It was definitely a fun trip. It wouldn't have been great without going with the fellow ULC. I had never challenged strong sea waves before until i joined this trip! The greatest fun of all was when surfboarding and swimming against strong waves at the beach! The satisfaction was greatly sensed upon reaching back the shore after the exhausting surfboarding and sea swimming. All these could not have been done if not going with ULC.

Strong waves they were! captured on the 3rd day before leaving.

On the first day, we first embraced the slightly strong waves and had a relaxing warm-up. On the second day, real 'training' began where first triers were taught on how to ride surfboard and swim towards the South China Sea under strong waves condition which would never ever be seen at Sentosa. Waves on the second day were obviously stronger, and it caused me a painful hit on my back by a surfboard when I was in the sea behind another surfer who just started to begin to surf towards the sea, it was my own mistake as i was unaware of the potential risk that surfboard might be hit inward the seashore anytime by strong waves. Amazingly, thank god that I didn't suffer from any bone fracture due to the double hit on my back and my bud because even Mr Sim said he could hear the colliding sound when he was on the shore. Well, the fun continued after the wound had been treated with some alcohol swap and covered by bandage. I must not miss the fun haha! Later on, 20+ ppl were split into 2 groups to start off a friendly match after hours of practice. I was neither a fast surfer nor swimmer but in the end our team won coz KM YJ and Leonard were in the team. Their stamina and strengths were more than enough to offset the weaknesses of every other team member. Woho!

The strongest sea waves happened on the last day. The wind was so strong that the second wave was already formed to vigorously chase after the front wave even before its crest started to subside. AT and Ian first ran into the sea to swim against the roaring sea. I was initially unconfident with my current stamina and skill to go against the real powerful current. But then more seniors had later came down to join us and thus I felt more secured to challenge the bad-tempered sea. By attempting several butterly forwarding and diving into the sea infront of the big wave right before its crest hit on me, finally i was able to reach out to the sea! Luckily I learned the way of compromising with the incoming strong wave when swimming out in the previous day. One must dive into the sea before letting the big wave hit on your face and body, otherwise one would end up with unconsciousness due to the strong force and finally...you know what could be next. As for surfboarding, i didn't try it on day three coz i still don't have the skills: capsizing, backward balancing, even the kneel-down surfing. The seniors had their fun surfing at such large waves, and I shall try when i have more confidence handling the board. After all, I'm proud to have conquered the fear for strong waves and have swam through it already! 

Cool seawater

No one else was at the beach before heavy rainfall.

Sadly, I didn't capture down all the most fun moments we had by the sea, coz i didn't bring along my camera to the beach on the 1st and 2nd day. But still it was not too late to use camera for other R&R (the relaxing and recreational) moments. In the evening of the 2nd day, we happened to be able to get out of The Pulai for dinner with the help of Mr. Sim's old classmate who was working at Desaru. After 30 minutes of land travelling and 20 minutes of motorboat riding, we reached a floating house in the middle of the sea. The most worth-mentioning dish of the night was definitely the steamed fish - fresh and chewy! The rest was not bad though, but the fish dish would be the only thing which makes me wanna visit there again.

  
  
LS photo series @ floating house. JK's looks the best. He deserves the centre position.

                    
Thanks to Yanni for the free modeling. Caught the sunlight effect!                                Cute Linda with her pisang goreng 

Right after dinner, firefly trip began. The last time when I watched firelies was at Kuala Selangor with fellow hwxh friends when i was still in form 3 or 4 -- long long time ago. I couldn't really compare which was nicer as fireflies are all the same. Both were not bad. I enjoyed the cool sea breeze when riding on the motorboat more than the fireflies though.

 We 'were' LS!

 
On the boat.

And of course, I still had quite a lot of memory space in my camera on the 3rd day. After room check-out, I proposed to snap some great shots at the beach with the LS before leaving. Luckily i did it. It was time to practise my photographic skills again haha! I've been missing the Tech Crew life which had the Nikon D70s always by my side. But, this time I could only use Canon Powershot S50, it's already quite high-end as compared to others in the same level. The quality of image taken using these two different cameras was so much differrent! This time i got to compromise with the sharpness and cleariness of the images a bit, they were out of my control already. Nevertheless, I still could play with some great angle shooting. Some were very satisfactory haha! But, I forgot to check something before using the camera, a careless mistake which i can't forgive myself -- forgot to clean the lense! I just realized that there was a large fingerprint right on the lense when I wanted to transfer the photos to my laptop. I think this is one of the reasons why most of the photos are not very sharply focused. Most probably it was caused by this external factor coz when I checked May's photos taken in Shanghai using the Canon S50 as well, those images are sharper than the photos i've taken. Tech Crew vice head needs to find somewhere to hide his head already....... but actually the air was misty at the beach due to strong winds when we were busy snapping shots there. The misty air caused the photos to look a bit blur and grainy. Sigh....

Well, I'm now back in Singapore 'successfully'. Few days ago I was still worried whether I could still re-enter Singapore again from Desaru or not. There was a passport issue aroused on the day before the trip. My restricted passport would have its validity period ended on the 31st December 2006. Thanks to the ICA officer who granted me the permission to use the passport till the coming new year's eve. Otherwise, so much fun could have been missed!

Bye Desaru.

Next misssion -- BM!

p/s: All the photos posted above might be a bit of misleading coz it always shows only the few of us. Actually there were about 20+ of ppl in the trip hah.

会到我所要的终点吗？