I listened to the announcement of winner, and had been so envy when I watched Ooi Ning, one of my state's representative bringing down the little trophy from the stage for the National Malay Language Quiz Competition. 9th place. I called back to mom, who had been eager to know how I'm doing. I remembered sitting at the table, looking at the glass filled with Sabah Tea, the proud product of the state, blaming it for not letting me to sleep nicely the night before. I think maybe it's because mommy is not there to be with me when I had my first flight during Primary 6 for that important competition of my life. I had been such a confident jerk back then, and thought I can win, because I've been stupid enough to believe that I'm more than well trained by Mrs Lai, one of my most respected primary school teacher. And I remembered I smiled in relieve when I looked at the result slip the day after that and knew I was the 21st ranker. 21st is not that bad right?

And that's how my memory told me about Sabah, which I stepped on after 9 years, for Baktisiswa :D The annual program by Medsoc is held to let second year students to have exposure in health screening in rural areas which medical care is difficult to reach =/ this year we had it in Kampung Lohan of Ranau, in the Negeri Bawah Bayu :D

The Preparations
Sucked. And I swear this is the last Medsoc activity which I am in (hmm let's exclude performance if there is any) because (you might find this funny) I'm tired to be in the preparation team anymoreeee hahaa and I wanted more time to hang around :) Running to different faculty for approval because we wished to use their auditorium for performance night and they can't tell me in face that we should pay so they gave me reasons like their technicians are tired (what?) and busy. :( Thank god the concert went well (aik Lin Ru came for performance too :D) Car wash is tiring, but I wished I could thank everyone that contributed to our funds - especially the kind uncles we met in Taman Tun Dr Ismail when we went there to for car wash. We were kinda thinking that we were daydreaming because we washed his car, ironed his clothes and got a very generous pay of RM400. "Finally somebody is doing things for those in Sabah," he said. Well hate to say this but things might get even better if you didn't happen to hear or know the complaints from other committee members - just thank god for it's a fairer system this time around rather than competing for places to go :s

Programsss
I always thought that having Nicole as our project director eases a lot of things - she understood the population in the village, the culture, and most importantly, her ability in speaking Sabahan accent gave the villagers a sense of familiarity. That's how I felt when I watched Nicole delivering her welcoming speech on the very first day of our project. The thing we did in the next morning is heartwarming - watching primary school students wash their hands and brushed their teeth under our guidance, and how they coloured the paper 'Swan' (as a gratitude to our sponsor) with full focus. :) The little students were shy talking to you, talked about their ambition proudly during sharing session with the eyes shone with determination, happily chasing around with us on a field - and I hadn't seen that scene in years :)

Our university had been very generous to had approved our adviser to provide 100 injections of cervical cancer vaccine so our adviser had been working on it. We had another team of doctors from the Department of Surgery conducting a research on prostate cancer awareness on men above 50 years old, and another team researching on the relation between multiparous women and anaemia. And of course we done our basic health screening - weight and height, BPs, blood glucose etc. Well the villagers probably had other routes to seek medical attention, or we didn't do our publicity well - only a handful of villagers turned up. So in the end some of us went to house to house to conduct health screening :)

I had the opportunity to talk about malaria to the villagers, and it's such a pleasure to have people listen to your medical explanation attentively :D (Confidence boost hahaa) I was repeating the same thing about the mosquitoes when an uncle who is listening told me: "Yeah I know about that! There is Plasmodium falciparum, Plasmodium vivax in this area," and happily explained to me which mosquitoes come out during the day, and which ones had it's butt up pointing up when it's sucking blood. I was so surprised and only knew that he used to work under some government research agency later :) And thanks to Suhanya I had the chance to try taking BP of some friends :)

Foster Family :D
This is the best part of the whole project in my opinion hahaa :) All the participants of the project are assigned to foster families :D The plan was initially two to three people per room, but in the end some families pulled out and we had 4 in a family, and the kind Village Committee Mr Ribin had even took in 7 students :) We were so nervous on the very first day when family by family are called out to the stage to take photos and meet with their foster parent. When we came out - it's a boy. Literally a boy, not much older than us. (Hmm?) Yee yee and me started to make guesses like he married early or he looked young and every other things else - until he brought us home to meet the real parents :D The house was within walking distance from the village hall, which eased our activities a lot. The boy who picked us up turned out to be our foster brother, Fadlee who is a student in teaching college :) And we met another foster brother named Farhan, which is a technician of Hospital Ranau :) Foster mom and dad were very very very kind, and allow us to do whatever we want in the house :p

We were told that the house was renovated, and this is the house to them and 2 other siblings who are studying in Peninsular Malaysia. The boys were sleeping downstairs while me and yee yee were led to a room upstairs of the two-and-a-half storeyed house. The room was all pink, and the weather at Sabah is the thing that i like the most probably :D We slept every night at 11 something at ease, and it's so surprising to see the sky turn bright at 6am in the morning :) Our foster mom had pampered us with those 'masakan kampung' every single day with tea and supper - we owed her for every single finger licking good meal :D Foster mom was a VERY good cook if you wanted me to comment, and she catered our wish to try out the local food so she had tried different local recipes to let us try out :)

  Trips!!
Hahaa after all those tiring screening activities throughout the whole day - we had the opportunities to explore around with our foster families! :D We were VERY excited about itttt, especially when Farhan told us we are about to experience the New Zealand in Sabah! :D And yeaaa it's certainly the same as what you had experienced - green grass, windy icy weather, and COWSSSS :D Tadaa presenting the Kundasang Dairy Farm by Desa Cattle Pte Ltd :)

The cafeteria sold freshhh milk and chocolate and beautiful postcards :D (made me thought that if it's photoshopped :S) Oh yea some of our friends got the chance to feed the cows too, but we left early for our next station - the Poring hotspring :) We walked across it into the woods first - and was looking for the waterfall :D the foster brothers told us there are 7 of them, and the furthest will take up to 3 hours plus to reach :S Hahaa since we had only less than 2 hours to spend there - we spent our time at the first waterfall (Kipungit Waterfall) and the hotspring :) The waterfall was shallow I would say, and we could actually reach the waterfall using our hands! *excited mood turned on*

And when we were coming out from the woods to the hot springs again - memories started to flash back - and YEAAA it's the same place I took photos years ago :D The big rock with the hot water boiling until a thin layer of smoke was always on the surface, is surrounded by chains to prevent people from falling down hahaa. The individual hot pools were cute - you have to clear out the water from the previous person first before filling yours - and adjust between the hot and cold tap (My leg was burning when I was turning on the hot tap and not realizing my leg was directly below it :S). It's big enough to accomodate three hahaa :D So we had been having fun there and listening to stories from other families :D There are larger pools to try out too :)


When it was time to go - we recorded a family about our stay there - (Yueting was bringing a videocam because he was recording a gratitude video to Swan) we hugged our families and said goodbye - some of our friends even shed their tears :( Before we move on to Kota Kinabalu we stopped by Sabah Tea Plantation which is the biggest organic tea garden in Malaysia! (some says the world :D) We were lucky to have a guided tour about the production, the method to identify which tea contained colourings etc - pretty place to experience :) We even had the chance to try out the little tea pancakes with honey :D The Sabah Tea Garden is connected to an Australian warriors' memorial named Quailey's Hill Memorial, and near to it was a Longhouse opened to visitors (you can even stay overnight there :D). Well it was our plan but in the end we decided to stay for a night more with our foster families :)

Sorry hahaa but this is absolutely my plan to stuff this post with photos and photos and more photos :D
And our last stop was the Tagal Fish Spa nearby for exfoliation hahaa :P I was really so scared of the fish and yeahh I.. didn't even go into the river :P My friends all removed their shoes and stockings, walked into the river, with or without bait and the fish approached. I had Suhanya's camera all to mine and snap around my friend's expressions - (they told it all) some shouting, some laughing, some holding on to his/her girlfriend/girlfriend, some enjoying :D The fish literally came in swarms and really did looked scary hahaa :P And our friends all came up with legs red bitten by the fish :P
Sabah was indeed a nice place - with real fascinating sceneries :) Hahaa I wished I will go again, nno competition or no community services this time - truly for vacationn :) (was thinking about Sipadan Island ohhh mann the clear sea) oh yea hopefully with the right person toooo :)