Fireflies outing with Leos

I am well aware of my absence from blogging and i apologise and blame it all on the holiday mood. xD Not that it makes me happy, but more of ...laid back. And when i am laid back, i tend to not have the mood for blogging. So, no post lo! :D

Anyway, since i am having the rare burst of excitement and energy to blog, i might as well make full use of it before it simmers and die and leave me withering till the next blue moon.

So let's cut the drama and let me walk you through past week's events. Starting with: The Fireflies Outing with Leos!! :D

It was planned as a year end trip for the Leo members so, semangat as i am (and coupled with some puppy eyed faces to drag me into the trip), i joined in the fun. :) Scheduled on the 16th and 17th of November, a group of about 14 of us met at the Uni entrance (the popular meeting place for outings) and embarked on our exciting adventure to Sungai Buloh and Kuala Selangor. xD Honestly, this is my first ever road trip with my friends! Ok lar, so maybe this trip is only an hour plus long...but hey! Let me enjoy the fact that i had a road trip k. xP

So eager was i about this road trip that i had my bag packed since Wednesday. xD And just as i was praising to myself on my achievement on preparing early, i decided to check my mail on Saturday night to check on any last minute mails and...sure enough, there was one.

I had work to do.

@#&$?! It was already 12 midnight!!! And they sent the email on Friday which was the very day i decided that there was no need to check my mails!! ARGH!! *pulls hair in frustration* ... I knew i should not have played games that very day...>.<

But after taking several deep breaths to calm myself down, i got straight down to work. According to the program list, my partner (Brian) and i had to prepare a list on "The importance of water and how to conserve it" or something along the lines. So, taking note that this was part of the activities that we were preparing for the children at the orphanage and the knowledge that they apparently understand simple English, i thought, great!! I can just Google my information and hopefully they can understand me! Woohoo!

Basically, i started work at 12 midnight and finished at around 1a.m. Not bad actually. Time was taken into picking the simplest instructions and knowledge - those that are easy for them to understand and for me, in case i have to translate (Yup. I had plan B) - and into choosing cute images on water. Or more of water droplets. Such as this very one that i took:

Hehe! I had another one of a cartooned water droplet...but it's lost amongst the many other droplets! (and i was lazy to search for it...:P) So anyway, that done, i sent another message to Brian to find out whether that the Asian and Malaysian map was supposed to be prepared by us or not and went to sleep with that question.

It was not until the very morning of my trip that i decided to being along a camera.

Picture me, still in my pajamas at 7+ in the morning hunting down the camera. Which was not to be found. So, with the ruckus that i was making so early in the morning, i woke my sibling who very nearly shouted at me to use her camera instead. So that covered, i was still worrying about the maps. After ensuring that all my last minute items were in place, i got a message from one of the OC for the trip - Sheen Sern. I DO NOT NEED TO PREPARE THE MAPS!! YEAY!!!!!!!

*breathes easily* Whew!

By the time i was ready to go, everyone was already up to send me out and after receiving "take care" shouts and goodbye waves, i hear my younger sibling's voice above everyone else's:

Her: Bye! Take care arr!!....OF MY CAMERA!!!
Me: Bye -! WHAT! Is that what you say to me when i am leaving?! GEE! K lar k lar!! I WILL!
Her: OK! Take care!! Of MY CAMERA!! hahahahahah!! Byeeeee~!
Me: -.-" BYE!

So here are a couple of pictures of the cars that bore the responsibility of driving the rest of us safely to our destinations taken with my sis's camera. xD I am sorry i have zero knowledge of photoshop and have no clue how to blur out the number plates but don't go stalking them lar k!

This is one of the cars that brought us there - SS's car. :D

This is another of the cars that brought us to our destination - WJ's car

This here is a picture taken when we had our stop at the Rumah Tunas Harapan

Here is a pic of the girls that went for the trip. :) Sorry, didn't get to take a pic of the guys. LOL.

Ok. Enough with the pre-trip pictures. Because this is all that i have. Hahaha! Moving on...we headed to our first destination - Sungai Buloh to the Furry Friends Farm (FFF). A brief introduction on this place, it is headed by Miss/Ms. Yeap. If you have read through my blog since the very beginning, i had a post on a newspaper cutting of a dog that resembled my lost dog and well, that very picture was taken at the FFF itself. So, in some weird twist of fate, i am at the very place i thought my lost dog was.

Anyway, this place is actually something like SPCA and PAWS except that the concept of taking care of the dogs and the environment of the area is far different from the conventional animal centres. For one, all the dogs at the compound of FFF are strays and so Yeap allows them the freedom of roaming around as they are accustomed to whilst at the same time training them to be chained up, put in cages and be around people. The reason behind doing this is so when a prospect owner for the dogs come by to adopt one, these dogs are able to be used to being chained up if and when visitors of the owner comes by to visit or whatever.

One the day of our visit, there was a small puppy that someone left at the entrance of the FFF and it was about a few months old so it was really really small and cute! But apparently, under the trained eye of Yeap, she could tell that the puppy was having skin disease (though i could hardly tell) and she told us that the puppy was having worms in the tummy noting the bloated tummy of the poor animal. The little one would be sent for vaccination soon. Thank goodness for medications for animals!

Before i elaborate more on what we did at the FFF, our first stop upon arrival was, you guessed it right!! -FOOOOOOOOOOD!!!! :D

I was supposed to take a pic of the restaurant name but was so eager to get into the car that i forgot...*knocks head* BUT! I took pic of the food! Not that it was anything out of normal. xD Feast your eyes:

On the girls!! Hahaha!!!

Again, i have no pictures of the guys. Too shy to admit they love the attention? Whatever lar. :D And so, pic of the food as promised- which i am not even going to try to name them lest i name them wrongly and get fried for it. I love my skin too much. So here:

The aftermath

Should have sent this to The Star! xD

So, anyway, after the glorious food, we went on with our adventure to the FFF. After getting lost at one point or two, we managed to find the place. And let me explain to you how the surrounding was like.

Picture a kampung area and the roads are a single narrow tar road and the only possible transportation allowed at that area are motorcycles. Of course, like many other kampung areas, when you spot people on motorcycles, they are always without the headgear. Possibly a way of protesting against the government officials for not widening the roads or for not giving the people more development in the area or just complete disregard for the law lar (like our fellow friend with the no parking sign. xD).

So, on your way to the FFF, that is what you will see.

Basically, when we reached the FFF, it was really different than what i would have expected. From the picture, i had imagined a wide land and dogs running around freely. Frankly, i was prepared to chase dogs around the compound and be surrounded by 200 dogs sniffing about me. Not saying that i stink. xD

But it was nothing like how i had imagined it to be.

Instead, the first thing that comes to mind when you see the FFF is - is this really the place?? xD Not that it was anything bad but it was so Cameron Highlands, if you get my drift. Nothing like how you would picture a Furry Friends Farm to look like. xP

It had an area of the land fenced where the majority of the dogs were caged and housed whilst some dogs were left roaming about. There were about 4 other "city" people already in the process of working to clean up the area so in some ways, we did not need to do too much of work alone.

Anyhow, after ensuring that most of our skin (that was exposed) were covered thick with sun block and mosquito repellent, we listened briefly to Yeap who told us to divide between ourselves into groups to: sweep, clean the cages, clear branches..etc.

In the end, Tze Yuen and i ended up doing the raking of dry leaves into bundles for "bonfire" later on. Which, if you thought was something simple and easy, think AGAIN! Now i know why people hate raking leaves!! But of course, the end result after raking is always a sweet one. We took pictures to compare the before and after result! Tze Yuen has the pictures and i would try to get that...but it looks gOoooooD xD Others were asked to wash the bowls (for the dogs), remove piles of old discarded items into a pile and to clean the dog pen.

The worst i heard was cleaning the dog pen. Maggots were feasting on poo and flies were everywhere. In fact, flies were all over the entire farm! At the area where all the food were, about a thousand odd flies were settling themselves all over the place and mind you, it is not for the faint hearted or the fly haters. I, for one, could only stare in disbelief at how ANYone can live through that amount of flies. I would have loved to swat them all.

Overall, we spent easily about 4 hours at FFF lending our services. Which was fun! :D It is always nice to see how everyone join hands to help each other out. But i left with dog poo stuck on my pants. :(

And with the extra knowledge that these bunch of dogs are darn lucky! They have far better quality food than we do!! This is their diet: Rice, Beans and OLIVE OIL! I take normal SUNFLOWER OIL k! (i think...xDD!) But still!!! And they take HUGE amounts of food!!! Like 2 huge bowls of food! By huge, i mean their bowls are the size of Yut Kee Bak Kut Teh's biggest Bak Kut Teh bowl. IT'S HUMONGOUS i tell you!! (If you really want to know, then take me to Yut Kee and belanja me lunch and i'll show! Wakaka)

Oh ya!! Before i forget! I HAVE to tell you the toilet at FFF!! I can't say i was not warned that it is ancient but gee! I had NO IDEA! You see, someone had asked about the toilet before we began work and we were warned that it was pretty ancient. So, thinking that i would not be needing it, i did not think much about it.

It was not until i was raking halfway that i felt that i needed to pee. Thinking i could hold on to it, i continued raking. But it was towards the end of the area, that by that time, I was holding in my bladder till my legs shivered and my eyes watered. So i knew i had to enter that dingy looking no-lights toilet no matter what.

The moment i climbed into the toilet, my eyes were as wide as saucers and i nearly peed in my pants.

The "toilet", is made out of wood. And the "roof" is merely some extra board of metal piece flung across the top. BUT! I have not reached the best part!! The door, has NO LOCK! So while doing my business, i was half praying no one would barge in!! Also, there is no such thing as a flush k. And it just so happen there was no water in the bucket that was left at the far corner of the small toilet.

AND! THE TOILET BOWL! Omg.. it should not even be a called a toilet bowl since it DOES NOT EVEN HAVE A BOWL to begin with!! Basically, the place that your pee or poo is suppose to enter is through this rectangular box-shaped hole that they cut off from the wooden floor (the horror!) and through this small old halved pipe, that was tilted at an 45 degree angle to send your business into whereever that i can not possibly imagine!! >.< Omg. *shudder*

I almost contemplated to pee by the bushes instead.

After i was done, i immediately ran to wash my hands and felt so disgusted i wanted to run to the chalet to scrub myself clean. Urgh..

Anyway. Once we were done, we headed to the nearest food outlet - KFC - for food. Still dressed in our dirty clothes and me in my poo stained pants. xD Everyone stared when we went in. I really think it was more of the stench than anything else that caught everyone's attention. BUT it was not me k!!

However, we ended up eating at some mamak. WITH MORE FLIES! *faints* After finishing though, we went to check in at the chalet which was really quite pretty! Here are the pics:

(Kit Yee, I am afraid that this is the only firefly that i could take! :( I would have been fined RM500! And many have tried to take pictures but all that turned out were black gloomy shots..Sorry ya...)

Here is the first thing that you see when you enter the chalet (minus the people and bags of course):

Here is the entrance to the toilet. The light was extremely dim (for the chalet i stayed in anyway). So, we mostly bathed in the dark. Haha!

Above: The entrance to the bedroom. Again, the lights are very dim and provide a very romantic feel to the room and i recommend it to people planning for a simple holiday for your partner.

Below: See what i mean? xD

Above: The cupboard and dressing table

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is the chalet! :D

And now: the BBQ - this was after we rushed to bathe after knowing that we were the 9th group for the firefly watch! Again, i am sorry for not being able to take pictures of fireflies. The rules states that we could not even talk during the ride or get risk getting fined off RM 2000!!! I could be exaggerating the amount but there were so many fines [not allowed to catch any fireflies or fined: RMXXXX and blah blah...] that we could hardly remember anything! xD

But we hardly bothered and ended up talking loudly at one point, being shushed in another, whispering at certain parts, laughing, giggling and even gurgling were heard at some point and the ooohs and ahhhhs at the sight of the fireflies "decorating" the trees with its "light bulbs" and the clear star-filled night that we had on that very night. Extremely beautiful. :)

The procedure of the firefly boat ride is this: when your number is called, your group must already be wearing your lifejackets that are of course required or else fined for RMXXXX. xD Then you would be asked to walked along a bridge towards the brightly lit waiting boat.

Walking along the bridge and looking out into the darkness, it is rather creepy especially at the sight of old big trees at every corner and how you could see no further beyond the nearest tree you see. Scary cat as i was, i held on tight to Tze Yuen's hand all the way. Haahaha! Sorry Tze Yuen!! xD

Then, you would be taken around a river-ish area where you would see the fireflies as the boat slowly glides along near trees for better view. But really. The amount of fireflies that we have is slowly getting extinct especially due to overdevelopment and illegal logging around the area where they live. We have to do our part to help these little insects by ensuring that we do not pollute the places where they live and protect our environment. :) Practice the basic 3 Rs!! Google it if you do not know!

So after around less than half an hour's worth of firefly sight seeing - which shows how little fireflies there are left to see - it was time for FOOD! :D

Here is a few shots i took (which aren't many) on the BBQ night! :D:

Junk FOOOD! And water. :D

MY FAVOURITE!

Most of them preparing the cocktail sausages and fish balls...or was it chicken balls? xD

Sheen Sern and Wen Jhe "cucuking" the chicken wings for us! :D THANK YOU!

The twins! Haha! Both are extremely adorable! xD

And that marks the end of the pics i took. Haha! I know. I had eating to do!! xD

Then we cleared up the area and in the end, went back to our chalet to prepare the gift bags for the orphanage the next day and studied!! xD Remember the maps i was talking about earlier? Well, we learnt later after dinner that we were supposed to teach the children on where the countries were on the map!! Yiks! Knowing that i, for one, am extremely poor in Geography, i nearly choked on my food. Thankfully, i was not alone. xD

So, all of us grouped together to form a study group and learn the Asia map which to us were harder. XD! IT WAS SO FUN!!! Now i know where most of the countries are at on the world map! Hahaha! It was the best study group i have ever had. xD

Then, we played: MAFIA!! :D I tell you, it is THE best game to play with your friends. When playing with cunning people, it is sooooo fun!! :D It is also an extremely addictive game so we ended up playing till 2a.m.! xD

The next morning, I had a rude awakening when my handphone rang. When i groggily woke up, i answered the phone with the most groggy voice i had ever remembered myself making and waited for the person on the other line to answer.

NO SOUND.

#$%@!!

Turns out it was Sheen Sern giving everyone a wake up call. -.-" At 7.20a.m.

ZZZZZZ....In end, we woke up and got ready to check out from the chalet at around 8:15a.m.++. Haha! So here: was how packed the car was with all our bags! Hehe!

Below: This is our breakfast!!! Chips, plain bread, biscuits and water!!

So healthy eh? Hehe!!

The next stop for the trip:

This is Rumah Tunas Harapan! :D At this orphanage, the concept of how the children are taken care of is very different compared to other orphanages.

How?

The conventional orphanages that we mostly hear about basically takes in orphans and several teachers or guardians would be in charge of the home. But in Rumah Tunas Harapan, they instil a family oriented concept whereby the children are placed into houses and in each house, there is a "father" and "mother" to take care of them as their own. There are altogether one Chinese family, one Indian family and 4 other Malay families. In each house, the couple would take care of around six children and bring them up according to the culture of each ethnic. For example, the children in the Chinese house would be brought up to celebrate Chinese New Year, allowed to eat Bak Kut Teh and so on. Same goes for the other houses too.

The children are taken care of until they are 18 years old and some, until they graduate and learn to take care of themselves. The children that we saw were mostly in the age group of 4 to around 17 years old? That is my impression of the teenagers and kids anyway. xD

So here is the entrance to the hall that they have:

Inside the hall.

Mr. Ong. The father for the Chinese family telling us more about Rumah Tunas Harapan.

Clearing space for us to execute our activities for them! :D

The teenagers and kids gathering

According to the plan, we were to play a series of games with them. Starting with the ping pong ball on the spoon game for the younger kids; the place-finger-on-the-ground-and-spin then walk on a straight line game for the slightly elder kids; the four/three legged race - where the participants bind their feet together with a string and walk to the other end and lastly, the squish a balloon between two person and attempt to walk all the way to the end game. xD After the games, we were supposed split them into the primary schoolers and the secondary schoolers and teach them the countries from the Malaysian and Asia Map respectively. Afterwards, we were to pair up with our partners and let the children walk through the "Environmental Walk" by learning how to save and protect/encourage/prevent: Water, Trees, Recycling, Pollution, and another two more i can not recall... And then we were done.

(I could not remember how to blow a balloon!!!! *sob*)

Yi Mei telling us the change of plans

Unfortunately, there was a change of plans once the younger kids saw balloons. It was like giving them presents for Christmas! So in the end, we had to improvise and allow the younger kids to play the ping pong ball on the spoon game and then allowed the rest to play with the balloons for awhile before gathering everyone into groups for the map session! Which i loved most because i learnt it!! Haha!! I could see that they enjoyed learning the Asia map as much as i did. :D Overall, the groups of kids i had for the entire day were very sweet and attentive. Which made it very simple for me. They were very enthusiastic and excited too! I could not have asked for better! :D

Then, it started to rain so, the children were lined up according to their units (the house they stayed) and i was with group 4. So Brian and i followed the children - all 6 of them - to the house. We met with their father - a very nice and gentle pak cik who was very kind and i learnt that he was retired and since he had nothing to do, he and his wife decided to take care of kids! 10 of them too!! I was honestly amazed. But hey, if he loves what he does, then i say, God bless this man with such a big heart! :)

So, when we were told to stay in the unit to talk to them about the topic we were assigned to - mine was water - for about 30 minutes, i nearly choked. I begged for a 15 and in the end, due to the rain, i was punished with an hour. xD It was not that bad lar. LOL! Except for some awkward moments when we had no idea what else to say. Haha! Worst was translating English sentences to Malay! I did not think it was so bad! Haha! But we managed. Thankfully with Brian's lame jokes. Haha!!! Honestly, thank you man! xD

We managed to handle everything until Sheen Sern came with the goodie bags and told us we could go back to the hall. Back there, we watched the kids play with rain water and enjoy balloon fights before taking a group picture and head off back to KL for lunch!!

Which was in One U. Haha! Tried Wong Kok for the 1st time. Not too bad le! I like it there. :D

Then it was home sweet home and a good hot bath...Ahhh..Nothing like home. :D

That's all for the long post! Sorry for the abrupt ending. Haha! I had been dragging this update for too long! Till the next one!! xD