Motorola IVEC 2007 : part 1

ourlast weekend i joined an engineering competition mainly sponsored by motorola (hence the title) for fun. it's held in the international islamic university (iium) in gombak from fri (12/01/07) to (14/01/07). basically, it's a group event and each university is only allowed to send in 2 teams. luckily for me, students of uniten aren't so keen in joining such competitions so i got the chance to represent my uni.

so, all i know about the competition before i left home for iium is the fact that it has three stages and each stage is an elimination round. but to be honest, the fact that the competition is gonna be held in iium interest me more. i've heard so much about this university that it fascinates me - the culture, the belief, the practice... ermm... i might sound a little bit racist here, but i assure you i am not... i am just curious...

so anyway, once i reached iium, the first thing that struck me is how beautiful the university is... i guess it has got the best location for a uni in malaysia with highlands as it's backdrop throughout the university...

ok... back to the competition, i was grouped with chuu liu (my batch, mech eng), pui leng (my batch, electrical eng) and siow yien (junior, electrical eng). i have to add here that we arrived in iium with totally no expectation whatsoever especially since we totally did not prepare ourselves. but when we heard that whoever advances to the second stage (top 10) will receive 500 bucks, it automatically became our target.

anyway, the first stage of the competition was divided into three parts:

- part one: problem solving. we were presented with a problem and then we were given one hour to solve it and present it to the motorola engineers.

- part two: practical test. this is where every member of the group will have to choose a task between c-programming, manual drawing, workshop and circuit lab work. i choose manual drawing as i was the most qualified in our team i guess.

- part three: a multiple choice quiz where every mistake will cost us a -1 point. this quiz covers everything from engineering questions to general knowledge to iq questions.

so, the day actually started well and after i presented our idea in the first part of stage one, i was quietly confident. but when the day went on and i sat for the practical test, my confidence shrunk. i thought i was good in manual drawing... but let's just say i'm totally wrong! that's not the worst part yet... when i sat for the mcq quiz, my confidence was virtually non-existent... at the end of it all, we were quite exhausted so we headed out of the campus to re-energize ourselves with a huge dose of mcdonald's! hahaha...

then, the next day arrived, the moment we were all waiting for... and guess what? after the first stage, we were in the fifth place! we're through to the second round! now the confidence is back and there's an air of anticipation among us... so we were now eagerly looking forward to the second stage...

and for the second stage of the competition, i'll continue with that in the next post... i know there's a possibility that next post to come after a few weeks, but it's almost 3am now and i've got a fully packed day tomorrow... so... good night!

here i am in iium! this is the main building of iium i think... well, it's the first building as we enter the gate and it looks kinda majestic...

the mosque in iium... i was told that it's the center point of the university and i would expect no less actually... but truth be told, it all looks really grand...

feeling blue...

i've been feeling a little bit on the down side the past couple of days. no idea why and although it's become something of a rarity these days, i still hate these mood swings. i can't control it as much as i can't control the sun giving way to the moon... but talking about it, even writing about it here makes me feel weak...

and i hate that feeling...

welcome 2007

i ushered in the new year with great caution and worry... 2007 could be a huge in both extremes - it might turn out to be the year that changed my life for the better or worse... in three months, i will be graduating and with that i will be faced with a list of decisions accompanied by many consequences... come to think of it, all my life, the choices that i had to make were rather straightforward and simple...

after my primary school, i applied for the best high school at the time and i was offered a place... after spm, i decided to challenge myself with stpm, a choice which i learnt to regret at first but i started to appreciate it more as time goes by... i've learnt a great deal from my 2 years spent in form 6... not particularly enriching my knowledge but more on the "real world" - i know, it's a little bit too cliche...

the choices set in front of me after my stpm were trimmed due to my pretty screwed-up result and also partly due to my stubbornness in wanting no less than to pursue a degree in mechanical engineering or chemical engineering... no more UM, USM, UTM and the likes... i was offered a place in Kolej Universiti Teknologi Tun Hussein Onn to do mech eng actually which i wasn't keen on enrolling - i was advised not to in fact by many ppl... i had to forget about private colleges and overseas education as well due to the financial situation.. therefore, i settled on applying for UNITEN and UTP, both being semi-private therefore affordable...

the choice of enrolling in UNITEN actually was made based on location more than anything else... i would have preferred UTP coz i actually had chemical engineering as my first choice and UNITEN only offered mechanical... but since UNITEN is just 25km away from home and about 5 thousand bucks cheaper per year, the choice is pretty much clear...

so far, i've got not much complaints... none at all actually... but in three months, the first and most obvious decision that i have to make is do i cont my studies or do i plunge head first into the working world? i know myself well enough to make the conclusion that once i start working, i can't sit my ass down to study anymore... but i do not want to blindly give up my pursuit in education that i look back 5 years from now and think to myself "what if?"... no... i do not want to regret any decision that i make now...

so what do i do? i haven't got the faintest idea... not yet anyway...