Note from writer and main editor:
this part of our journey in MHi we wrote in english mainly to enhance our english writing skills and vocabulary (although I'm actually really good in writing english essays) and so that there could be a little twist in this blog. Nobody likes a dull-one-color blog, so this is to sparkle it up, if you know what I mean. (even if you don't)
We were late. that's how I could explain it. Some of us woke up from bed late while others were busy preparing breakfast which was prepared by Yasser and his teammate. It was very unlucky for us as on that morning too, Sarjan already stood by. He and Abg Jin were very angry to us since the discipline problems among us were still too significant even after 2 weeks of our program has past. So, without wasting a lot of time, we have begun that day with a few push-ups (50 does not sound few) as our punishment. Worried? Don’t be, we deserved it, after all it has been 2 weeks.
What looked like an all out torture game, went to the high hope adrenaline type of activity when we were shown the techniques of rappelling. The Briefing was kind of….. brief, maybe too brief. It looked too easy. You wear some kind of humongous spender that would protect your back and secure you to the rope (It was huge, not to mention tight) and then they’ll give you some metal piece that looked like a piece of eight (which I presume is its name) with some kind of ugly looking grappling hook (this is not what it is called, It has a different name). Looks simple, but once we got to the rappelling site you might say something like that.
Our short trek from our campsite to the rappelling site brought us to a high cliff, maybe considered small in some eyes, but you just have to wait till you reach the top and Abang Jin orders you to go down it. Now that was our problem. There wasn’t any demonstration on how we had to do this repelling, so we did it head on blindfolded. Like in the movies where some handsome young guy came rappelling down rescuing the damsel in distress at the bottom, the only thing was that we were the damsel in distress, and we were heading down not being rescued up.
Aabid, became the first unlucky person to go down the 3 storey cliff. There were some bumps here and there, and some embarrassing moments when others took their turn, some of us even got the chance to do “shuffle” on the cliff(how creative our teenagers nowadays).
There were in some of those unexpected cases where among us (disappointingly boys, I’m not going to point out who) who were afraid of going down the high cliff (Fear of heights). It took the combined courage of “Ustaz” Khairul and Abang Jin to force these type of scardy cats to "come down the tree".
Now some of us (including myself: Khaleed) had to trek back to the campsite early because we had to prepare lunch, so, sadly the part of akhwat's rappelling is not mentioned (hopefully they'll have the liberty to update it ASAP).
3.30pm
What was so special about today was that we had a whole lot of outdoor activities, and on this evening there will be our all time favourite: Treasure hunt. Now the game was simple. You're given a compass to find your way and find the last check point. Now the hard part was you had those "safe keeping stuff" (barang amanah). Every team had to safe keep the water in their team's respective plastic cup (more of a plastic cut into a shape of a cup). each teammate had to hold on to a piece of string that held the plastic cup and it's contents. We were iven a brief introduction about our compass and how we had to use it. Now you could say it wasn't that complicated (hey, anyone knows how to use a compass), well the ones we got were "upgraded" ones, these were the type of compass the was used during "compass orientation" (whatever that means), the "lecture"(it went for almost an hour) was given by Abang Jin.
With all those cool dials, and funny looking diagrams, we were ready to hunt for treasure. The idea was to point the direction of our next clue by using the compass and the information from our previous clues. You could say that the one hour lecture paid off because some teams finished in just a few minutes after they were given the green light. Unfortunately, some teams weren't so lucky, there was the sudden accident of tripping over a rock a spilling the water (which would cause a great madness from Abang Khairul if he knew) but somehow we managed it. By the time it was asar, almost all of the teams have located there last checkpoint. Congratulations!!!
9.00pm
Critical thinking. that was the name of tonight's slot from Dr.Harlina. with her were ( I assume) all the other members of JIM Hulu Selangor. May Allah Bless them, thankfully they brought extra food and rations, some of us were starving after an "all out" outdoor activity today.
Back to the critical thinking. It was mostly, well about how we're suppose to think. An intelligent Muslim (Said Dr.Harlina) wouldn't just follow anyone's rule blindfoldedly, they would think first and act appropirately. That was one of the objectives of this slot. The idea of critical thinking was to ask questions that would create concrete structures to be followed. We were given some funny yet mind blogging question for us to answer and comment to test our critical thinking ability, e.g:
The world wouldn't mean anything without a God. And yet, the world is full of meaningness. Does this means that God exist?
A spherical object creates a rounded shadow. The earth creates a round shadow on the moon. Does this proves that the earth is a sphere?
Answer it for yourself ( I know, i know, it does doesn't make sense, get it? LOL)
Now there were another two more slots with Dr.Harlina tomorrow. one about Emotional Intelligence and the other is our regular Malaysian known friend "Celebreating Diversity". Hopefully after this everyone will be a great critical thinker.
But there was still something bothering by the time this slot finished, a question raised by Suhaib:
If critical thinking is so important then that means we should ask as much questions when given an order to better our understandment. So, should we actually comment and ask questions orders that were given by our leaders or even maybe our parents so we wouldn't go blindfoldedly?
Answer it for yourself. And a little advisefrom Dr.Harlina for those hot heads out there who "thinks" they are critical thinkers: Don't question your parents orders!!!
PS: This article was adapted and "mainly" writen by the editor (Don't ask who was it, you'll find out)but the brilliant ideas and knowledge is credited to Helios Knight. Thank you
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