Doner KeBABI

One thing I miss most from my student days in the UK is the food. Greasy fish and chips, drenched in vinegar; fresh hot doughnuts oozing with sweet strawberry jam; soft scones with dollops of cornish cream; rhubarb crumble drowning in custard. And last but not least, who can resist a big, fat doner kebab. I always preferred mine big, with ALL the salad and ALL the sauces. My favourite kebab shop in London was one naughtily named Lolita in Paddington. It had the doner kebab TO DIE FOR.

Yeah, we have the so-called local "kebab" chain restaurant - Kyros Kebab. Guys, that's just a TRAVESTY to the fraternity of kebabs! The few times that I gave it a try (mainly due to lack of any other choices) it was always dry, stale and utterly DISGUSTING.

Anyway, everyone knew how UNHEALTHY those kebabs were. I mean, insurance proposal forms should have an additional box to tick - "How many kebabs do you normally eat in a typical week?" - and those who've eaten a big amount should pay THROUGH THEIR TEETH to get covered! Eating more than your fair share of doner kebabs should lead you needing a doner of another type - HEART DONOR! And they always CLAIM that it's supposed to be "lamb". Errmm... WHICH PART of a lamb is it? Surely tastes really different from the normal lamb that I also happily consume.. lamb chops, lamb shank, lamb stew, lamb beriyani etc. I've got to admit that NONE of them even REMOTELY taste like the "lamb" kebab that I love.

So, like the Radiohead classic, I said NO SURPRISES when the results of a survey of kebabs in UK found that they contained "...shocking levels of salt, fat and calories..". But what did SHOCK me was that from 494 samples of kebabs, six were found to contain PORK!! And what's worse, two of the six were claimed to be HALAL!! So there were those who thought they ordered a kebab, but got a keBABI instead! I am truly dissappointed.

And I wonder how many of the other 488 samples which actually were lamb didn't turn out to be halal after all. So, to my brothers and sisters in the UK, please do make sure before you buy your next kebab. I always made sure that the shop was indeed halal, and the men working there were indeed Muslims before I felt comfortable buying.

Kembara ANSARA 2009

First hunt of 2009. First one for quite a while, actually - more than a month since the MENSA hunt. Not a great start to the year though. Turned out to be quite disastrous, both in terms of the hunting experience and our performance.

Same old story with the team - I have never yet hunted with the same team for two different hunts! Originally we had two of my colleagues joining us. They were both from MRSM, so together with me we fulfilled the criteria to get the special ANSARA prize for highest placed ex-MRSM team. But at the 11th hour the Missus couldn't make it, so we had another colleague joining us. So there we were, The MERCERnaries, confident of at the very least finishing as the best ex-MRSM team. OH how wrong we were. In the end, we finished with 60+ points, and the 15th team out of only 34 got 79 points. Shows how far off we were. WE WERE NOT EVEN CLASSIFIED!

On hindsight, what did us in was mainly two things - carelessness and poor time management. Two of the REALLY important things that one must avoid when treasure hunting - so no excuse, really. There were a few clues where I figured out the answer, but not the SPECIFIC answer. And there are no half-points in hunting - either you get it right or wrong. And we got it wrong. One example:

Right! So be it to notes.

I managed to figure out that "Right!" stands for "R", and "So be it" is "Amen", giving me "Ramen" which was the name of one of the restaurants in the sector, which I put down as the answer. However, I stupidly didn't follow through with the rest of the clue - "notes". On the same signboard, there was the name "Ramen Wang Sdn Bhd". Now "notes" can be to mean "wang" ("money" in Malay). Therefore, "Ramen Wang Sdn Bhd" is indeed the only correct answer.

There were at least a couple other clues where I did the same mistake of not reading through the clue properly, and was punished. Saying that, there were also a few clues where I really "tembak" the answers, as the answers I had only half-answered the clue, but somehow they turned out correct!

Time-management was the other big mistake. You can argue that poor time management and not reading the clue properly go hand-in-hand. Not deciphering the clue makes it harder to find the answer, which in turn means that you spend more time than neccessary at the sector looking for the answer. We really suffered in the latter stages of the hunt, rushing back to the finishing point, what with the massive traffic near One Utama on a Saturday afternoon. We didn't get the points for 5 of the last 7 clues, which with more time I'm sure I would've got most of those.

All in all, a frustrating hunt, but on the bright side, a HELLUVA lot of lessons learnt!