Oh, he is such a cool Uncle :)

So what did you guys do for last Raya Haji? I took monday off from work and stretch my weekend all the way through to tuesday. It's just so nice to have so much free time in your hands. So what did I do? On Satuday and on Sunday, I did some coding for my freelance work. I was suppose to submit a php program that was suppose to be used somewhere in the UK. I'm not very sure what the outcome is, but I'm hoping they will pay me nontheless. That sunday night, I was coding again. I know, you're thinking, this guy is such a geek. But its for a worthy cause, I did some programming before for an online testing system to test some of my students. It's a pretty lame web application which is not worth anything much, but could be used by others for creating online exams on the web. So why the hell not, I've put it on OSCC knowledge bank so that everyone can download it, modify it, and use it according to the spirit of Open Source Software. I call the program I wrote Simgipunq, which stands for "Simple Gila Punya Quiz", or roughly translated to Damn Simple Quiz. Cause that's what it is....

But then, I still had monday and tuesday off. And feeling geeky all week really got me down. So I decided to bring emil with me, to join his really cool uncle doing some wall climbing. Monday evening, after running around doing my errants, Emil, my sis (Leilanie), my brother Inlaw and I, went to Summit USJ. Emil and myself went to the training for wall climbing. There are two roles that you play when you are wall climbing. The climber and the belayer.

The belayer helps the climber belay down and make sure that he is safe while climbing. He also makes sure that the climber doesn't fall straight to the ground (which could be really bad if this happens to you). The techniques of belaying are as follow:

1) Make sure you have the "figure of 8", and the carabiner with you. Attached the carabiner to your harnest and insert the "figure of 8" into your carabiner like in the picture.
2) Fold the rope like in the picture with the end of the rope on the right side of your hand (on the left side of your hand if you are left handed) and insert the loop through the "figure of 8" like in the picture.
3) Then, insert the loop into the carabiner and screw to lock the carabiner.
4) Finally, just like how Emilio is doing it, stand firm and get two hands pulling downwards to make sure the climber doesn't fall:)

The other role that you play when rock climbing is the climber's role. This is the role that you get to be a monkey and climb rocks. But there are a few techniques about roping that you need to know before climbing. The techniques are shown below:

1) Before you tie the the rope to your harnest, make sure you have enough length to tie the knot. Here is the ISO 9001 recommended length, with your hands stretch out on one side and the other holding the rope.
2) Then, curl the rope, like in the picture no. 2, such that you'll see a figure 6.
3) Wrap the rope around like picture 3, and insert the end of the rope through the figure 6 hole. You should be able to see the figure 8 on the rope.
4) Insert the end of the rope through your harnest, from top to down.
5) Insert the rope through the knot, by following where the rope came from like in picture 5.
6) Keep following the rope and inserting the end of the rope through all required holes.
7) Make sure you have a very firm knot. You don't want the knot to get loose anytime while you are climbing :)

Only when the belayer and the climber is ready, then you can start climbing. Here are some pictures of us in action. We went on tuesday too, we figured, we didn't have enough the first day.....

Emil had a lot of fun. We all did. Even Fariz, my brother inlaw tried it out. Now, I know I like geeky stuff and do geeky things. But hopefully, to my nephew(Emil), he will be telling his friends that...."Ohhh, I have such a cool uncle...."