The Enigm@ Chronicles

This past Saturday the 1st of November 2008 couldn’t have come too early for me. I was eagerly anticipating the day of the Samsung Innov8 Run that I’d been shortlisted to participate in. For those not familiar with what the Samsung Innov8 Run is - well basically it’s a treasure hunt styled race to the finish among the lucky contestants. The Innov8 Run was organised by Samsung in lieu of the product launch for the brand spanking new Innov8 i850 phone from Samsung.

The CoC (Clerk-of-Course) for the hunt is from Time Out Solutions (ToS) and speaking from what little experience I’ve had in treasure hunts thus far this year - ToS are fantastic hunt setters with fun people working with them to make hunts like the Innov8 Run a great outing altogether.

So lets get back to my tale of the Innov8 Run. The contestants were supposed to be at the briefing location and flag-off point by 9am. We were already made aware that this hunt would be a day long affair and that we should come prepared. So bright and early Saturday morning I made my way to the Samsung Service Center located off Federal Highway where I meet up with the other contestants and also the other 8 bloggers that were at the special briefing with me last week. My predetermined teammates Daniel & Azri was soon there and the three of us were soon strategising on our attack plan for the hunt. There are a total of 15 teams of 3 contestants and 1 marshal per team that made up the participating contestants.

At 9am, the rest of the contestants began getting their team stickers and thus finding out whom they were teamed up with. Daniel, Azri & myself were slotted in Team 15. Next the hunt briefing was held with the first 7 teams going to the briefing whilst the last 8 teams duked it out to decide their flag off time. Here is where our first experience of the day with the Samsung Innov8 phone - we were required to battle it out in Asphalt4 street racing game that comes with the Innov8. Each team had to send 2 representatives, Daniel & myself for Team 15, who had to attempt to score the fastest time to finish the race in order to score our team a prime flag-off position.

Once we were done with the game, our turn for the briefing was at hand and we proceed to the briefing room where Jag from ToS conducted the hunt portion of the briefing. By the way I have to say hats off to Jag for conducting what is surely the best hunt briefing I’ve participated in for this whole year. Jag was then proceeded by Samsung’s Innov8 expert (didn’t catch his name) who gave everyone a crash course preview on the Samsung Innov8 phone that we were going to be using during the hunt. Each team was provided with 2 phones - 1 with Naviphone GPS software preloaded and the other with a Maxis 3G sim card that enabled Internet connectivity. Once the briefing was over, we were provided with our Adidas sponsored shirt that we were going to wear during the hunt and given the all important list of instructions, clues and tulips for our hunt and the all important passport for getting the stamps at the completion of each section of the hunt.

In the final minutes before the flag-off at 11.30 am, the participants we treated to a rousing kick-off speech by Samsung’s General Manager. Remember the gaming we had to do earlier. Well as it turns out Daniel’s score manage to bag our team 5th placing in the hunt flag-off. Great job Daniel! Our marshal for the race was Kugan and together with him we began our last minutes preparations.

As we lined up in the kick-off formation, we pored over the instructions and the hunt questions whilst trying to figure out the first cryptic SMS clue that we had just been given. The unique angle of this hunt is that the Innov8 phones were our portal to all important information like SMS & MMS clues. As our team was flagged off, we immediately headed to the our First destination Wisma KKAUM located opposite Taman Jaya. Now we were supposed to use the Innov8 phones’ GPS capabilities utilizing the Naviphone mapping software. However things began on a rocky note, as we had some teething problems using the GPS software. Weirdly the instructions given were at times too late to allow for us to make the required turn. However we somehow managed to make our way to Wisma KKAUM only to find out later on that we were supposed to have made out the first challenge stop located in the Astaka Field just before Wisma KKAUM.

Finally we reversed our steps, made it to the challenge point where Daniel & Azri proceeded to complete the blind folded challenge and netted us our first stamp on our passport and our very next clue in the form of an MMS. Back in the car, we quickly headed off to the destination shown in the clue which was Menara KL. Here is where the biggest mistake off our hunt was made - that is we failed to REALIZED that we were supposed to follow the tulips given to us earlier. So lo and behold we found ourselves in near KL in a jam when I asked for the clue list and then only saw the tulips on the page behind it! Realizing our blunder we quickly made our way out of KL to the first destination stated in the tulips which is the Mc’Donals near the Digital Mall. Yikes… precious time was lost to us due to our error!

Look forward to my further adventures on the hunt. Click here for Part 2 of the hunt!

Tags: activities, KL