This is recount on how a dry and lack of excitement family outing turned into once in a lifetime experience. It was an ordinary Saturday when I was awakened by mother’s deafening voice calling me to get up for a family outing. As always, I didn’t spring out of bed in the name of excitement because this activity would mean me sitting at the back of the car like some underage child, throwing my gaze out of the window and lamenting how long would it take to reach the destination. “I am too old for this”, I thought. “Where to?” I lazily shouted back. “Fruit orchard!” she replied. All of a sudden, a feeling of joy surged throughout my body and it energized my hardly awakened self into a state of tumultuous excitement and I leaped out of bed yelling, “Yay!”. Well, no! I wished it would be that fun. That scene only happened in movies. I dragged myself out of the room and started morning routine as it was. It was 9.00 am in the morning when the fruit orchard adventure started. The orchard was owned by my father’s friend located at Kg. Tuguson. His name was Santi a retired teacher and when I got to know him, he unbelievably represented Sabah 8 times for marathon. That explained his young biological age in spite of his real being. His health was in tip top condition. When we arrived at his house we had to regroup because road to the orchard was a little bit like camel trophy off road challenge. Our ambitious viva ( A Malaysian brand car) would miserably fail the assignment. My sister and I got a chance to ride in his car (the orchard owner) and he informed us about all the orchards that he had along the way. I summed up he had at least 200 acres of land and 12 orchards altogether ranging from fruits and rubber trees. This man was seriously wealthy. He also had 10 children. All were now working except the youngest who had just graduated. My jaw dropped in utmost amazement. It was a hilly terrain with rambutan and durian trees caught by my sight every now and then. Finally, we arrived at the destination with all new sorts of feeling. This was when the real fun begun. I didn’t have to comment on types of fruit trees there because it was almost like fruit haven with array of fruit trees everywhere. He had a ‘sulap’ (small house) where we were given prelude of eating fruit episode as a starter. He had collected some ‘ralit’ (a kind of durian) and ‘timadang’ or ‘tarap’ (infamous local fruit with soft juicy white flesh) to entertain us. My sister and I were not really fans of the durian so we resorted for some photo shots and video taking. Now it was time for a rambutan picking event. He invited us to go to the rambutan trees near paddy field and picked as much as we can for free. I looked around and suddenly I said, “Perfect!”. I saw a ‘wakig’ or ‘barait’ (a kind of basket to be carried on a back). I was so excited and I brought my sister into it. It was not because we could hardly wait to fill it in with fruits but we were busily taking picture instead. We never felt that excited to see a real ‘wakig’ before. It was an utter enjoyment. We did fill the ‘wakig’ with fruits of course. All of us went to the rambutan trees and started picking rambutan like there was no tomorrow. The ‘wakig’ was on my back while my bro and sis filling it with the juicy fruits but not until when it was too heavy then I put it on the ground and continue gulping more and more rambutan. Everyone had a whale of a time picking fruits. Now it was all done. The ‘wakig’ was full and it was time to head home. To carry the now full and heavy ‘wakig’ all the way to the car was challenging but fun. The orchard owner was so generous that he gave us mangosteen, ‘langsat’ and ‘tarap’ in addition to the ‘rambutan’. On the way back to his house, it was still the same story of orchards that he owned and successful children that he had. As for us, we were too tired to drop our jaws anymore. But, this man was truly inspiring on how he planned things perfectly and it turned out well for him. Did I mention that he lived in a 3 story house and had 13 grandchilden in the middle of nowhere?(I say this because his house was located far in the inland)That was when we knew that we rode home with a superman. My family ate lunch in town before we went home and we talked about the joyful experience over it. At the end of the day, the whole experience was like a supposedly boring family outing turned to be a total home stay-like vacation extravaganza (with ‘wakig’ and all) where I got to really live it up to the fullest and to really take any chances to make it all the more happier. Until next time.