The Search for Soul of the Night with Nokia N82.

Okay, finally I’ve got time to sit down and blog about this fabulous race. I was invited as one of the medias to race. I was very happy, yay free phone!

When I found out that my teammate would be a stranger, at first I was a bit sien, why couldn’t they pair me off with Ah Suan or Ah Pau or even Ah Pop so that we could get the free phone and chill. Of course, the organiser had already anticipated this and found a way to counter that. By pairing us with people we don’t know, whom they have shortlisted from the nationwide auditions.

I felt that I owe it to my teammate to perform even harder because I didn’t have to go through all the hassles of auditioning. I heard the audition was tough! Anyway, His name is Fairuz and we clicked from the start. Pork Dickson boy, love his hometown :)

I stayed overnight at One World Hotel and I got the boo over to keep me company (read: bluff him to bring my laptop so I could pull an all-nighter researching). Woke up at 11am for the race! I was so focused my womb wasn’t even sizing up (yeah aunty visited at the same time :P).

All of us had a delicious lunch at Bakerzin, then we adjourned to the starting point where we were interviewed by the media and all. Felt damn glamourous hehehe.

We’ve got 8 teams of different colour. They are:

1. Team grey

Afiq (Harian Metro) and Sharon.

2. Team yellow

Lai Sin (Sin Chew Cyberworld) and Hooi Han.

3. Team orange
WTF WHY WE DIDN’T CAMHO ONE FAIRUZ????

4. Team pink

David and Ah Pau.

5. Team purple

Sadat and Sam (The Star).

6. Team red

Ah Pop and Szetoo.

7. Team blue

Aref (NST) and Sabrina.

8. Team green

Ah Suan and sweet Frankie boi.

At 4.30pm, the race began. We got into our Nissan Cefiro with our race marshall, Phoon and videographer, Kok Wah.

Our very nice race marshall :)

The day was still really bright. We figured that the judges wouldn’t really care about the daylight as long as the places are available till evening time.

Bad decision :( It was soul of the night afterall!

We were given 5 themes; games, live entertainment, food, shopping and nightview. It was raining really heavily when we started the race, so we decided Bukit Kiara Skatepark as our first destination since it has a roof.

Mid-air.

The daylight was really bugging me but I kept telling myself that there’s a reason why the race started at 4.30pm, the judges wouldn’t be so anal….not!

Then we went to Jalan Sayur (off Jalan Pudu) for the Wai Sek Kai. It was about 6pm by then and I read in The Star Food Guide (courtesy of boo) that the stalls would be opened by then. Unfortunately, the rain had prevented a lot of traders from operating so the sight wasn’t really something to shout about. I’m pretty sure it’s a sight to behold later in the evening.

Anticipation.

We left Jalan Sayur only to be stuck in a horrible jam. We were afterall in the middle of the city. At first we thought about going to KL Hilton for the nightview but changed decision to go to Bukit Permai, or better known as Mini Genting by Cheras folks.

How lah I know got so many people know about the place? We were toying with the idea of going to Thean Hou Temple for the view too, but in the end we went all the way to Cheras.

It still wasn’t dark enough…sigh.

When we’re about to leave, we spotted Team Yellow. ALAMAK. We were quiet all the way back to PJ on MRR2, namely due to tiredness and also tulanness of knowing another team has gotten to our location.

But Team Orange will persevere! We went into Kepong and stopped by Fun & Cheer, a wholesaler of everything from stationeries to cheongsam to binocular to party poppers. The reason why we went there was because we thought it’d be a better idea to avoid the typical shopping places like night markets and shopping malls. Besides, I really adore that place!

Find everything and anything here.

Lastly, we went to The Curve to catch a live performance. We weren’t really sure if they’re going to be there but we took a chance. It was almost 9pm by then and the race would end at 9.30pm sharp.

Live performance and Fairuz stealing the limelight.

We were there and out in less than 5 minutes. At the junction turning into 1 Utama, we spotted Team Green’s car next to ours. But our driver, Sharil was really nice, he drove like a mad man and overtook them at a different traffic light :D. We were the 5th team to arrive, I think.

Then we rushed to the laptop and started uploading all our pictures to Soul of the Night’s website. It was quite daunting! We had to upload one by one and also caption the pictures.

The other teams started arriving. Some rushed to the laptops and some looked so relaxed, obviously because they have utilised the awesomeness of N82 to upload their pictures while on the go. We didn’t upload pictures on the go because we wanted to choose our pictures carefully at base.

Me, Kok Wah (our videographer) and Fairuz.

Then it was time for announcement of winners. We were so nervous. I held onto Fairuz in a halal way for support throughout the announcements.

As you should know by now, Ah Suan and Sweet Frankie won the race. Their prize…trip for two to HK with RM1500. Congratulations you two!

Fairuz, don’t be sad!

And here’s our post-race face…still pweety right?

Ah Pau, Ah Kim & Ah Suan.

I had a really wonderful time at the race. Seriously, being born and bred in KL didn’t give me an advantage in the race. In fact, I think a KL native is more likely to be unaware of all the interesting places in KL, the outstation people are more well-informed! But I’m glad I could see so many sides of KL in one night.

Oh yes…and the phone. It’s too awesome. I’ve done grieving for my N95, hehehe.