DAY 2 @ NUSHSoMaS/NUS High (21 May, Wednesday) The day of judging for the pre-site challenge as well as the release of the question for the on-site challenge... SO, as mentioned in 1 of my previous posts, I was feeling pretty confident of our team's chances of winning some nice award... and hearing about the fact that Miss Lim released the class 15 mins early added to my "high" mood... maybe that was why it felt a lot worse when we didn't. I guess it was really hard on my team, since we had put in 1 whole month of effort (not to mention the late nights) to do up the poster... BESIDES...
HOW COULD YOU BEAR NOT TO GIVE ANY AWARD TO SUCH A NICE POSTER?!?!
Moreover, we thought that we had already fulfilled all of the judging criteria... and as I walked past all some of the other groups' 1st award-winning posters, I can't help but feel a sense of injustice... Extra small fonts, "not-so-optimized" methods and the like... it was really bad, the more effort you put in, the worse you'll feel... Sore loser you can call me, but I guess you'll probably feel the same if you were me...
Nevertheless, congratulations to Yongquan, Yuhan and Xiaorui (from 6H) who won 1st award, and the high sch team who won 2nd award. And as if to rub it in, the organizers announced the awardees right before the poster exhibition, which made it all the worse as everyone flocked to YQ's poster and all dao-ed me... So i was just standing there, waiting for anyone who got attracted by the title of my poster enough to come (and looked after the laptop as well)... And of course, no one did.
And naturally, Yongquan got interviewed (and always at times when I was beside him), again, and again, AND AGAIN... was getting real jealous haha... Actually, I did get interviewed just before the release of the on-site challenge... Guess how they identified who to interview? "Hwa Chong right? Which team didn't win a prize?" SEE, they really rub it in... Luckily I still managed to keep my fury at not winning an award down and told them we would try as hard as we could to get something... And it paid off... later...
Oh yes, in the afternoon, they also took us for a small tour to PSA... It was then when Mr Yeo asked me how we fared... And I, feeling really bad, still managed to inject a bit of lameness in my reply: "YQ 1st award, high sch 2nd award, we got 3rd award..."... how funny... but it was the best I could do... Later, they released the questions for the on-site challenge. As expected, it had something to do with optimizing the way of berthing ships... BUT WHY WOULD I CARE? I just screwed up the bloody pre-site challenge, why would I fare any better this time... See? How cruel it was to release the results so early...
DAY 3 @ NUSHSoMaS/NUS High (22 May, Thursday)
A short break from the campus that held so many bad memories for me... But there was no time to enjoy, we had to make full use of the day to work on our on-site challenge (yes, despite all the injustice, I had to put all those feelings aside) and churn out a powerpoint, algorithms if possible and a script... And it was not helped by the fact that we were changing classrooms every now and then, there was no aircon, and Wu Hong from 7B could not communicate online with us due to the boarding sch cutting off internet connection, and our algo king Zhe Wei was having long lessons...
Nevertheless, we managed to come up with what we wanted to present, and we had also decided that we should focus on more computer programming and clarity and ignore all the crap about mathematical principles (seeing that it got us nowhere in our poster, and even Wang Tengyao said the on-site challenge problem was a TYPICAL programming question) so we started working on it at night... it was then when some heartless guy (the CT rep actually) sent me this message: "IMPORTANT: CHECK YOUR EMAIL AND DOWNLOAD THE TRAVEL DECLARATION FORM. PRINT AND SUBMIT COMPLETED FORMS TOMORROW." Argh had to make me worry about getting the form into Mrs Loh's pigeonhole by 5pm when I'm busy enough...
And so we worked, Zhe Wei came online to help do up my program, Li Wen (my other teammate obviously) was doing up powerpoint while I was desperately trying to think of what else we left out... actually I was just waiting for everything to come to me so that I can compile, just like a C++ compiler HAHA =P
DAY 4 @ NUSHSoMaS/NUS High (23 May, Friday)
We were still working... I'm putting this here cos strictly speaking, a new day comes after midnight... after a very long while, Li Wen went to sleep at 4+am, Zhe Wei finished 1 of my algos at 5am... when things cropped up. Zhe Wei's mum forced him to go sleep, ARGH... WHY THE HELL IS HEAVEN TREATING ME LIKE THIS!?!? was the 1st thing that came to my mind... In any case, I still managed to finish everything I had to do at 6.30am, and so I didn't sleep a wink...
Then, in NUS High, my team faced a very important decision: to scrap the method due to a lack of algos or present it but say we don't have an algo. We decided to include the 2nd method in our presentation. I guess it paid off well. However, to make matters worse, we found that our 1st algo gives erroneous results when we used other data sets... What to do? Embellish the errors, show the judges the more "accurate" results and harp on it, talking about the speed of the algo and things like that. It paid off as well.
So we went through the 1st 2 presentations pretty smoothly (we had to present 3 times, each to 1 judge), explained everything very well, though I was on the verge of breaking down... then came our last presentation. I was feeling slightly more confident, if not even more tired...
It was then when someone smsed me, and helped to boost my mood a little bit: "tutorial in E-block classroom..."
Uh oh, looks like I forgot to 交代后事 thoroughly... O well, it was a good laugh for our team (but not so funny for Mrs Tham I guess)...
And we got lucky! Our 3rd judge was 1 of the 3 who had judged our poster as well, and he was firing a lot of questions at us but was very impressed with us... and so for the presentation, he did the same, we replied rather impressively, and he felt that we were really good... YAY! And now, for some sleep...
My mood got better as the day passed on, after hearing that Mrs Tham released the class 30min early, and that YQ managed to "illegally" transfer all other groups' presentations into his group's laptop... However, I was still really tired, which explains why I nodding off during the talks at IHPC... I wanted to listen, but... anyway it was quite nice there, the stuff was really high-tech... And then it ended. Now I can sleep=)
DAY 5 @ NUSHSoMaS/NUS High (24 May, Saturday)
The prize presentation to end it all. Was wondering what would happen to me if we won something, and what would happen if we didn't... Conclusion: I would go mad if I won, and the same would happen if I didn't. DAMN, i'll go mad in any case...
And they interviewed Yongquan again. Wonder how many times they must do it right in front of me ARGHHHHHH... but the questions got worse. "How was the food?" was 1 of them...
Anyway, the ceremony started. A lot of people obviously...
And each school had to send a representative to collect the COPs (Certs of Participation) for their schools, so poor me was isolated from the rest of my team and dragged away to sit down in front...
It's clear who is happy and who is not...
And of course, I had to endure the agony of watching them give out the prizes for the pre-site challenge, it was really bad, felt like crying... And my last chance for glory came. Presentation for the on-site challenge award winners. So... they gave out the commendation awards 1st, in alphabetical order. They missed our team out. DAMN, that's it, I'll end up empty-handed... BUT... eh there're distinction awards! AH HA, 1 last chance, since I doubt we can be winners... And how heaven plays tricks on me...
A only... B only... looks like I'll have to wait... Hwa Chong Institution... O well, at least our school did get a prize... Wait, team 2? TEAM 2? TEAM 2? I stood up in shock. Am I dreaming?! Turning my head around, I saw Wu Hong and Li Wen leaving their seats and walking towards the stage. OMG, that's it, I'm not dreaming, IT IS US!!! WE WON A PRIZE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WE WON SOMETHING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Which partly explains why we took so long to get up on stage when they announced our team's name... It took a superhuman effort to supress all the joy in me and the urge to start jumping and yelling all over the stage... instead, my mouth was slightly trembling as I walked up the stage and tried to controlled my walking speed, lest I started running to the trophy and knocked the GOH over. When I saw the team trophy in the GOH's hands, I was like "OMG it's gonna be mine! And it's so beautiful!" But when I got it, my thoughts changed to "What the it's so freaking heavy..." So I was too busy smiling at the camera and thinking about all this that I forgot to bow much...
Later, Yongquan and team got up on stage too. Gotcha, everyone from HCI college section got it, haha! Nevertheless, RJC were the winners, but who cared! WE WON A PRIZE!!!
When the ceremony finally ended, all hell nearly broke loose from me, was in jubliated shouts of "We won a prize!" and "I didn't sacrifice my sleep for nothing!" and things like that and I think my team was overjoyed too... And as we went for refreshments, our appetites increased significantly too, we all had at least double helpings... and it reminded me of Joel again...
And more photos...
ME!!! And my team who made it all possible... Oops I look a bit too tall and crooked... NOtice that the plaques really shine...
The big winners from Hwa Chong with their award-winning poster... See? It's labelled "First Award"...
Let us not forget the high school team...
All of us! Look at all those things that we won...
The team trophies are really beautiful...
What's everyone looking at? Hai ya, the camera again, it's yet another group photo-taking session...
Oh yes, we were all eating right in front of YQ's poster... and we invaded other booths as well, oops...
That's all! A rather happy ending I guess, though I'm still not too happy about what happened to my poster...
Jia Guang
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