When I’m doing this post, my muscles and joints are all working in pain. If I’d have to give chase over some thief whom has stolen some old lady’s handbag, I’d have to give up the chase within seconds because I can hardly walk now, and sprinting is totally out of the equation. All this was due to me participating in The Amazing Mall Race organized by The Star Sarawak Edition which was held in tHe Spring.
Before I go on details, we had to give our team a name, and without thinking much, I decided that my robotics team’s name should be the name to be promoted. After all, Joseph (my partner for the race and also my ex-student) is one of the members of my robotics team, and it did make sense at that point.
After the forms were submitted, I couldn’t help but laugh over how funny it was to see our team called MJROBOTICS being highlighted in tHe Spring. At some point, I frankly felt that I should have decided on a better name, but hell… we were the best team for two round, and I guess, in a way, by beloved robotics team gained some exposure in Kuching ;-P Any publicity is good, right?
Well, the race actually required us to run all over the mall, all 3 stories of the mall, and with a bit rush of adrenaline, and a good game plan, Joseph and I emerged 1st twice in the race of 3 rounds, leaving other contestants wondering how on earth did we manage to finish super fast. I think Sylas(the emcee) even said that we finished the task of 6 shops within 10 minutes 😀 If you are wondering about the task, well, its just running to a particular store and obtaining the stamp of the store, while taking a photo proof of our presence at that particular store.
Okay, the two leads in the first two round made us super proud. Imaging having the emcee telling off your victory to the crowd, while you walking up to the stage to prove yet another victory. By any standards, we had our heads held high. Leading the pack, and having people guessing how on earth we did it 😀
LAST ROUND, and we were feeling confident. We were fast, we knew the mall well and we had the RM200 prize money as motivation.
The last task was to get 4 items (1 hot drink, i cold drink and 1 can drink with rice), photostat the receipt in one paper, and head on the stage to be declared the winner. Yeeeaaaa.. it sounded very easy. Joseph and I wasted no time planning out where we could get everything at the lowest cost. We were confident. It’s EAAAASAYYYYYY!!! RM200, come to papa we said! We were on fire!!
…and we actually did as we expected, when we reached the photostat shop we were the first, and we had one last task before running off with the grand prize. Like I said.. EEEAAASSYYYYY!!! but after a while, we realized our lead was reduced to 4th because there was no one manning the photostat shop, and us, being good, law abiding citizens waited for the person to come so that we could have our receipt photostatted, while some other teams dashes in, and photostatted the receipts themselves!! Ahhh.. Nevermind that, we were still very confident. We bought everything at a super low price. RM11.70 for everything. Who can beat that? I saw most teams dashing towards the food court and Ta Kiong, as we went to the Singapore Chicken Rice where everything was available. Confident, we came in 4th, but was still very much saying ‘The RM200 is ours!” Prudent shopping shall prevail…
Well, that thought lasted until we heard the emcee say “Let see who spent the closest to RM20!!”
And that was when our eyes rolled up in disbelief. One by one, the teams were called up, and when we came up while the emcee (Sylas) continued praising our lead in the race,and the moment of truth eventually came when he totaled out our receipts which proved we spent THE LEAST MONEY, and we came out 1st, but from the wrong end of the pack.
Maybe better luck next time, but I guess the moral of the story would be to listen attentively when instructions are given out, although I do think that I could easily fault the emcee for not stressing the ‘closest to RM20’ part, and the fact that other teams actually bought more than the 4 items listed. Ahh.. bitter grapes.. hahaha.haha
