Team Building and The Push of Physical Limit

My company had a team-building event on Friday at Jerajak island. Jerejak island is about 10 minutes of boat ride from the Penang island. Despite the claim this island is 'rich with history' because the 'founder of Penang' Francis Light landed on it in 1786 before he found Penang, to me it looks just like yet-another-piece-of-island.

The day started with an annoying alarm call at 7a.m. Those who know me well are aware, 7a.m. is well helluva early for me, but to catch the boat to the island, I dragged my butt to the jetty _very_ reluctantly and got on the boat.

I took the boat to Jerejak Island from this jetty

The boat chuckled along the coast line towards Jerejak island, I gazed at the buildings with a blank mind, thinking to get a cup of coffee to wake up my mind. Boy, my brain was in hibernation mode.

At the island, we grouped in teams and had the typical drills for team-building: telematch, jungle exploration (also known as 'mosquito feeding sessions' or 'whack the bug activity') and wall climbing.

Grouping in front of the hotel

Rock Climbing:
One of the activities we had was rock climbing. Standing in front of us was an artificial wall around 20 feet tall with various protrubing holds. There were altogether 3 paths with varying difficulties. I conquered the normal one without much fuss. After 20 minutes, I thought I was ready for the hard one. Slowly I ascended with full confidence. Just 3 feet below the top, I found my hands and legs had involuntary fatigue spasms, I wanted to move on, but my body wass out of control and failed me. My body couldn't stop shaking. I was dangling at such height and I realized my very own limitation. Finally I just released the grip and let the training supervisor to lower me down using the rope attached to the safety harness. The lesson learned is: physical strength comes from training, not from wishful thinkings. For the Mount Kinabalu trip, i have a lot of catch-ups to do for training.

Everybody clamped inside one room

All the physical activities ended around 5:30p.m. and we had 2 hours of free-and-easy time before dinner. We just spent the time chatting and eating tidbits in the hotel room. We were all 'rotten' and said silly things, but it was quite fun to do all these once in a while, just to release tension in work.

The dinner and night proceeded without anything interesting. I relaxed myself and chatted casually with my newly-acquainted colleagues. The next day we had a treasure hunt. That was all of my team-building activity. Despite the fact the site was so near my office and Penang, going to a new place does switch the pace of life.

On the way back to Penang, well, this is the Penang island at my left side, if you turn right, it will be the Jerejak island. It is _that_ close to each other.