Family Day and Bruises..That Doesn't Sound Right...

Indeed it doesn't, but that's what happened..allow me to explain. The refinery had this Family Day organized at Tiara Beach Resort, Port Dickson. It's basically held as an appreciation towards the staff's hard work and the family who are behind every brave soul running the plant. Many programs and activities planned for the event, but the most interesting has got to be: Paintball.

To be honest, I've never tried paintball before, so there 's this mixture of feelings: excited, scared shitless, and doubt of myself(I even had the thoughts of not playing). In the end, I was like 'what the heck, lets shoot some!'. The participants arrived at the site (it's a palm oil farm..wow, talk about guerrilla warfare) at about 10:30ish. We then went through the rituals..registration, filling up forms, liability forms of 'we are not to be held responsible for this shit', stretching exercise, familliarization to the equipment, bla bla bla. Now comes the fun part. All teams (team of 10) are playing a total of 4 games: kill them all, capture the flag, medic, and VIP.

The first game we played was kill them all. Basically we need to attack the opposing team and the captain has to touch the bunker at the enemy's territory. Sounds easy? Wait till you actually play it! We all then got geared up with the face mask, the gloves, the celoreng shirts..and the thing that we started to love, the marker (basically the gun thing you use to shoot, that's what it is called). The marker is powered by compressed CO2, and we're talking serious pressure here: 1800psi! To those uncertain of how high that is, let's just say it will some bruises on your body when you got shot, your eyes may go blind if it hits you. We then got into positions, and the game begins.

It's like being a child again, playing shooting with your friends. Only this time, we kick up a notch of seriousness. Man, this things hurt! But, with adrenaline pumping up, I remain calm, not bothered with the pain. I managed to shoot and hit some. Imagine running around from tree to tree, taking cover, covering your team mates, shooting enemies from close range (that will leave some serious bruise, we're talking weeks to fade). In the end, my team lost. It's OK, we still have 3 games to go. But that was more than what I expected. We were exhausted, I think i drank 2 bottles of water after the 1st game.

Then comes the next game, capture the flag (which I think is the suckiest game of all 4) Why? it only lasted like 10 seconds. Our captain could not see the captain of the opposing team ran to capture the flag (the flag is placed in the middle). I did not fire even a single shot, which turns out frustrating. Dammit!

Next, in my opinion is the most tiring game (at least for me anyway): medic. Being a medic, I have to shoot enemies, and at the same time attend to 'injured' team mates to 'heal' them. For the previous games, we only need to tag a tree behind with our flag to sort of 'recharge'. This is where my physical capacity challenged me. I got shot the most on this game, I even got shot on the head (I have a bump as a proof, and I'm now having trouble to lie my head down..arghhh!). But in the end, our team won! Yeah, you heard that right!. Last but not least, the VIP. Your team has to escort or cover the VIP (me, in this case), and your objective is to shoot the enemy's VIP, and the game is over. Both teams played defensively, until the opposing team ran out of pallets, and we started charging in and shoot them all! Long story short, we won! Victory is sweet after all, despite all the pain you've experienced.

Paintballing sure is a sweet activity, and I'm looking forward to playing it again! (Not anytime soon, I hoped) We left the area with sore bodies and bruises (as if it was war scars, haha).

I think that's about it to update. We had the rest of the usuals: telematches, which I am too damn tired to join, dinner, some performances (owhh btw, we invited the hillarious Saiful Apek and Faizal Tahir as guest performers) Faizal Tahir sure rocks the stage, despite the drizzling rain. See you in the next post!