Dumb Wars

In an attempt to ease up the stress from the upcoming common test...


A bit older than The Dumb Pluto War (which everyone should have known by now), we've got The Solar System's Nomenclature War.

"The origin of the word "cubewano" is perhaps the most extreme example of nomenclative amusement among astronomers.

The first KBO found was initially designated 1992 QB1, Parker explains. It's a name that denotes the year, month and order of discovery and is typical for newfound objects whose orbits are not pinned down. It was later learned that 1992 QB1 was a "main belt" KBO, not a Plutino, and so astronomers just began sounding out "QB1" and a new term was born."

Ridiculously enlightening indeed...



I swear, one day, if I am ever in any astro competition comm, I will make at least one question, if not more, out of this. Far more fun than comparing supergiants to onions.

AC 2008 day 2

Gonna make this post short.

AC 2nd day started out with special round, which involved the ever so familiar boardgame with randomly scattered questions. I guess we did alright, considering the fact that I got 4 blanks (no question) in a row after the first 2 questions or so. But no question = very boring ):

Then finals came.
Junior finalists included BP team 1&2, RI team 1&2, and RGS. Whatever happened to the other schools :\
RI walked away with Gold, followed by BP and the other RI team.
Senior finalists included RJC team 1&2, ACJC, HCI, and NJC.
1st round was individual round, which we didn't do very well.
2nd round was Bail or no bail (=.=") where I realised I don't have any good sense for the gambling kind of gameshows and such.
3rd round. Buzzer round. Gave me heartattack everytime. AC, RJC (the guys' team), and HCI buzzed in most of the time, while we could only buzz twice. There are people who were saying the buzzers got problems, but well, what ese could be done about it?
Gold was taken by RJC, with ACJC being 2nd followed by HCI.

We got 4th (or 5th?) again, a repeat from last year's junior final, with almost the same people. Sad it is, but convincing, yup. Anyway I still have next year, while this is already the last year for some, so gotta look forward (:
Emotional consolation from pwning all for ob round is not enough :\ Why wasn't there a separate prize for ob round as well like what they did for project round?

Now, time for reflections:
- Focus on self-mugging. Get someone else to train others. I'm no good at multitasking.
- Focus on theory more (might as well not spend any time on ob maybe?)
- I don't know what to do about the buzzer round part :\
- Get-train potential people for next year's team :D
- Start training eaerlier
- Sleep early the nights before lols
- Don't get into emotional issues right before competitions
etc.

Oh yes. A very big thank to my teammates shuwei, haiming, hung and boyuan for going through all this with me to the end. I bet sometimes before/during trainings and the prelim rounds I was very irritating, but sorry lah I can't help it =.= Or if you think I wasn't then gotta tell me :D Not being able to get into top 3 was regrettable, but at some point I seriously thought we couldn't even get into finals, so this is not too bad.
Next year, next year.

PS Dear senior(s), don't kill me. You've got good reasons not to.
PPS Help me add on to my reflections.
PPPS KFP rocks, especially with the star of the show right there XD
PPPPS Mr longantree, where were/are you?

AC 2008 day 1

The night before I was trying to do some final touch-up on the spacesuit, and some last minute mugging. Ended up sleeping at 2am, and having to wake up at 6am means I walked to school in a very very dreamy state. Still, I took this picture early in the morning
Pretty (there's iridescent cloud to the left!), yes, but ain't pleasant knowing that the more clouds the worse it'll be for ob round.

Round 1: MCQ. I think I screwed up. But everyone else was saying they screwed up too. I don't really appreciate such questions as supergiants being similar to starfruits/watermelons/oranges though.
Round 2: Project round. Let me tell you something. From now on whenever I think/see/hear of the word 'spacesuit', I'll be spewing !@#$%^&*. You get the idea. And aren't little models of spacecrafts much nicer than a human-sized spacesuit model that cannot even be preserved entirely?
Round 3: Data analysis. And everyone screwed up again!
Round 4: Ob. Was hoping for clear sky so that we could ace. But God ain't nice ): Clouds, and haze, and poorly designed lighting fixtures around the field certainly didn't help. Why didn't anyone want to go down to the other field with me ): Only the theory ob paper made me feel better (:

To conclude, theory papers were much harder than the previous year's. And the ob objects were fewer. This is ironic. Why not just make the ob round harder, since it's only 10% anyway? I was hoping for a lot more ):
Let's just wait for Monday lols

Apart from all that, taiti, whenever and wherever it is, is always fun and much appreciated :D


Wah, continue mugging ~