5.45am
I woke up when I heard the conversation between Calvin and Wen Pin. I was supposed to wake up at 6.00 am instead. Swt… Unable to back to sleep, I did my last packing to make sure everything was well packed in my big luggage. Today, finally, I was going to leave Hanoi!

6.15am
After finish preparing, the taxi was already down there waiting to fetch us. It costs us 12USD for the taxi, not too expensive actually despite the distance from the hotel to the airport. Feeling a bit disappointed as I couldn’t eat the Doner Kebab in Hanoi before I left Vietnam. I was thinking how to spend the remaining 15000 Dong (Vietnam Dong) in Vietnam.

7.05am
Reached airport. We checked in our luggage. We were so worried that our luggage will exceed the weight limit (15kg). Of course, we didn’t want to pay more if it was over weight. Luckily, all our luggages passed the test. But, imagine, I brought around 5.3 kg from Malaysia to Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam and returned back with 13.8 kg. Bought too much things I guess.. haha. I spent my remaining Vietnam currency to buy sweets and bread as breakfast. Then we were ready to get on board.

9.00am (Vietnam time, one hour earlier than Malaysia time)
After going through all the customs and departure procedure, we went for a window shopping in all those duty free shops. All of them were expensive. I wonder was it really ‘duty free’. We took a picture with a gentle stewardess before we got in the plane. It was boring inside the plane. Trying to sleep but couldn’t. The seats were uncomfortable for us to sleep. But I shouldn’t complain for it, since we were using AirAsia, the low cost carrier.

1.30pm (Malaysia time)
After chit-chatting to get over with the boring moment, the plane finally was going to land. The sudden change on the pressure made my ears very painful. Perhaps I was suffering from flu and thus I was the only one who was in pain. Calvin, Wen Pin and Kylie seemed fine. It was torturing… At last, the plane landed on LCCT and the suffering was ended. However, the effects of the pressure made my ears 50% deaf. (even until now, I am still 75% deaf) I was happy returning back Malaysia. It had been quite sometime I never see any Malays and Indians. And people speaking Malay and Cantonese but not Vietnamese. Glad that I could understand what people were saying.

1.55pm
I had to get on my bus by 2.10pm. And I was still waiting for my luggage to come out. I plan was ruined. I planned to eat McD before I got on the bus but due to the delay of the flight and some procedures, I couldn’t follow my plan. I ran with my luggage after my luggage was out and said goodbye to my friends. By the time I rushed to the bus waiting spot, it was already 2.12pm. Luckily the bus is still there, it departed LCCT one minute later after I got into the bus. The only sad thing was I had to skip my lunch.

6.10pm
Oh… what a familiar place. Medan Gopeng, Syuen Hotel, Stadium Ipoh, Tesco, Tesco Extra and finally Bercham, the place I’m staying. After going on for the Indochina trip for 35 days, finally I back home! Happy to see my parents and glad to show them what I have bought from Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. Unpacked my luggage and ‘set up’ my laptop, my lovely laptop that I miss every single day.

8.10pm
Didn’t have much time to chat as I was going to have my dinner. Long time never ate so much already. So glad I was back home. However, I still couldn’t get used to the weather here. It’s so hot!

10,00pm
Chat a little bit, and started typing this post. Got quite some number of people welcomed me back. Haha but sorry I didn’t give much response to them as I am typing this.

10.40pm
I would end it here. Oh~ can’t imagine I had returned home.

I went to a programming competition in KL on a saturday during my exam week. And honestly I went there without any preparation as I was busy revising for my exam. It was a great experience and perhaps I should talk about it.

It was Saturday and I woke up at 5.00 am (waking up my roommate as well, sorry for that) and with the panda eyes, I prepared my stuffs (which are two reference books) and waited for my lecturer to come. It was a good competition for begineers like me to get the experience and know what the market really wants. However, there was only 3 of us participated this competition and I was the only Chinese, sigh... (not to be racial) Reason is, my dear coursemates they all are busying preparing for their exam. In fact, when I asked them to participate, their replies are :" Crazy ya, I'm not you ... blablabla". So disappointing. But i think it was their lost for not going, it was really meaningful.

I was sitting in the middle with two persons on my sides. I'm grateful that I was skinny as the two persons beside me are really big size and really made me very uncomfortable during the journey. That was torturing period and with the cold air-con, I was frozen to death (jz a little bit exaggerating ;) ).

We reached the place (Wisma Genting) around 9.50 and the competition started at 10am. I'm thinking whether I should include this in my post or not. Hmm.. nvm. I'll just write it down. I faced a severe stomachache at that time. Swt, it had been few days I had this kind of stomachache. Must be the unclean food in utp, training my stomach's resistant to dirty food. Oh well, the toilet was kinda clean. haha...

I ate a few kuih muih provided by the organizer as breakfast and immediately started to read the question. Oh ya, perhaps I should briefly mention bout the way this competition runs. This competition does't have teams or whatever, so it's an individual competition. It has 4 programming questions that require us to solve them and the competition time started from 10am until 6pm. Ya, 8 hours for 4 questions, I could imagine how hard the questions would be at that time. And my senses didn't disappoint me, it was really tough. (but not too hard if I have more time, energy and more reference books! haha, it was an open book competition) The one who managed to finish the most questions correctly will win. Obviously, the organizer needs some time to calculate and evaluate the solution, therefore the result of the winners will only be announced next year.

Actually the question isnt so hard, it just requires us to think. I'm sure if we were allowed to bring our laptop, I could finish all 4 questions correctly. Haha.. but that's only an 'if' which means I couldn't do the questions. I spent 3 hours thinking on the first question and 1 hour writing the solution for the first question and at the last five minutes cancel what I wrote. I spent few minutes trying to understand what question 4 wants and I didnt get it. I spent few minutes also to read question 2 and it was a very long and troublesome question. So, I go for question 3 which was supposingly the easiest among all (coz it's just GUI and some eventListeners) and spent 2 hours working on it. At the last hour of the competition ie: 5pm, my brain malfunctions and my eyes were begging me to give them a rest. I did, and I gave up doing the questions and try to sleep on the desk provided. haha. So, in total, I only did 1 question and I don't think I did it very 'correctly'.

After the competition, we were caught in the usual KL traffic jam and waited and waited and waited and waited and ... until we had our dinner around eight something. The good news is we were given food allowance by dear UTP, and we ate in KFC, a place that could not be found in UTP or near UTP. Forget to mention the lunch and tea time break provided by the organizer. It's not very delicious though, but still okay. We started our journey back to UTP at 9pm. On the way, I talked with my lecturer for about 3 hours (one of my hobbies). And I learned quite a lot about programming, and some tips for exam, haha and some other interesting stuffs we have discussed (like religion, life in foreign countries, dark magic, ghost vision and etc). We reached UTP around 1am. I was super tired and my eyes were requesting to 'retire from their job' because they had been working over time for about 18 hours nonstop. I slept immediately when I returned my room. Sigh, I gotta study 13 chapters in one day coz I had a paper next day. (but anyway, that paper probably will give me an A-, not because I study not enough, it's just that the answers of the questions cant be found in the book, SWT)

I could say that this competition or this trip makes me gain more than lose. Despite the discouragement of doing the questions very badly, it motivates me to learn more.(although it was just temporary as holiday spreads a disease called laziness) And I felt that I know more about programming and what kind of problems the market is facing. (programming is a problem-solving tool). Anyway, this was my first time experience. Will do better next time if got the chance when the exam paper doesn't clash with the competition.