very long period of time. joining this kind of competitions really sucks ass.

while we were leaving, there was tons and tons of people.

yesh, seriously damn freaking allot of people there. most of them are in uniforms tho, so it wasn't so cool. feels like they were paid to be there.

anyhow, on our way out, we encountered really jakun malays. those that have never seen white people before and those that act like idiots. this are the kind of people that are really turn this country into a shithole.

as we were walking out, someone said really loudly,

person in crowd 1: eh, ada orang putih datang sini! person in crowd 2: hahaha! dia tidak faham la!

then i looked at caroline and said,

noel: why don't you turn around and just give them a f*ck you?

caroline: well i really feel like saying something to them in malay, but they are not worth my time.


later down the road, we encountered yet another group of bozos.

bozo across the road: WELCOME TO MALAYSIA!

then caroline said,

caroline: now i really feel like shouting to them that i've been here for 10 years already. pfft, welcome to malaysia...

anyway, after all that jakun sightings, we got into the car and off we went home.

but seriously man, there were so many people there. in the complex itself there could easily be about 700 or more people. whats worst, is that people outside the complex on the road, acted as if they owned the road. even as we were driving out, they just stood infront of the road as if we were not even there. caroline had to actually drive around them as she didn't want to punch the horn.

anyway, here are some snapshots of the day. click on them to enlarge.










well thats for the random pics of the day.

now before i leave.

can you guess whose hair is this?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

hey! are you in Asia X Games? Where is this?

I found your blog through the start online, probably we could exchange thought from time to time, do visit my blog and leave your 2cents

Noel said...

hey dani. neh i wasnt in the asia x games. this is a competition heald in some sports complex near where i live.

jmeei said...

To the hair question... Stupid Shahpur's! :D

Noel said...

thats right jiameei! howd you guess?