We won, again!

All right, some of you may wonder how come I didn't come to school for two days already. Some of you might even wonder where have I been the last weekend. Well, it's only fair that I tell you that I was in Kangar, Perlis for 3 days 2 nights.

But why was I there, you ask? Well, Siddarth, Izharul and I were involved in the National Science Quiz 2005. If you had read my previous post, you would remember that we became the Perak Champions and that we are selected to represent the state in Perlis for the Zone Levels.

So, on Sunday the 14th of August, we made our way to Kangar together with Mr. and Mrs. Yee. We left at 11.30 a.m. and reached at around 3.45 pm. We checked in to an inn and was surprised to hear that we were the first ones to arrive! We expected the Perlis team and the Pahang team to arrive much earlier! But never mind. We rested until 6.30 p.m. By then, all teams had already come.

At 6.30 p.m., all of us went to Kuala Perlis for dinner. We had it by the seaside and we enjoyed seafood. Both Siddarth and Izharul hadn't tried them before (not to mention that they were particularly surprised to see the bill!). After dinner, we just drove around and returned to the inn shortly.

The next day, while Mr. Yee was working in Arau, the rest of us, together with the other participants of other states, were taken to a field-trip in Perlis. We were first brought to "Taman Herba" or Herbal Gardens where about 700 species of herbal plants are found and planted here; some are native in Perlis, some are imported. There, we had the opportunity to open our eyes wide towards some of the species of plants which we turn our eyes blind on.

Next, we were taken to Bukit Temiang where we had the opportunity to see grapes being grown in a big scale. Until then, I didn't know that grapes could be grown in an Equatorial climate. According to one of the officers (the name is Mr. Ahmad), in order to make the grape plants bear fruit, they had to drop off their leaves manually, only then will they bloom. All this was new to me!

Then, we made our way to Gua Kelam (a cave) situated very near the Thai border. There, I observed a very strange thing. My handphone, which uses DiGi as the service provider, received an SMS which bore the following message, "DiGi welcomes you to Thailand...". What? Thailand? The next thing I knew was that I no longer received signal or reception from Malaysia but from Thailand (the service provider was "Orange"!) Oh, I wanted to make a call back then! That would be an International call so I didn't proceed on with the call. Anyway, inside the cave, we observed the structures of stalagmite and stalactite and the various shapes of the cave which dazzled and impressed us very much. It was only a small cave so we made our way out soon after we got in.

The final destination was Padang Besar where we were given about an hour to do our shopping there. There were many products made from Thailand and most of the traders are from Thailand. They speak Thai among themselves and when we spoke to them, they struggled quite hard with their poor Malay. Sometimes, they might just switch on to Hokkien, which thankfully I could understand a bit. There, I bought some sotong (squids) to be taken home.

After dinner, we had a rehearsal in the school which was to organise the quiz. We tried the microphones, checked the computer monitors and tested the buzzers. After we confirmed that everything is in order, we returned to the inn to rest and make our last preparations.

On Tuesday the 16th of August, at 8.00 a.m. Mr. Yee fetched us all to SMK Derma, where the quiz was held. The judges were given a briefing so we took the time to make our final preparations in the school pavilion. We spent almost an hour and a half before we were called to register. After registering, the quiz started almost immediately.

Let's skip to the quiz. There were three rounds. In the first round, each participant must answer three questions, each within 20 seconds. In this round, strictly no discussion is allowed. If the participant cannot answer the question, then it will be posed to his/her teammates. If the answer is wrong also, then other teams can steal the question to answer. In the second round, each team had to answer 2 questions. This time, the teams can discuss among themselves and each team was given 30 seconds to answer the question. If the answer given was wrong, then the question would be open to the rest of the teams to grab. However, the most exciting round was the final one. It is based on the saying, "Siapa cepat, dia dapat" (whoever is faster will get the reward). This time, any team can answer the questions posed if he/she knows the answer. The participant who knew the answer would have to press the buzzer and whoever pressed the buzzer first got the opportunity to answer. This is the deciding round for the winners. Anybody can answer the questions. If your answer is correct, 20 marks would be awarded. But if it was wrong, then 5 marks would be deducted. We had to keep track on everybody's scores to determine whether or not we should risk losing 5 marks.

So, here are the results:

1. St. Michael's Institution (Perak) - 210 points
2. SMK Sultan Ismail (Johor) - 160 points
3. MRSM (Pahang) - ± 110 points (± means "about", I'm not very sure)
4. SMK Derma (Perlis) - 85 points

So, as you can see, SMI became the CHAMPIONS this time for the Zone Levels! We would be representing Zone 2 to compete against Zones 1, 3 and 4 in the National levels! It will be held in KL soon. Wish us luck!

Anyway, hooray! ...Hey, it rhymed!