Astrigue 2012 Reflections (070412 at RI for Astrigue Convention, 140412 at HCI for Astrigue Challenge)

We gathered at Raffles Institution at 0730AM at HQ. The day started out with me briefing the facils and juniors bout what they were supposed to do, followed by registration and then opening ceremony. The whole of registration i was running about trying to make sure everything was just fine. Opening ceremony, where I said my opening speech, stumbled through the first few lines because I was quite dazed from all the running and didn't have much time to look through once more.

I thought that convention was pretty smooth, and I was glad that a lot of new schools came, though queensway backed out. The attendance was pretty good and lunch (a buffet) was awesome max. Lunch = totally delicious. It was quite a slow paced day for me because I wasn't lecturing and except for a minor hiccup where the secondary school students went into the wrong rooms for the first session, we changed it soon enough and everything was fine. The lectures took a long time and i could tell some participants were quite tired.

It was raining, so stargazing was cancelled. There was also the problem of us having no dinner (Over budget, so i was informed quite last minute there wasnt any) so i felt that the cancellation was quite a blessing because otherwise it'll be very complicated with some schools going out to eat dinner and whatnot.

Although i have to say that planning didn't go as efficient as I wanted to, convention was just fine and a lot of my j1s came to help. We went to have dinner at the end of the day which i felt was quite fun.

Competition was another matter. Initially things were running quite smoothly, after my opening speech and registration. hwa chong was pretty big so the ushers allocation was quite messy, and there were also very few RI J1s. There was 2 gates and the distance from the high school gate to registration (canteen) was so darn far. haha.

Yup, opening speech and then they had MCQ round, followed by DRQ round. I was the invigilator for 2 groups. Nothing interesting.

Problems started cocking up during project round where we needed judges. Initially our plan was to have Dr Lim, the RI teacher and prof phil chan and zhan ming from RI who created the project round question to judge, but somehow i think due to communication breakdowns dr lim wasnt informed, the RI teacher was late and prof phil chan couldnt make it. We made an on the spot decision to include heng chun and shuin jian in, but by the time the RI teacher came (we had to wait for him cuz if we didn't it would be quite rude since we asked him to come down) we were half an hour off schedule. We decided to push the break behind up front but by then the schedule was damn messed up and I was quite worried about the finals round.

When phil chan arrived at 4, the planned timing for finals, i had to ask him to go for the seniors interlude (everything was pushed back by half an hour) and it was quite paiseh with dr lim right there somemore.

Anyway in my opinion the finals round was the most poorly executed and our lack of planning really showed. Firstly, we only had bout half an hour to setup the entire thing for the LT like mikes and all, and it was really a first time that finals was held in hwa chong. We didn't have any AV help and i was quite worried that we wouldn't be able to set up on time. We had just managed to secure the buzzer system for RI and then there was all the debate whether we should have 4 screens for the contestants.

After haphazardly helping to set up i felt that last year's finals were much better than ours. there were wires all around which was really ugly and the prizes were just strewn around the table.

Overall, i was really displeased with the setup, and it was partially my fault too because i was leaving it to the logistics people to plan out the thing and i trusted them, even though I have to admit i know nothing about the tech stuff and when jason told me that he had everything under control i just believed him. Should have checked with them because turned out there was multiple cockups with the system which we should have tested leading to many awkward pauses and "breaks" which were prolonged. At 430, the stipulated time for the finals, there was a cockup in the system. Wth. We started 10 minutes late and i was getting increasingly worried because i knew nothing (I'm a technoob) and i felt really helpless then and all i could do was well, pray that the system started up.

I could sense the seniors who came back (2008 batch) were getting really dissatisfied. The judges too asked for whether they had a copy of the questions for their perusal and we left them out during the planning. I spent the first third of the finals trying to think of a way to get the questions to them. Finally we procured a laptop and i asked soham to edit the ammendments which he did today to the copy that yiying had. Finally gave it to them for reference. However i could tell that they would have preferred a hardcopy. Spent the next half hour running around school trying to find somewhere to print out a copy but to no avail. Gave up and went back to the LT3. Was pretty tired by then.

Came back to see a little more of the picture ID round and BPGHS was leading by a pretty big margin since RI wasn't taking part this year (haha we requested). We then had a break, and then they started changing all the wrong answers last minute. Apparently there were a lot of errors and i was like.. ............ Oh my gosh and then. 5 minutes was over, everyone was settled and then once again they were scrambling to get everything fixed and then there was some problems with getting the system to be displayed. Everyone including the participants was just sitting around waiting (you know, the bored kind of waiting) and i was like D:, just sitting back and not knowing wth is wrong, and that there's nothing within your set of skills to fix the problem when you're in charge is the worse kind of feeling you can have. After bout 10 minutes of awkward waiting, they finally managed to start it up.

By the way, sitting down at the LT, it was so totally damn obvious to me that whoever organized this was so poorly prepared. The Emcees were mostly dominated by RI people, our own research manager wasn't really willing to take the microphone. After that, there was so much deviation from the timeline, and before i know it, the emcees were talking about DRQ answers. Much to my horror, when i probed further, i was told that the personalised certificates for everyone wasn't ready. According to the timeline, we were suppoesd to have reception first before prize ceremony, but apparently someone (to this date, i have no idea whose fault this is) decided that we were gonna have prize ceremony first. Spent roughly 10 minutes of awkward talking of DRQ answers and the LT was getting increasingly noisy. I mean it was damn boring lah. It was totally not on schedule and i was quite worried. The issue with certificates was a result of the mismangement and miscalculation of time, once again by people from my exco, although the switch of prize ceremony in front was probably due to the Emcees who announced the wrong thing. i have no idea. whatever it was, the certs werent ready and it was so awkward.

Finally i had enough and i asked them to quickly wrap it up. I decided on the spot to have prize ceremony first, followed by reception and then give the certs to them after that. I quickly announced that and then had the prize ceremony. I felt that i delievered it okay i guess. I explained the rationale for the DRQ answers and then announced the winners. The participants seemed quite happy though and clapped quite loudly, i guess they didn't realise there were so many cockups haha. Yup , released them for reception.

All the while, Heng Chun was like MIA i think he was somewhere behind wth or at the HQ so i had to make all the decisions myself.

Just halfway through the certs were done. they were soo late. I was quite annoyed to be honest. Tension was running quite high among the 2 EXCOs. The seniors were pissed, they left us a thumbdrive telling us what we screwed up on (as if i didn't know, but i guess their feedback kinda highlighted everything and cemented what were the errors we made, well they sure noticed haha). and then the rest of the people working on the certs were so clueless, i guess they didnt even know what time the certs had to be ready i guess, seeing we bought it only on the day itself the person in charge (anyway im not gonna put like names or anything and blame anyone because it's everyone's fault) should have made damn sure that they were ready and not take our own time to finish it like it's of the lowest priority and to think we were all the HQ laughing at the senior's rehearsals and not getting on with the work.

Officially closed Astrigue 2012, and then after that ran around trying to give the certs to everyone. Didn't even get to enjoy reception, just had a cake that eiros saved for me.

All the j1s were at the reception when the person who closed the doors came and started hurrying us again. Got all the j1s to quickly come back and remove their bags before they locked up.

We moved to the tech workshop where i gave the j1s a long, hard, debrief about some of the screwups we had (didn't mention some). I have to admit that it's hard to point out our faults without sounding like i was blaming someone (i tried not to think about who screwed up but rather how to improve astrigue 2013, otherwise all the trust and calmness and zenness in my will be so screwed and anyway it's totally pointless to blame people). Al the while i was trying to tell the juniors what went wrong and trying to be careful with my phrasing to avoid blaming people.

Went to eat macs with juniors and i have to say that this year's batch of juniors are really lovely and wonderful. They were so enthu and even though it was alr say 9PM at night noone complained and they were so enthusiastic. We had one round of names (cuz i had the feeling they didn't know each other) after debrief before heading out to KAP macs for dinner. It was a long day but it ended on a high note because i was so happy with my juniors for staying for astrigue for a good 12 hours but still managing to look relatively not sian. (well, those who felt that it was sian wouldn't have come anyway so lol). Even Dr Lim came for club dinner (haa). Talked to dr lim with Heng Chun for about half of the dinner before dr lim had to go. Spent the rest crapping with the juniors.

Stayedback at macs to wait with YY for her parents because she didn't wanna be alone. Her parents were real kind and fetched me all the way to my block. Went home, crashed.

Those 2 days were really meaningful for me :)