The Sun Motor Hunt 2009

This has got to be the only type of activity in life where you never want to get promoted.... Do you know what it is?

Treasure hunting!

I am not sure how many hunts we did this year, but it probably has to be less than 3 - I think I participated in all of them - Australian Alumni hunt, Uncle Chong's Economy Hunt and this one - the creme de la creme of all treasure hunts - the Sun Hunt. We got a decent 28th position for this hunt - from 57 in 2007 to 83 in 2008 and now 28!! It seems the lesser we participate in the better we are! Some highlights :

- I no longer believe in outsourcing - we outsourced one treasure question to our fifth man CG and he got a decent answer - except that the outsourcer -ie. us in the car, did not spend enough time thinking about the answer, if we had, we would've gotten the right treasure!!!

- We have a great team - WY, JS, NY, myself, CG, JS2 (backup) - this is 5+1 persons, but somehow, we could never make the same event, so we are all pretty happy with the 5 person thing. JS could not make some of the items last year, I could not this year and last year at Damian's wedding for mensa hunt, and WY when she was away, JS during the christmas hunt too.

- What I really love about our team was the great spirit of team work - we never duplicated each other, we lived with each others strengths, interchange thoughts and in general have a great time at each hunt - with lots of jokes and humor. I used to be the anchor for the team in figuring out the questions, but we have grown so adaptive nowadays (and me a bit degenerative too) that we all know we are all capable of solving the questions and treasures, and we work together well - yesterdays event was such - team work made everyone solve some big questions, even the driver whilst driving!

- I am easily satisfied to believe that we have a long way to go before we are masters, but we do have the potential of a great team. It is my honor to serve with great people.

Back to the reason why you never want to get promoted - the Sun Hunt is indeed the most punishing of all reasons. The Sun Hunt has gotten so big that it caters for up to 270 teams in the open category and a limited masters category for 20 cars. This is itself a major logistical nightmare every year, for the sponsors and organisers to manage traffic, the wrath of the non-hunters and in general, organise a full day event - hunting for 6 hrs and then a dinner because you need a couple of hours to mark at least 270 papers! The poor masters had a tough time - the questions were tough, and all of them got rewarded but what is usually a top 3-5 position is now a 15-20 position for some of them and after a tough day, only a miserable mp3 player, and the whole dinner is dedicated to questions for the open category!!!