I have to admit that staying up for Turtle Blogathon was so much easier than staying up for the previous blogathon (in 2007) because this time around, I had company. Plus, I was so busy researching and typing up posts that I even forgot about the chocolates we bought earlier. And because I was so pressed for time, I didn’t even finish my tub of durian ice cream (and now it’s in the freezer)!

Anyway, before we began, we took a picture of ourselves. We tried holding the camera to self-shoot but due to lack of practice, the pictures didn’t turn out well. So Prof Chan found, in her house, a wobbly and short (only 15 cm) tripod and now that I think back, I can’t believe I had so much faith that the tripod won’t tumble and break my camera, LOL.

Oh, and by the way, that’s Fong’s personal laptop, not sponsored by TCC :)

After a little opening ceremony, we started blogging away. Prof Chan and I worked on the questions that we had divided among ourselves, and Fong took more pictures and uploaded them onto Facebook. And at the same time, we were chatting in the chatbox that was put up for that purpose.

Quite a number of our supporters dropped by and chatted with us. And because Prof Chan and I had to publish a post every other hour, we took turns to entertain our visitors in the chatbox. After I have published a post, I chatted in the chatbox while Prof Chan typed her post.

Our first visitors, Vicki and her friends, dropped by at midnight and brought us McDonald’s, which was very nice of them :) We chatted, they watched a few episodes of CSI back-to-back and they kept us awake with their antics during the graveyard shift!

16 hours after flag off, we finally felt the need to lie down, so at about 1pm, we took this shot of ourselves, yes, with the wobbly tripod (and no, Dan Lee, we didn’t fall asleep):

Azimi visited us about 3pm and while Prof Chan was chatting with him, Fong and I took more pictures of ourselves. By then, we were quite relaxed because Prof Chan’s last post was at 4pm and after that, our guest bloggers were supposed to be taking over. Our 4 guest bloggers collectively wrote the following posts:

• What happens to the environment if turtles became extinct? by Lim Puay Aun and Pelf
• The joys of being a turtle volunteer by Lim Puay Aun
• Turtle conservation in Malaysia from the perspective of the media by Hilary Chiew
• What do you do as a turtle conservationist? by Rahayu Zulkifli
• Tell us about the turtle conservation projects carried out by WWF-Malaysia by Rahayu Zulkifli
• Is there any volunteer program at the Ma’ Daerah Turtle Sanctuary? I would like to visit the Ma’ Daerah Turtle Sanctuary one day, how should I go about it? by Rahayu Zulkifli
• Of turtles and Terengganu by Sean Augustin

Azimi left at about 5pm, and Yee Ling dropped by at about 6pm and left at about 7pm, and Prof Chan started cooking dinner, and the most exciting things started to happen at about the same time.

We did not have a “target amount” when we began the Turtle Blogathon because we did not want to have any expectations. But after 21 hours staying awake and blogging non-stop, we had only managed to raise RM 2,200, which I thought wasn’t very good and that we could most probably do better than that. Felicity suggested that we announce a target and perhaps other people would be more willing to make a donation to help us achieve our target. So announce a target we did, which was RM 3,000 :) Within 40 minutes, we were RM 400 closer to our target.

And in the final 30 minutes, one of us thought it would be a good idea to further raise the target to RM 3,500. That drew even more excitement in the chatbox and while some of us thought that it would be difficult to raise RM 500 in 30 minutes, some of us never stopped soliciting donations from their contacts. Also at the same time, a few of us were chatting about the “fly a plane” auction in the chatbox. And I was busy cooking up the final Thank You post.

But yes, we made it. We’ve managed to raise a little more than RM 4,500 in 24 hours. But without our supporters and generous donors, we couldn’t have done it. Thank you to my blogger friends, Edrei, Jimmy Ang, Kevin Chai, Rinnah and Soo Hon Keong. Your generosity knows no bounds, and for that, I am truly grateful :)

THANK YOU SO MUCH :)

You may view the other pictures in this slideshow (they’re similar to those uploaded onto Facebook, in case you’re wondering):

You know, the last time I pulled an all-nighter, it was during Blogathon 2007 where I blogged non-stop every 30 minutes to raise funds for Eden Handicap Service Centre, Penang. I can’t remember how long I took to “recover” after staying up for 36-straight-hours but I reckon it wasn’t sooner than a day, LOL.

Anyway yesterday, Prof. Chan, Fong and myself met up and discussed the mechanics of the Turtle Blogathon and boy, the discussion lasted for 4 hours! We have received more questions than we could answer in 24 hours, but we managed to group certain questions together, so whenever we publish a post, most of the time we would be answering more than 1 question. We figured that this would be the best way to answer everybody’s questions :)

Remember I said we have prizes to give away during the Turtle Blogathon? Well, we are not exactly giving those prizes away, but we will be announcing how you can win them at 10:30pm on Oct 25th, 9:30am and 11:30am on Oct 26th, respectively, so do drop by the TCC website to participate, yea?

That’s all from me, folks. I gotta go do some research because I will be answering 10 questions :)

On Friday, Oct 23rd, we will be finalizing the turtle-related questions that we would have received by then. We will also be arranging the flow in which we answer those questions so that you will have a better idea of what we will be talking about. Raising funds for the Turtle Conservation Centre (TCC) is important, but we also strive to ensure that the information that we will be presenting reach out to a wide range of people :) To us, public awareness is equally important, because we believe that only an informed public can make an informed decision :)

Since we announced the Turtle Blogathon last week, we have received some really interesting questions, for example:

• Why are green turtles so-called? They don’t look green at all!
• Does the recent tsunami affect the population of the sea turtles?

So if you haven’t submitted your turtle questions, you can either email your questions to cp@turtleconservationcentre.org from now until Oct 22nd, or you can just use the form below (which is easier than firing up your Outlook or GMail, right?).

You can ask us just about anything, such as:

• Do turtles sleep?
• How long can a sea turtle stay underwater?
• Can turtles overturn themselves when they are turned turtle?

[FORM REMOVED]

A very generous sponsor has just pledged to sponsor some really amazing prizes for us to give away during the Turtle Blogathon, and these include:

• a 5D4N stay at either Bali, Phuket or Pattaya,
• a 3d2N stay at one of 6 locations in Malaysia, and
• an opportunity to fly a plane. YES, YOU READ IT RIGHT. FLY A PLANE. AWESOME.

More information will be revealed at the TCC website from time to time, leading up to the Turtle Blogathon, so stay tuned! :)