JUST PERFECT

(by Lenny Wan)

“Just perfect”, I thought when I read about the Consumer Hunt BPK 2012, a ‘free’ hunt on a day when I was free. I roped in another “ekor”, Ruben, who did not know much about the hunt and didn’t even know the prizes on offer. He was under the impression that it was just a small hunt on a Sunday in Semenyih to quench our thirst for hunts (especially after a month of May which was largely bereft of hunts).

The two of us arrived at the carnival site at TESCO, Semenyih that lazy Sunday morning with not much expectation but to our pleasant surprise, we discovered that the consumer hunt was part of a series of activities for the “Bulan Pengguna Kebangsaan”, which was organised on a rather large scale.

Consumer Hunt BPK 2012

Tesco Semenyih

The first part of the Hunt involved finding the acronyms of the government’s initiatives such as Bantuan Rakyat 1Malaysia (BR1M) and another challenge which required us to anagram the names of Ministers. Once we got that out of the way, we proceeded to the cryptic portion of the hunt at the rows of shop houses surrounding TESCO.

Ruben and I appeared to have rediscovered the old magic that saw us winning the Berjaya Times Square Novice Walk Hunt three years ago as we co-operated and complemented each other well to solve the cryptic clues.

Our confidence kept increasing as we solved one clue after another…until we realised that we had inadvertently missed out the bold questions targeted at Regulars which were found on the following page! That certainly burst our bubble and slowed us down to an extent. We found the following to be the toughest of the lot:

Q: mmX

We skipped this question the first time round and only came back to grapple with it at the end of the Hunt after we had finished the other sectors inside of TESCO. At one glance, one would have thought it was the roman numerals for 2010 but looking at it carefully, something was amiss since “mm” was not capitalised.

Based on this logic, we started looking at ‘mm’ as a measurement and figured that mmX  = mm10 and could possibly refer to 1cm…close, but not good enough since if that is the case the question should have been “Xmm”.  Then, inspiration struck and I suddenly thought of the “phantom” approach and when we inversed “1cm”…ta daaaaah….the answer appeared clearly:



I felt a sense of satisfaction in cracking a challenging question as well as a sense of redemption for failing to tackle an easier question which also involved numbers.

The question that earlier troubled me but apparently not the rest of the regulars and not-so-regulars was the one that went something like “…jawapannya sama dengan 4”. I saw a “V One” on one of the signboards and thought, too bad that’s a 6 (VI) and not 4.

I went to confer with Ruben, who had just completed his treasure quest (which involved skilfully digging out one of the treasures which had been strategically hidden behind other products by unscrupulous competitors ala ‘Sutah’  of THS Walk Hunt 2 fame). He coolly asked me whether there was a dash (which could indicate minus) between V and One.  

The moment he said that, I had a feeling he was right and with my tail tucked between my legs, I went to check and sheepishly confirmed that he was indeed correct. I felt relieved yet embarrassed that the answer was as easy as one, two, three (or in this case, four)!

We completed the hunt with some time to spare and were happily enjoying our coffee and toast at Old Town until a herd of regular hunters came streaming in and were animatedly discussing the questions and possible answers involving “women”, “rainbow” and “beauty” which we thought were straightforward (simply because we didn’t even spot any alternative answers)! Thankfully, those ultimately proved to be false alarms but that wasn’t the end of our fears.

During the answer presentation, despite finding out that all our answers were correct, we still had a sense of trepidation as the COC Fuad announced that a few teams had carelessly committed spelling errors in spelling the names of the Ministers. We were in haste when completing that part as we thought that we were behind time and due to the fact that timing of submission of Part I was the tiebreaker for the hunt. Hence, we didn’t really have time to check the answers.  That, coupled with our tendency for “amateurish mistakes” over the years, caused us to have an uneasy feeling (paranoia some may say, but we beg to differ!) on whether such errors could be our undoing once more.

We were kept in further suspense when the organisers only announced the winners for the 15^th to 4^th position and told us  that the top three would have to wait another two hours for the “Kemuncak Bulan Pengguna Kebangsaan” later that afternoon, where the Minister himself would give away the prizes.  We were happy to be placed in the top three but at the same time, it somehow felt as if we were punished with “detention”, as one hunter cheekily put it.

2nd Runner-Up

1st Runner Up

We sought shelter from the sweltering heat of the mid-day sun at “Restoran Teratak Pelangi” and whacked generous portions of nasi ayam and air Bandung (comfort food, perhaps). Then, after sitting through speeches by the Minister and other VIPs and being entertained, in the spirit of 1Malaysia, by a traditional Malay dance performance, an Indian classical dance by Chinese girls and a medley from Jay Jay (Carefree), the moment of reckoning finally arrived!

As the emcee announced ‘2Ekor’ as the champions, our sigh of relief was almost audible! Relief that our three-hour wait finally came to an end, relief that for once we did not make any careless mistakes and relief that we finally achieved our first perfect score in an open hunt!

Kudos to COC Fuad and his helpers for a satisfying hunt and thanks to all other hunters who helped make our long wait bearable and the hunt, a fun and memorable one.

After a photo-taking session with the other winners for sentimental reasons and HNN purposes, it was time to go home and although the skies that hovered above the carnival site were dark and sombre, it did little to dampen our spirits.

It may not have been the most prestigious of hunts and we may not have won the most coveted of prizes but to us, it was just perfect.

Champion

Photos courtesy of hunters Lenny Wan and Ruben Enbasegaram