Merdeka Road Relay

A story of one of my contributions to my division back in 2008.  Not particularly glamorous but it was still a memory worth sharing.

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So, one of the departments in our division organized a road relay in conjunction with Merdeka. When they first announced it, I was curious and it managed to peak my interest. There should be 4 people in the team and one person from each team would have to do one activity at one of the four check points before passing the baton – in this case, a Jalur Gemilang – to the next person.

I didn’t really follow up on the matter as I couldn’t find anybody who was as enthusiastic. However, at the last minute, a team from another department was short of one person and looking for somebody to join the team. Being my usual self, I offered to be in the team eventhough I had no idea who the rest of the team members were.

So, the event was today after work hours. I went there in a rush as I was in a whole-day meeting preparing for an event that is about to happen in about one week plus.

I put on my running shoes and the soles of the shoes came off! That was one bad luck already. When I arrived at the assembly point, the other teams were there but not my team members – I knew because the rest seemed to belong to some group or another. It didn’t help that the people there knew me and kept asking, “Hey Faza, where are your team members?” Kind of embarrassing but I stayed on anyway. Eventually, 2 of the team members arrived and we had to import another person from another department to complete the team.

The organizer briefed us on what awaited us at each check point. The first person had to answer about 30 questions on Merdeka stuff, the second had to play hop-scotch, the third had to juggle a takraw ball and the last had to toss a marble into a circle to get points a-la dart board. Guess which one I had to do? I was the third runner and I had to juggle a takraw ball! I mean I’ve played a lot of sports and I would say that I’ve always been good in all the sports that I played but I’ve never played sepak takraw before. I wanted to swap with the only guy in the team but he said he was also no good in sepak takraw. Anyway, in the spirit of esprit de corps, I agreed to do it although I had no idea how to juggle the damn takraw ball.

When all the third runners were on the way to the check point, one of the guys (yeah, the rest were all guys!) commented, “Wah, the third runner sumer lelaki.” I turned around and said, “Excuse me!” and they started to make jokes that if I were better than any of them, they would have to default the game. And guess what? I was actually better than at least one of the guys! I managed to juggle the ball twice and this one guy only juggled once! Satisfaction!

In the end, my team didn’t win – I expected as much. But I had fun. I would join in such events again without batting my eyes.

Oh, yeah. In case I forgot or had no time to update, MERDEKA!