AstroFest 2008 Photos

Posted by HELiX

AstroFest 2008 photos!

Comments(0) 1:24 AM 5 May 2008

So kthxbye

Posted by HELiX

Y’all should prolly know by now - I’ll be flying off for Europe and [a little bit of] Shanghai tomorrow, barely a day after the last day of school.

And for those of you who had to bear with my constant rants about being so unprepared for this trip…

Too bad.

Because I really am. Holidays are here and I’ve hardly settled down for a brief rest, and here I am, being flown a couple of thousand miles away to the Land of Manchester United.

Don’t look at me like that; they became European Champions just yesterday.

Along with this trip, largely not paid by my family (shan’t mention more), my Dad got two new laptops because the current one we have is really old and the newer one is stuck in Munich with my brother.

Not too sure about the availability of free wireless networks there. While perhaps you’re thinking that, hey, all modern hotels these days come with free wireless, just know that much of my days will be spent on the highways in a car. And our accommodation is usually some random cheap motel along the way.

So I guess it’s like that yeah. Have a good stay in Singapore y’all.

Comments(0) 9:26 PM 5 May 2008

Whatever this is

Posted by HELiX

Warning: Incoherent desperate entry at 1.30am in the morning

Now just before I forget to post up again, here are the results of AstroFest’08.

1st - RJC Team 1
2nd - RGS Team 1
3rd - CJC Team 1

Now, I can’t remember the merit awards winners but vaguely, there were BP, RJC Team 2, maybe TSS.

So, congrats to all prize winners!

…

Today was SYSF Shell Science Fair’s prize presentation, and it was such a big problem that it had to be on the exact same morning as the Champions League finals.

Clocking in just 3 hours of sleep from 12 to 3, I woke up expecting the match to end in 90 minutes and ALLOW ME TO SLEEP AT 4.30.

But what an idiot Lampard was, to equalise Ronaldo’s goal soon after and sent the bloody game (hey, literally, see Scholes.) heading towards a draw for another hour and a half more.

When it was almost 6, van der Sar’s reversed psychology worked and Manchester United became European champions finally.

I was quite contented until I saw the clock, and realised that I won’t be able to get any more hours of sleep.

Daaaamn.

Blah blah blah blah blah, made my way to Science Centre for the fair.

And found out that once again, I got a miserable Silver. Ah dammit. Not again. Seriously, not again.

Stupidly enough, they had the prize presentation immediately after releasing the results, so all the prize winners received their awards (one big trophy for the school, and $150 shopping vouchers) and proceeded straight for… home. At 12pm. When the fair is supposed to end at 4pm for the day.

The lack of sleep is really getting to me. I practically slept through the prize presentation rehearsal and parts of the actual thing, when I’m actually in line to receive the prize.

Which reminds me: it’s 1.43am. Good night.

Comments(0) 1:44 AM 5 May 2008

Lately

Posted by HELiX

An effort to update more regularly, here goes:

The impact of AstroFest has really been quite hard on my studies, considering that for over 2 or 3 weeks I didn’t touch a single piece of homework whenever I reached home. Not that I was lazy, but AstroFest just took priority.

I’ll need the holidays for it, but sometimes I wonder just how much I can do in Europe.

So Vesak Day was another day of astronomy for me. International Year of Astronomy 2009 (IYA2009) meeting among all the major players in the local astro school community. A first I believe.

We had representatives from RI, HCI, RGS, RJC, ACJC, ACSi, NJC, VS and NUS discussing about our plans for IYA next year.

Quite a productive session I must say, and Weilin can get her point across really well. But the teacher-like thing still lurks in my mind… oh boy.

Had dinner together and stuff. Great fun! There should be more meetings coming up as plans progress, but we shall see.

The original intention was to set up a forum for the whole IYA students thing, but Weilin preferred Yahoo groups because of the Daily Digests. Figured that I could add some modification to the forums for that, but realised that it was only for the old phpBB version 2 and not version 3.

So, er, spent quite a few hours recreating the site in phpBB v2. Have yet to modify it to function like Yahoo groups.

I need more time.

Exactly why I have to end this entry off really soon.

And today, I collected my new passport from that damn place at Lavander.

It’s a weekday. Tuesday. I went in the afternoon. Was really crowded. Got to the ticketing machine. Scanned my appointment card. Got my ticket…

Awesome. I’m number 3854.

And they very kindly reminded me on the ticket, that I’m 604th in queue as of the exact moment.

OH YEAH, SIX HUNDRED AND FOURTH.

And they also kindly provided a service for you to SMS in your ticket number, and you can get your estimated waiting time. My brother did just that.

2 Hours, 30 Minutes.

It actually took 3 hours, but nevermind that. I have wasted enough time waiting in line for my passport so I shall sleep now.

Good night.

Comments(0) 1:24 AM 5 May 2008

AstroFest 2008: Aftermath

Posted by HELiX

I guess that was it.

Over 4 months of preparations on my side. I’ve done as much as I can for it.

Plenty of blog entries around for you to read about the participants’ perspective of AF’08, but I’ll offer mine.

T-minus 1 day.

On the day before, it was my intention to have everything set up and ready for AF’08. Perhaps even squeeze in a rehearsal. Problems?

• The MRC guy who was supposed to set up all the technical stuff decided to take MC for the day.
• The Hub was booked by the Harp Ensemble into the night.
• I had to leave for a meeting at SSC with their IYA events coordinator.
• BOTH DongWei’s laptop and desktop crashed during that week, and he wasn’t able to finish the games for the Finals.
• Certain people of higher authority interfering with my plans just a day before AstroFest, which totally made me upset for the entire day. So I couldn’t organise the rehearsal or prepare well.

Because of these, I lent my laptop entirely to DongWei for the night, and slept at 4am.

D-Day

7:00 AM

So on the day itself, had myself in school at 7.00am to set up everything. In just an hour or so, a last-minute rehearsal was quite impossible.

And so the participants started coming in. Earliest was CCKSS at 8.00am. At about 8.55am, 5 minutes before the registration closes, I had the registration ICs to call up those who haven’t arrive. And guess what?

NYGHS thought it was at 10am.

We decided to drag a bit from there, waiting for other teams like BP and RJC who were slightly late while Dallan was furiously sms-ing NYGHS to chase them.

9.40 AM

After delaying by more 40 minutes, we decided that we couldn’t go on like this and just started the opening speech and briefing. We had 20 minutes less time for the games, but we quickly made up for that by limiting the time at each game station to 20 minutes each.

I’m not too sure what went on at the other game stations, but from what the station masters told me, I think it went pretty alright. My station, Aim for the Stars, was okay as well, although it really sucked to make up questions on the spot using pages from Wikipedia. Some could tell I was unprepared like this, but I thought it was okay since I just recently the same bunch of questions for every set of teams that arrived. And some participants tried reading me for clues whether I’m making up some false statement. Let me tell you that it doesn’t work :)

Perfect, everything worked out well. By lunch time, we were back on schedule despite a harsh 40 minutes delay at the start of the event.

12.30 PM

And by the way, that simple buffet lunch was $3 per person, and still wasn’t enough to feed us organisers. So Mr Chan bought for us all McDonald’s, which was really nice of him.

1.30 PM

Immediately after lunch was the Astronomy Fair, so participants spent some time setting up their booths. Judges arrived soon enough, and by 1.45pm all 3 judges were moving around to the 22 projects by 11 schools up on display. I kindly reminded them that they have only 3 hours for 22 projects, which works out to be a mere 8 minutes per project.

I didn’t really had the time to walk around to the various projects to learn more. Through the full 3 hours, I was trying to sort out the stuff at LT1 for the events coming up, and also, taking a well-deserved break after a stressful morning.

All was well.

4.00 PM

Everything was looking good until… At 4.20pm, just 10 minutes before the Fair was supposed to end, I checked with the judges.

Dr Cindy Ng had completed all 22 projects, and was spending the final minutes moderating the scores.

Dr Seah was left with a couple of projects more. Around 4 I think.

And Meng Lee was still 6 or 7 projects away from completion. Ugh. Big problem.

4.30 PM

The groups who had finished their judging tore down their projects and moved back into LT1. While the handful of groups remaining were left behind.

Symposium’s supposed to start immediately, but everyone was just there waiting, and waiting, and waiting while the judges were finishing up.

Took almost another 40 minutes for everyone to clear up the Hub and settle down.

5.00 PM

Already 40 minutes behind time, we were about to start the symposium when suddenly… the link from the laptop to the project stopped working. When it was working all the while during the 3 hours of preparation during the Astronomy Fair.

We tried, fruitlessly, to fix it for another 20 minutes before giving up and starting with the fair with the side projector. I’m so thankful I asked for LT1 with 2 projectors.

5.30 PM

I requested all speakers to cut down and rush through their talk. Kia Boon delivered his first, but not without playing me down at the start. Hurhurhur. He took 13 minutes >.< Rong’en and Jinpeng followed, and then myself who really, really skipped all the details and just simply mentioning the really important stuff. Finished mine in 7 minutes or so! Hope I did get the message across though :/

6.20 PM

That’s a full 50 minutes behind the schedule. A big, big problem.

Started with the Finals, which was simply impossible to rush through and out of our control.

Wasn’t too bad, I’m glad everyone saw the uniqueness and creativity we tried to factor in. We didn’t want it to be anything like a quiz finals, because AF’08 isn’t a quiz competition in the first place.

First the was Jeopardy round, which was a really weird idea I came up with when brainstorming for the classroom games. It’s how the real Jeopardy! game show is played in the US. Figured that it could be better applied to the Finals.

Despite having a short rehearsal for it on the previous day, the common mistakes were evitable. Like:

“Gemini, please choose your questio- Sorry I mean, your answer.”

“Your time is up. Does Taurus have an answer- I mean, question?”

“I’m sorry, that’s the incorrect question to the answer. The question-, I mean answer is now open. Other teams may now buzz in to question the answer.”

Hilarious stuff :D

6.40 PM

And the 3D Picture Identification, which was an idea I adapted from DongWei’s 3D glasses lecture where he had everyone making the glasses to view some astro pictures. I thought it could provide a good twist to the standard Picture Identification round already found in Astrigue and AstroChallenge.

Was quite glad to see the pleasant surprise on everyone’s face as I gave out the 3D anaglyphic glasses. There were exactly 94 pairs or so, and I gave out every single one of them, with no extras and everyone having one each. Amazingly, just nice! Although some people complained about having a headache when viewing through the glasses and quite a number removed them after a while.

Which makes me wonder, how do these people watch Spy Kids 3D then?

7.00 PM

It was already 7, which by right, should be the time everyone goes down to the canteen for dinner. Yet, we were halfway through the Games Finals and not to mention the Prize Presentation.

Asked around and finally decided that we couldn’t go ahead with our last item for the Finals, which was equally unique and fun in its own ways. Ended the Finals just there and calculated the final team scores.

7.10 PM

Prize presentation. At this point, I was going through so much stress that I was completely numb. I couldn’t feel happiness and hope. Was just worried and disappointed of the situation.

The winners were announced without me having a clue beforehand. Even so, I had no feelings. Had other thoughts going through my mind.

There were some mix ups during the prize presentation. With all the prizes wrapped and my bad memory, I couldn’t remember what to give for each prize. But anyway, most of the books are priced roughly the same, I hope it didn’t make such a big difference. I think I got most of the prizes right anyway.

And also, since we were running out of time, we just removed the COP presentation altogether. So now I have a huge stack of COPs with me. Will send to the schools by mail, or perhaps pass to them during NUS-NTU.

7.25 PM

Dinner time. While everyone proceeded down for dinner, we quickly tore down the place and packed up.

By 7.45 PM, it was too late for me to hang around because I have to catch the bus to Science Centre, so I quickly left for the canteen and had everyone else left behind to clear up. Ugh.

Grab packed dinner and boarded the bus with everyone else.

Dammit, I was dying from stress so much that I didn’t enjoy my meal.

8.15 PM

Reaching Science Centre was a relieved, but I was quite surprised to find the observatory open without my registration.

And hey, they were letting the public in!

I mean, I booked the place, and they nearly had me to pay almost $200 for it (which I bypassed), and now they’re just opening it as though it’s free?

But with that, and everyone settled down either inside or around the observatory, I felt much more relieved that all my tasks are done.

Made my way to Kinetic Garden with some others and played with the exhibits.

10.00 PM

People slowly left and by 10 PM, there was just a handful of us back at the Observatory where we played with the 16-inch telescope. It’s quite hard to manage their weird fork mount.

Left with Rong’en, Anne, Mark, Yongli and Jian-Yi.

…

Well, this is a part which is probably more important that anything else.

To begin with, a big, big thank you to the Siek family. Auntie Eileen, Uncle Liter, Jarell, Janell and Elle for rising up to my impossible challenge of mass producing the 3D Red-Blue glasses by hand. Thank you for fetching me after school for a few days, bringing me around Singapore in search of the materials required. Thank you for calling up all the shops and services to locate the materials. Thank you for coming down to my place to tirelessly work on the glasses for over 18 hours. Thank you for spending the entire night making the glasses, from 6 PM to 6 AM, without a single hour of sleep. Thank you for sponsoring the full cost price of the glasses, which wasn’t cheap at all. Just… thank you, a lot, a lot, for making the 94 glasses given out possible.

Thank you to Shaun Ng, for being the Games IC. For working on all the 6 games alone, without any help. For running around early in the morning, to 6 different venues, just to set up all 6 stations. For coming up with the rules, scoring system, questions, flash, and just about everything related to the games. For calculating out the scores for the games, for fixing the buzzing, and perhaps some more things I’ve left out.

I must thank all my members for their support and help. For sticking with me through the entire event, setting up, packing up, giving out the food and generally just doing everything. For not minding that I was going to leave them behind to clear up, while I left on the bus for Science Centre.

Thank you to DongWei for producing the Finals through midnight on the day of the event itself, staying up with me to clock in a mere 2 hours of sleep before the event. For setting up the Hub, LT1, having a large network of friends to draw manpower from (basically half of the manpower is through him), and giving suggestions to all the crazy admin work I had to go through.

Thank you to AstroBargains for sponsoring some of the prizes for AF’08. For coming down to AF’08 to witness our event. About a $500 sponsorship… you don’t get that everyday.

Thank you to Sujay for doing the logistics. And Kok Hong too.

Thank you to Mr Chan for sponsoring our lunch, arranging for the lunch and dinner for the participants. Booking of venues… and stuff.

Thank you to Jin Peng, Kia Boon and Rong’en for agreeing to come down to give a talk.

Thank you to Jin Peng for ferrying the general public to-and-fro.

Thank you to Yongli for enabling us to book the Observatory free-of-charge.

Thank you to James for being the emcee for the entire event, running through most of it without a script.

And thank you to all participants of AstroFest 2008, for making it a success.

…

I will have to conclude with my honest opinion.

While I was pretty upset that the entire event didn’t turn up as well as I expected (can been much, much better, I assure you). Hiccups here and there. Worse still, they were out of our control. Teams arriving late despite a buffer time of 30 minutes? Judging extending by an hour more? Really now, I wish I could blame my side for these problems, but ultimately we did well and the problems that arised were not our fault.

Perhaps we were too ambitious. Being my last year in charge and I won’t be doing another competition for a long while to come, I wanted to include everything in AF’08 so that it stood out from all the other competitions. Games? Checked. Symposium? Checked. Fair? Checked. Finals? Checked. More prizes than any other competition? Checked. Enough time and manpower to produce all a good event out of all those? Nope.

But we tried our best. Or at least, this is one of the few times when I’d say I’ve tried my best. I’m the type who’s very selfish with that phrase. Mainly because, many times I know that my best is far better what I’m doing. But this time, I felt that I’ve gave my everything.

The results may not be the best possible, but personally, when it all comes down… it’s whether or not the participants enjoyed it. It may be painful for us to scrapped an entire item in the Finals which we’ve been working on for a week; it may be tiring to run around setting things up; it may be embarrassing that we had to run everything unscripted and unrehearsed, but what matters in the end is that the participants liked it, and will remember our efforts. I think we achieved that.

If there are improvements that can be made for next year… here goes:

1. Do a rehearsal. Or two.
2. Which also translates into, have everything prepared at least a week before. Which was what I was aiming for, but while I managed to do that, other ICs didn’t. So SET STRICT DEADLINES.
3. Have the event over 2 days. You can’t just squeeze everything into a day.
4. Have more buffer time. The fair won’t finish in exactly an hour. Assume the possibly that some teams may be late.

Compared to last year, our pilot event which was half the size of this year’s, we had much, much more screw ups. As Shaun summarised, “This year’s one was much more epic, but the screw ups were of similar proportions.” I agree.

So that’s it. AstroFest 2008. Despite some hiccups here and there, I can safely declare it to be success.

Thank you all.

PHOTOS IN A WHILE.

Comments(0) 11:56 PM 5 May 2008

ACJC AstroFest 2008

Posted by HELiX

Comments(0) 1:39 AM 5 May 2008

DESTRUCTIVE INTERFERENCE

Posted by HELiX

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Comments(0) 6:44 PM 5 May 2008