Flying~Soaring through Dreams: 2008

The 3-month waiting has finally came to an end when i cleared my solo flight a few days ago on 16/09/08. Solo flight was only authorized when the instructor was satisfied that i was able to carry out any flight alone safely. That was the 18th hour of my flying since i came here so i was actually lagging behind quite badly already now. I had a fairly good starts with flying lessons before i had an instructor change because he was leaving. That was when things started to go downhill as i was told by the new instructor that i was experiencing a lot of problem and struggling hard to fly the plane, which led to repetition of sorties (flight lessons) over and over again. I was left stumped and seriously demotivated over the next one month period because of this, had nightmares and actually thought that this would be the end of my career if i don't move my ass and fix the mess. Of course, it's easier said than done. I never expect the learning curve to be this steep. Fortunately, i had another instructor change and this time i felt that everything is finally beginning to move towards the right direction again, which eventually led to my first solo. While the first solo itself wasn't perfect, i was pretty satisfied with my flying and is hoping that i would continue to improve (or at least maintaining it) over time. Having said that, here's some snapshot of me and the baby in which i flew through my first solo :)

Oh, we also had a BBQ party last month for no apparent reason. I guess they did just for the heck of it. It was fun and there's lots of food :D mmmm..

The main BBQ pit..err... stove..

Mmmm...carnivores will be really happy when they see this

Obviously,the BBQ pit was not huge enough for everyone, so these peeps opt to cook those meats their own way

And finally, yesterday we had a paintball warfare thanks to whoever that took an initiative to organize this event. There were many newbies among us including me but we have loads of fun fighting against the other course, which apparently was more experienced than us :P The game itself was a blast having 18(3 of which were ladies :))vs 15 firing at each other. As expected, we got thrashed and many times i was caught off guard and shot at point blank (ouch!) because i was too busy talking to another person during the gun-fight. Yeah, i know that wasn't very smart of me. Serve me right eh? Anyway it's because of this that i learnt a valuable lesson from the game; let the gun do the talking, not your mouth. Everyone started off with approximately 200 bullets round, and to be honest, i thought it was a huge amount of bullets. However, half way into game, i realized that those bullets are only sufficient to start getting you into the game. Before you know it, you will run out of bullets and become a free-frag target. Yay! Kudos to Ted for being the last man standing and also the one who took the most hit for nothing :P Mwahaha.. It's pretty painful getting shot alright.. enough to leave marks on your body for days.

Entrance and advertisement :P

Registration counter and ammo distribution.

Are we going into some sort of bio-chemical war? Because it certainly seems that way to me..

Marching into battlefield

Left: Testing out the guns Right: My comrade, we vowed to cover each other asses.

Team 132 a.k.a newbie team a.k.a team-waiting-to-be-thrashed ole!

Left: Oi! Sleeping behind the mask? Right: "Looks like this is the end, we are out of bullets..it's been an honor fighting alongside with you"

Meaningless pose..

At the end of the day...and lastly but not least,

A big OUCH!

I'm certainly looking forward to the next paintball event again :D

7-8? Or even 9? I really don't know. The thing is, there has not been much happening during the last one month and therefore i could not find much thing to post about. It's the peak of winter and the weather has been pretty shitty all the time, with tiny windows of clear day every now and then, it's like striking a jackpot to be able to fly on those days. I am now like on my 7th hour of flying even after 1 1/2 month being here, that's like average of flying once a week. I guess there's nothing much can be done except sitting ducks, rant, whine, sleep, eat, sleep, sleep, and finally, now i have decided to update the progress of my OBS at Day 10 and 11. I have almost forgotten about it until i accidentally came across photos depicting sweet (and some not so sweet) moments i've had during the good ol' OBS day. It's been only 9 months since then and yet it felt like ages ago to me.

Day 10 ( Sailing Expedition - Day 1)

Done my morning ritual as usual; run, basic exercises, etc. Blisters weren't so painful anymore, so...yay!!

After breakfast, we went directly to the meeting court to prepare our sail. We were further introduced to a bunch of sailing equipments which looked rather bizzare although some of them are pretty common stuffs, like torchlights, lightstick (those stick that emit lights when you break it, commonly seen in concerts), etc. The most important part was the ropes to be tied to the sail. I was actually overwhelmed by the number of ropes required to sail just a small cutter ship. I think there were at least more than 10 pieces of ropes (we call it "sheets", i don't know why) with variety of diameter and length to just operate the boat. Then, there were these at least 10 other ropes for misc. purposes like securing stuff on the boats, boxes, barrels, and some are for capsize recovery purposes.

Left : Whoa, what are these stuffs? Right : Mummieee , my tummy hurts :(

After we left the jetty, we were briefed in details about the purpose and usages of each sails. There were 3 sails if i did not understood wrongly. The main one is called the main sail for obvious reason. It is the largest and covered the largest surface area of the sails which helps to propel the boat forward in presence of wind. The other 2 smaller one is called 'mizen' and 'jib' respectively. One at the tail and the other one at the head of the boat which is responsible for directional control of the boat. The we were explained various sailing terms that i could hardly comprehend or remember at all. In fact, 'port' and 'starboard" were few of them and i could not even remember which one means 'left' and vice-versa.

Whole lecture wasted about 1.5 hours under burning sun directly above our head, but when we were actually ready to depart, storm hit and pretty much fucked us up. Perfect timing. We had to abandon the boat immediatelyy and head back into the OBS ground immediately to wait for the heavy rain to subside. And when it FINALLY did, it was already 4pm and that really screwed up our initial plan to sail to the intended first campsite as we couldn't make it in time before nightfall. In the end, we headed to the nearer campsite instead which is actually the old OBS campground which is kind of abandoned, about 2km away.

Left: You see those storm coming? Right : Imagine what's gonna happen if we're in the boat.

Everyone did not want to miss the opportunity to take a nap and wished that the rain never stop :P

We even had our nice unscheduled lunch when the storm broke out.

"Best" of all, there were totally no wind at all after storm. It was dead still, silence as if the world has stopped spinning so we had to row the friking boat instead. It's so fucking ridiculous and tiring because it was really damn heavy. Still, we had no choice. How can we row something that is not even meant to be rowed?

Hey, why the hell would we need a sail if there's no wind?

Yeah, row the goddam boat, ROW!

Believe me or not, he was actually trying to fish with this puny little string with a hook made out something i couldn't quite remember and some bread crumbs as the bait. I laughed my ass off but hey, he did actually almost caught the fish but the hook wasn't strong enough to sustain the force of the struggling fish. I actually stopped laughing at my own foolishness at this point.

Light sticks up just before nightfall, so that no one would accidentally ram into our ship while we were asleep

Old OBS Campground, pretty much abandoned but for some reason, the lights are still up. Pretty scary huh?

Went to sleep early that night since there were nothing else left to do and especially that the first day plan went haywire. That is one day wasted already now, there's only 2 more days left. Hopefully, with no unwanted incident again.

Days Left : 11
Mood : Pissed Off

Day 11 ( Sailing Expedition - Day 2)

Woke up at 7.30am today, whole body aching because i have been sleeping on a hard tarmac road, instead of sand or grasses. Without wasting too much time, we boarded the sail boat again, rehearsing whatever we have been teached the day before. Still very confusing and most of the time i found myself stood dumbfounded because i did not know what am i supposed to do.

Everything seems nicer in the morning

The wind was very still during our launching stage due to the geographical area and a bad day. We ended up woring further into a so called "more open" sea so we could catch more wind with some luck. Indeed, the prediction was correct and we were able to draw some wind by then, albeit a little light. At least we were moving at a snail pace. Nothing could be worse than rowing the damn boat, trust me! Oh yea, we also had a special version of morning dip by jumping off the boat into the sea.

Sun ray pierced directly through my skin throughout the noon and sunblock lotion seems to be least effective at most. With some luck, if the sunlight is blocked by the sail however, a shade is created and i would occasionally find myself hiding under it if the shade favor me. Everything was moving at such a slow pace that everyone including me soon felt sleepy. Of course, we weren't allowed to sleep. Few times, those who were caught asleep were poured over with a pail full of sea water. FUN! Their reactions were....simply put..priceless. That's when everyone became alert again, but not for long. Haha! The process was then repeated.

Later in the evening, when we were about 3/4 to our destination, the wind grew increasingly wild and strong due to an approaching storm. That was when the actual excitement finally begins. Everybody had their own role to play and must react as fast as possible to ever changing behavior of the wind. Otherwise, we would end up being pushed away really quickly in the wrong direction or in the worst cast scenario, it would topple the boat over resulting in a capsize. Trust me, capsizing a sailboat is not even as remotely fun as it did on a kayak. We did not want that to happen. We could see lightning bearing unusually heavy rain heading towards us from afar. Probably 30 minutes away. Soon, everyone seems to understand their roles better and there were less confusion among us. I found that the speed of the boat went from a snail pace to one matching a speedboat. Yes, that was how strong the wind was. Everyone was high on spirit, cheering, and screaming about.

High spirit moment!

Noticed how everyone leaned to the port side of the boat? The wind was so strong it was trying to flip the boat to the starboard so everyone had to balance it.

When we were approaching the destination, it began to rain cats and dogs and it was so cold all of us were freezing on the boat. However, we were still busy maneuvering the boat so no one has the time to put on their rain coats over. Too bad...but that is what improving the fun factor :P Finally, this is what i would call an actual sailing, not rowing the boat like slaves and idiots.

Ah paradise....No..not for us...unfortunately

We anchored down our boats near the shore and the rain eventually stopped. We moved up to the beach and were told to prepare for an evening run. WTF? I thought there will be no running during expedition away from OBS ground?! Anyway, i was exempted due to my blisters condition so it was all good.

How can someone be still so energetic after what we've been through for the day?

I guess that's the end of my story for Day 2 sailing expedition because it's dinner time soon! Oh yea, on a final note..we were told that we won't be setting up any tents for tonight. Why? Hoho...because we were going to sleep on the boat itself!! Nitey nite to myself!