"Through the Wind and Wave"

Fuh... I am tired today. This morning, after my earlier 6 am post, I went back to sleep and got up again at 8.30. Our family got ready to go for the cell outing planned today. PJ cell decided to go for paintball today. Yup, paintball. Or as some call it, "Pain-ball"...

Shah Alam Extreme Sports Centre, the location of our "battlefield". What you see here are their futsal courts and cafe facilities. What you also see is an incredibly cool skate park, complete with bowls, jumps, rails, and half-pipes. What you don't see, are the rock climbing walls, fast food restaurants and paintball arena. Obviously, they have quite a lot of stuff there. Now, let's move on...

Here's the cell, waiting anxiously for the "battle" to begin. Notice the neatly arranged paintball helmets in the foreground. They didn't stay that way for long...

Here's Jon and his invited friend, Kartik having a little fun...

We spilt into two teams of six each. After a round of briefings, fittings, and preppings, we were off. (Sorry, didn't get pictures of the field due to the gun in one hand and helmet in the other...)

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FIRE!

Two teams of six each, one flag. Mission objective: Capture the Flag

Round One. After the signal, we all moved to find cover among the various barrels and dirt mounds. I found a good spot and proceeded to snipe 4 guys out of the other team, until I got sniped at myself. Our team managed to win, after one of ours made a quick dash for the flag...

Round Three. We switched bunkers for a bit of fairness. This time, we advanced rather slowly. Unfortunately for me, I got pinned down, since the other team somehow seemed to have wisened up and trained most of their shots on me. After a while, the other team made dashes to the flag. They needed three to retrieve the flag cause we gunned down the first two. Anyhow, they won round two...

Round Three. Back to our first bunkers. Despite the terrain advantage, I found myself pinned down again. Oh, well, all's fair, they were just trying to take out the best shooter... Halfway through the battle, I ran out of ammunition. After a few rounds of dodging hails of pellets, the other team seemed to have run out too. I tried to dash for the flag, but one of theirs pulled a surprise and shot a few more pellets in our direction. (This was amongst the many empty diversion shots fired, mind you) In the end, the other team got the flag back to base first...

After all that, we found out there were still some leftover pellets, enough for a two on two match. Well, without delay, the players volunteered, and we went for one more round...

Two-on-two, survival battle. Last Team Standing

Final Round. Me and Susanna decided to volunteer for our team, while the heroic Jon and Kartik (check that, two 13-year-olds) played for the other. After distributing ammo and selecting bunkers, we were off. Su and I tried to gain ground to make up for our low ground disadvantage. After a few barrels forward, the first shots were fired. While trying to push forward to the next few barrels, Su was taken out. That left me (4-dead) against the two of them. I shot in their direction until I ran out of ammo, which was bad :-( Unfortunately, Su's gun was a few feet away from where I was, and completely exposed to enemy fire, which was bad too :-(

So, after a hail of shots from the two boys, I charged at the dropped gun, firing empty shots all the way, Rambo style. Grabbed the gun, continued firing empty shots, and dashed back to cover, to the applause of the other cell members. The fight was back on :-)

I didn't let my empty gun sit unused. With the empty gun in my left, and the loaded one on my right, I proceeded to use the strategy of three empty shots, followed by one from the loaded gun. With the first hail, I took out Kartik, scrapping the inside of his legs, which, for some reason, were open wide :-/ That left me alone against Jon, brother vs brother. I continued my strategy, until, somehow, my loaded gun jammed. Not good. I continued to give distraction fire with my empty gun, while shaking the loaded one to free the jam. Three more hails later and it got jammed again. This time, Jon gained ground while I unjammed it, and when I peeked out to fire...

Bang!

Headshot! It landed right on the visor of my helmet. That was it, Jon was the winner! After emptying out whatever pellets remained, we headed back to the Sports Centre.

Pictured : My helmet. Post-headshot.

Pictured : The only other shot I recieved. This is one my left forearm. Note the splatter mark on the pulled-up sleeve, and compare it with ground zero on the bruise...

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After all that, we headed over to Burger King for lunch and fellowship. Man, we had a lot of refills today. Good thing BK does it for free...

Well, that's all for the outing then. While the other cells go vacationing in various parts of Malaysia, PJ cell went through the wind and wave. Here's to a great day for the HOF PJ cell...

EDIT : After getting online for a while, I napped from 3+, right until 9. It's not everyday one gets to take a 6 hour nap...

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Update on the EAK team. The full story can be found here, but for the gist of it, they won! Congratulations to the team!

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And simply because it looks cool, here's more pics of my Omega Guardian creation:

I probably should iron that handkerchief before taking anymore photos...