What? Only now?
Yeah... finally, a post.
And the friggin' 'add image' thing won't pop out. Ugh. The frustration. I can even go to the living room and watch the Nadal vs Ferrer match and the page still won't come out. Lol.
10 minutes past..
Oh babi-ness, still won't come out. I guess I'll keep typing.
This post is about the F1 In Schools Technology Challenge that I participated about a month ago.. haha. But the competition was over 3 months, starting around June where teams had to come up with a 5-page portfolio and submit it to the F1ISTC in Malaysia..rather Sarawak, I think.
First, there were so many students in my school joining and teachers had this idea of eliminating groups which didn't .. I don't know how to put this but it's kinda like 'less potential' of winning. haha. Teachers-in-charge asked groups to present using PP, together in it are the initial car designs (hand-sketched & CAD), team name, motto, sponsorship matters and etc. All that had to be done in 2 weeks or so. Have to modify some more.. Just when I thought this was hard..
Then a few weeks later, results for the teams which were qualified for Regional Finals were announced at www.f1inschools.com.my. Sarawak was in Zone 6 together with Sabah and Labuan. Oh well, being the BL we are, haha.. all 4 teams from BL were qualified. Ooo.. it's sure gonna be loads of fun when we're in KK. So throughout the August school break and the whole month of September, we were all constantly working our bums off, eyes on the computer/laptop screens, brainstorming, modifying, discussing, meetings with teachers and members, going out to look for sponsors, and staying back at school for almost every school day. 99% stay back. That's why I as so busy then! Going out looking for sponsors is just not my thing because I just don't like asking money from people. haha.. Have to be 'professional' some more.. but every team has to look for sponsors to keep the team going. We had to have our own team corporate uniforms, merchandise for marketing, spray paint for the car, and so on. Left-overs from our budget goes to the school PTA (sadly and yeah, we can't keep it.. sobs). I fact, everything that belongs to the teams, belongs to the school after the competition ends, except our uniforms and merchandise. Things like monetary funds, backdrops, banners must be kept in school and we can't bring it home. We were all thinking of putting our team banners up in our room wall, but... sigh.
The last few days before leaving for KK was hectic!! Teams from my school only managed to manufacture our cars the week before competition. And one car takes at LEAST 2-3 hours to manufacture. Manufacture meaning cutting into its shape, no tyres, no paint job, nothing. Naked. (The cars are cut from Balsa wood, it's very light. Cut using Denford CNC machine. There's a computer programme where you have to press some buttons and so on to start the machine and there's a knob on the machine to control the speed of the cutting). It's complicated, but we had an F1 official there to help us. So we skipped, ahem, were excused from school. i missed class for about a week. That includes precious Add. maths, chemistry, biology.. I say precious cause every little bit of information is precious. Physics wasn't much of a problem because my physics teacher was involved in the competition as well, so she was busy. On Thurs, Fri, Saturday and Sunday before competition, my friends and I who were in the competition was at school sandpaper-ing the car, making it smooth then putting tepung penyumbat on it, sandpaper, put, again and again until it's so smooth that you'll go crazy doing it for days. After that, have to spray the car with white coat 3 times and after each time, have to sandpaper the car. Then spray with base colour, and the other colours. For my team, we added stripes so, it was a lot of work. Lastly, spray with clear paint. Multiply all that paint job and finishing by 3. Each team needs 3 cars for the competition. 1. Race 2. Spare 3. Display.
On Sunday afternoon, (i know, what the hell? A Sunday?!) teachers brought all teams to SMK Matang Jaya to test run our cars. My car wasn't done yet, so it was still in the white coating. And coating was only half-way of the paint job. Competition was on Tuesday. After test run, went back to school and then went home in the evening. When I wished there was coffee to keep me active and awake, I was already too tired and lazy to make it.
Monday- our teachers-in-charge (TIC) wanted to prepare us for the competition so they made us set up our booths in the school hall on Monday for booth presentation. Okay, it was hell for a couple hours with teachers and students coming in to visit our booths. Interact. Be friendly. Be approchable. Be confident. SMILE =) I was so glad after mock booth presentation was over. Then, we all went back to the KHB workshop a.k.a. bengkel to continue our car finishing. The bengkel was where all of us spent our last week before the competition. Oh, the memories. aahhh. Made all kinds of sounds, sang, laughed, ate and smelled sawdust, ate KFC Zinger burger, twice..
Tuesday, 2nd October- Stef picked me up and we both went to the airport. Check-in was.. haha... SMKBL was the largest group out of the whole Zone 6 and we had so many stuff. tubes for banners, boxes for other props and nazmi even brought his PS2!! that's insane. 3 days in KK and most probably boring nights, not a bad idea after all. But we had our laptops with us :) and Eric's laptop filled with a variety of tv series, reality shows, songs, etc. When we went to the gate everyone was gone and i think we're the last ones and everyone was waiting for us. Lol. Our seats were scattered. So we were all practically sitting with other people.
Reached KKIA and boarded a bus to Kompleks Tabung Haji, where we all stayed for 3D,2N. there's no shopping mall 1km radius around that area and it's located in the kampung area. It wasn't bad, it was ok. Just that, I expected too much. haha.. It's a kinda like a Muslim place some more. (I was hoping for 4 or 5-Star hotel. Oh come on lah, JPN didn't even wanna sponsor 2 of our teams to KK. JPN was suppose to cover all expenses, air tix and accomodation+food. And there was some conflict going before the competition saying that JPN was only gonna sponsor 2 teams. Pft). We went to our rooms, unpacked and dressed in our full attires for the presentation. That's the first part of the regional finals comp. Teams will meet with a few judges in a room and give a 5-minute verbal presentation. Present whatever is important to get good scores and then the judges will ask questions. random questions. It was about 30 minutes per team for the presentation. Nerve-wrecking, yes. Before that, teams were quarantined in a waiting room. I walked back and forth the room so many times, wiping dry my sweaty palms. None of my team members prepared scripts, we went in, spontaneous. Didn't be too rehearsed. Eww.. haha. it turned out good anyway.
Had dinner after the Muslims had sahur, I'm not sure bout the spelling. Correct me if I'm wrong. And then I was up all night preparing for tomorrow's booth presentation. putting on double-sided tapes on the banners and stuff, editing video. All that, I did it in someone else's room. First, in Eric's room which looked like a store room the whole time because he had his AeroFlow© Eagle iron stand, AeroFlow© flourescent light sign, toolbox, wires ,etc. It was loaded. haha. Emm, Tan had their stuff in there too. When they wanted to sleep, I went up to teacher's room to do some editing cos' my room was occupied by unwanted occupants. I don't wanna elaborate here. It was just uncomfy to work with people i don't know around me. I ended up sleeping around.. 2am. And woke up at 530 to shower and breakfast at 630. 7am meet at the lobby with all the props for the booth. Before that, have to register our car 1 and car 2 for specification reasons. It's part of the aspects for point scoring. Only 1 hour to set up booth. And surprisingly, my school did a heck of a job. I'm not and don't want to trashtalk bout other teams but my school was the only school where our booths were fully fitted, decorated. There was absolutely no more space for other stuff on the walls of our booths. We could hardly walk around in our booth with ease. I was standing outside my booth for most of the time. While the booth p. was going on, the races were also going on. when it was our turn, the officials would call us up to the race track and my friends from other teams would take care of our booth. We took turns.. lol.
The booth p. and races ended at around 2pm. Only valuable stuff like laptops and LCD projectors were brought back up to our rooms and the other were left in the hall for tomorrow's VIP booth p. As Emm said, "Cikgu, apa yang tak bernilai?" Lol. Of course everything was valuable. It was our hardwork for months, but we won't have much time to set up again the next morning though. That Wednesday night was awesome! I'll tell bout it in another section.. hehe. We begged and persuaded our teachers with our form 4 teenage charm, asking them to bring us out since one of our team clocked in 2nd fastest in the race. so we did go out. And went back to the complex at 10 cos' that mall closes at an amazing 930, so early.
The next morning, Thursday, i woke up late! hahaha.. AutoFreaks© knocked on my room door and woke me up.
Rick: Eh, breakfast now.
Me: (smiled) I overslept.. oh ya. (closed the door and took a quick bath.
My roommates were Muslims)
Apalah.. mana tahu when I went down to the restaurant, nobody. Rupa-rupanya NO BREAKFAST. Ish. The Muslims already had their meal in the morning.
Then i went to Eric's room and we, Chinese kids ate ...................... (not gonna tell you here) haha. We shared, okay. Oh, just like brothers and sisters. haha. Feel the love. After that, went down and had our final booth p. for the VIP/VVIPs. Then was the results and prize giving ceremony. Being teams from BL, our teachers and the school had high hopes and that was the weight we had to carry. We all expected to win and other schools see us as a big threat. The big fish in the pond. At least that's what I thought they should be thinking of. haha. At last.. *drum roll* (not as exciting as when in KK).. haha. We grabbed 3 out of 6 awards given out.
Best Marketing & Sponsorship: AEROFLOW©
Overall 1st Runner Up: AUTOFREAKS©
Overall Champion: Light Speed©
We did it! We sapu! We gulung! haha. my team didn't win anything but we got an overall 8th place though. I'll give credits to my own team :D
Overall 8th place: Swift Stream©
haha. So we cheered and, I was so happy for them. Cos' we worked together! And whoever said we did not co-operate and work together, you'd better take that back. Or if you don't want to, it's fine. At least we know we did and you weren't there to witness it happen. *bitchy stare, waves hand in a Z shape and snaps* hmph.. haha. we had so much fun TOGETHER at KK although we were competitive among ourselves when it comes to serious business. We had to, to show some colour and intimidate our competition. haha.
Went back to Kuching that very same day, at night. Packing was alright for me cos' I didn't bring boxes of stuff but for Eric.. haha. I think he used cellotape like no one else. Before leaving for the airport, teachers brought us out to the Filipino market and lunch. The weather was steaming hot. So.. I did buy some stuff.. I'm not such a good shopper, especially when I have limited funds. haha. Melvin and Liew had plastic bags of goodies for the homies back in school. haha. Then went back to take our luggage and boarded the bus to the airport. Man, BL was noisy in the bus. haha.. laughing and poking fun. Reached the airport and check in our loads of stuff. This time we had good seats okay! We weren't sitting alone anymore. Hallelujah. Flight was delayed. Had dinner at the airport KFC. Again, we boarded the plane last minute. haha.. It was like 'last call' already I think. I slept during the whole flight. too tired I suppose. I think Rachel's mp3 was still in one side of my ear. Maybe it was God's music that made me sleep so soundly... ;P I was so blur when she passed me a bun when I woke up. haha. Reached Kuching around 10pm. Took a group photo at the arrival hall, all of us in our Maybank & AeroFlow© sponsored corporate shirts. Thank you :D
I couldn't hold my pee any longer so I went to the toilet. Came out and looked for my luggage.. Damn! Can't find. haha.. Whoever put my bag on the floor, *toot* haha. I panicked okay! I thought it was lost or mixed up somewhere on another plane or maybe they didnt even put my bag on the plane to Kuching! Ugh. Hallelujah. I kept my cool and found it. My precious clothes in side arh and my Winnie the Pooh towel.. haha.
My dad picked me up. I went home and showered. Oh, the cooling water that runs on ... don't think otherwise. haha. It was so hot. And what more to say, History paper the next morning and I.. haven't studied that time. And I think you can predict the results of my exams lah. haha.
My oh my. what a long post. Hope ya'll read till you need a toilet break half-way reading. haha. Will continue on the events that happened during the KK trip in another post. Need to refresh my memory a little bit. Lol. Happy reading, happy blogging and goodnight.
xoxovon
I'm alone. I'm hungry. I have a golf club beside me.
For more information on the F1 In Schools Technology Challenge, check out http://www.f1inschools.com.my/
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
F1 @ KK, 2-4 Oct 2007
Sunday, October 28, 2007
To fill the space in between
xoxovon
Darn. Chemistry folio and morale assigments. urgh.
Friday, August 31, 2007
It's Finger Lickin' Good.
Last Friday, after my whole day at Winners Court, I went home, took my bath and went to KFC immediately for my birthday dinner with some friends.
I have no idea what we were doing. My little brother took all the photos that night.
I'm guessing we finished our food.
Albert spilled something. Chicken.. Lol.
No one was hurt during Albert's spilling incident. :D 
Did she just pick her nose? haha.. No one knows the truth about her nationality or where she came from. kidding. Lol. Oh oh. She even brought chocolates for us all, how sweet. Her shirt says ' I ♥ M♡M'. Where's OUR love? =P
Ee-mee koko!!! O.o A camera. 
Emmanuel: *tongue-out*
Another one.. Gradually, we started acting crazy.
See what i mean. KFC is alcohol-free. No worries... haha
Thanks for the presents although I only informed you the day before. :D
I am sixteen, going on seventeen.
From the lens of a camera.
Briefing
Co-organiser, Lester.
Mised Doubles Round 1- Amy/Jeff vs Yvonne/Sen Kai: This pic looks kinda funny, only if you think so. Lol.
... was picking up the shuttle. haha. Nice arse x.x
Girls' Doubles Open: Roselind and I. Matching shirts! whoot~ haha
Edited this cause it was blurry. Our faces can hardly be seen then. :P
These are only some. Thanks to Aileen for some of the pics too. Hope there'll be more pics coming in from other people soon. haha.
xoxovon
A picture means a thousand words. What does a picture of a thousand words mean?
Saturday, August 25, 2007
Ooo Yay. Badminton
Schools back! Eww.. Lol. I did nothing much during the hols. Friday was the most tiring day of all but FUN. Fun fun fun. Why? I'll tell ya.
Friday was the.., I would call it the 'intraschool badminton competition 2'. lol. I woke up about 20 minutes later than I was suppose to. Eat breakfast, bathe, pack my rackets and extra clothing. iperspire.. haha. Like a woman, I reached Winners (or Winner.. whichever) Court a few minutes past 8am. When I reached there, teacher was half-way through her briefing. Wei Yei said to me the usual thing, "Von, very early von." (in Hokkien). Did my warm-ups (which is never enough and always end up with muscle cramps. haha). Then I wore my badminton shoes cos I didn't have to time to put them on at home and I wore slippers all the way. Even brought them to court.
I warm-up my strokes with Sophia, Ruby and Michelle for a while. Unpredictable. haha. My first match was.. I forgot. Either Singles or Mixed doubles. haha. What a darn unlucky draw. My partner, Sen Kai and i were playing Jeff & Amy at the 1st round. We met during the first competition and we lost. but I think we've improved, if not a lot, a little. We won the first game but lost the 2nd and the 3rd. Sen Kai was encouraging. He had the 'fighting spirit'.
Sen Kai: (in Hokkien) As long as the shuttle goes over the net, that's good enough.
The four of us played our first round as if we're in the finals of some big competition. Screaming and cheering when we made a good shot or won a point. It was fun. Psyching each other out, a way of 'threatening' :) In the end, yeah we lost but it's ok.
Then my singles.. i had the-not-so challenging opponents at the early stages and I did what I expected, go to the finals. During the matches, I keep scolding myself in my head so that I won't get carried away. Often I either miss shots, didn't run or my smash won't go over the net. How depressing. haha. I had lunch at Winners court, didn't go home. Kind teacher bought chicken rice for some of us and it was FOC.
After that was my girls doubles. Not many people joined the girls singles and doubles cause it was open and there was no age groups. and many other reasons which I'm not sure of :P. I forgot how many stages there were in girls' doubles.. i think one pair will only have to play about 2 or 3 matches to get to the finals. haha. My partner was Roselind. Honestly, we didn't really know each other.. but by playing games, it can bring people together. right? Doubles acquire teamwork and a lot of communication and i think we did pretty well. hey, it's our first time playing together, a debut.. a great one. haha. I purposely changed into my 2007 Amethyst shirt so that we have matching shirts. haha.. Cut the story short, blah blah... we got to the finals!
It was around 3 something in the afternoon by then. I was surviving with plain water, glucose+water and that packet of chicken rice I ate for lunch. Chicken rice so expensive lah. RM4!! Surprisingly, I didn't feel hungry or anything..if i was at home, I'd be visiting the refrigerator every 30 minutes XP.
2 points into the first game and something happened, it ain't good. Cramp! Right calf. The opponent placed the shuttlecock to my back-right corner and I went for it. Right after I hit the shuttle, I skipped outta court and sit on the floor. Damn...
Thanks to the opponents for tolerating with me. I used about a couple minutes to get back into play. Amy gave me 5 minutes.
My friends helped me stretch my muscle and oh boy it hurt the first time I held my leg straight. Lawrence made jokes haha..
1) my leg would feel better after shuffling
2) step out of the court and let my partner return all the shots
3) many more.. haha
So we lost the first game.. I think that was what happened, i forgot. haha. Cause we went into the rubber game.. yeah.. i didn't lose hope. I think I had quite a number of winning serves. Just by serving we won points. Shouting 'Saa!!' after winning *almost* every point. Man, I miss that.. In the end, sighs. We won! Amethyst ..rocks..? haha. Thanks to those who gave support/coaching and cared and helped during that critical moment when I had muscle cramp. Never forfeit! Never say die! Lol. Was so happy.. I know, it's just intraschool, no big fuss. Who doesn't wanna have a little taste of victory and it was a good birthday present for the both of us. 4 other people I know share the same birthday as me, 26th Aug and Rose and Wendy were born on the 25th. That makes 7 birthdays in 48 hours.
Imagine if you were friends of all 7 of us and we each had seperate birthday parties and we invited you to come. Imagine getting all of us a present. haha.. Ok, so we won. Wow.. It's sad though. Amy, Adele and Rose might not be coming back for Form 6 next year meaning no one to play with :( .. got la, other people, just that i cant play with them. haha.
Played my singles finals on Saturday morning cause it was getting late and I had to attend another event that friday night. I lost my singles to Adele. She was the better player on the court, I suppose. No hard feelings. Congratulations to her and the other winners as well.
Winners
Boy's U15 Singles: Nazifi
Boys' U15 Doubles: Nicholas & Christopher
Boy's U20 Singles: (I don't know) haha
Boys' U20 Doubles: Arif & Hong Ruey
Girl's Singles open; Adele
Girls' Doubles open: Yvonne & Roselind
Can't wait for prize giving during assembly. I hope it's next Monday. Don't have to stand under the sun! haha.. (the date of post is 25th but I finished it on Tuesday :P)
xoxovon
Never Say Die
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Hi Mr. Holiday
Went home around 1030pm. I dont remember having that 'much' make-up on before. *thank you rachel and rachel's mom* .
Monday, I did. . . nothing. i think. I DID PRACTICE my violin.. In the afternoon I played with my bro's ex-laptop. That movie maker is...somewhat interesting. haha. I made Jijoo the 'lead actor' in my credits part. haha.. *imagine*. sighs.. then i watched tv the whole night. From ANTM to *skipped channels from 9-10* CSI: NY. arghhhhh.
I had violin lesson this morning at 830 and i woke up.. late! Was supposed to wake up by latest at 630. Cos i wanna practice my scales. haha. :P Came home and watched some more tv.
Damn.
Saturday, August 18, 2007
FEVER!
I've been having this badminton fever for about a week. Thanks to the Proton-BWF WBC held in KL this year. I think i didnt do much work other than sitting in front of the tv watching matches after matches. So disappointing though. Quite a number of top-ranked players crashed out even before the quarterfinals. I tried picking up little points/notes (in my head lar...) by watching them play.. damn. so hot lar. im melting. ugh.
KKK/TBH lost to some japanese pair.. arhhhhh.. LCW lost to SDK! Badminton competition's this friday.. hmm. played at KGS this morning and darn the floor was slippery. can't even get a grip or run. surely slip.. sighs.
After playing, i went for an early lunch. it was like 11am. Then... oh darling azrin called. she called the night before too. We just talked some stuff and then she asked someone to talk to me. .. honestly, yeah i was happy to get to talk to an old friend who i havent seen or met in almost 4 years. since form 1. Oh albrinz. haha.. he said he's goin down to jb with his family and so and so. Then .. the line putus. Babi na.. Called azrin again. Yes, azrin. I suck at conversations. I just didnt know what to say and my friggin phone speaker was loud.
Tomorrow.. or rather sunday night. got VRN performance. aiyah, just chiong la. My one-week so called holiday os so not a holiday coz i got so many stuff planned out on each day. My bday's coming up.. :
xoxovon
I'm sleepy.
