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.
Post a Comment