Sunday, June 18, 2006

hey i blog once again.
haha as i said b4 5-14 june was my 'mini-holiday' ... so now its over:( n i shall try recalling.
5-7 june was raffles cup. long-awaited, n arguably the most prestigious team tournament tis yr. got 2nd last yr, wanted desperately to make history n win the champs. 1st game we won 6-0, which is a gd start but jon playing on third board alreayd looks shaky playing with a noob opponent. we won 2 n lost 1 team game on the first day, which we lost against hwa chong team C, weakest team in hwa chong. I won my opponent comfortably for tt round, but jon struggled to a draw position, made a really really stooopid move in a deadlock and lost straightaway. told him to be patient with his game, but he didnt listen to me !!! ck sacrificed 2 or 3 pieces and...died. lol. almost wanted to strangle jon for losing a draw position. now 1 point gone. have to win the rest to get champs now. bah. played my individual speed chess competition after the team section, and won 2 lost 1. lost to a hwa chong guy who i won in slow chess mode haha.
2nd day of the competition:
won 1 team n drew with hwa chong team B n cat high team. all 3 of us drew with all 3 opponents from hwa chong bah. i was sooo disappted in myself. i played too fast n 'accidentally' exchanged 2 ches wif my opponent. he's chao humji lor! he nt 'supposed' to xchange che wif me wan lor...supposed to be he being the main attacker while i thrive on the counter-attack (cos i playing black), then he scared of me n xchange... den play a while i realised tt oops i left no pieces to win so become draw:(. third game was baaad. let my team down. met with the strongest player in cat high (who incidentally can do 36 pullups). cant really rmb game details, so i koped an excerpt from my opponents blog :):

"Favourites Ling Chun Kai and Lim jun Ren were strong opponents.Lim, who was famous for his countless speed chess games, was faced against me, while ling was against justino.Joshua was expected to win their third board, whom i am not sure of his name.The tactic employed by them usually was: A draw each from Chun kai and the third board, while jun ren will triumph in the middle board, thus resulting in a 4-2 win from them. Jun ren certainly proved to be a tough opponent , and our match was stagnant all the way.joshua quickly called for a draw in the 3rd board,while justino, who took a risk, was not calm enough to perform.His advantage was neutralised into a draw by chun kai as the latter had more calmness.chun kai offered a draw but it was rejected by justino. Said chun kai," If you dun draw, later i win then u noe." Justino merely laughed and continued with the game. Suddenly, chun kai's words came true.justino totally threw a cannon for no reason. Chun kai was definitely assured a win.At that point of time, i was not happy at all. First, we were stopped by HCi. Now, we were about to be stalled by RI.wad next?However, i focused on my game, and after lagging behind 10 mins for awhile, slowly forced him into thinking.Finally, i was left with 5 mins, he was left with 1 minute.I had the upperhand in that situation, + i had the time advantage. I knew i was assured of the win, but we only drew with RI 3-3. I triumphed over jun ren at the end due to him "dropping clock"."

haha by the end of this we noe tt we have lost everything we hoped of getting. i was surprised tt i wasn't too disappointed, perhaps its the last major tournament our team might take part in n i just wish to enjoy these last moments of encouragement, excitement n team spirit. won all 3 of my individual rounds tt day, n i'm left to win my last round on the 3rd day to rank top 8 among all the jcs and sec schools. after 2nd day ended, jon and I went to red cross campsite for our red cross camp.

woke up early on 3rd day and travelled from campsite back to RJC, and we bathed there. if nt we'll stink the whole hall up. last team game was a draw wif victoria. ck drew his, i won mine n jon lost. now can't even get 4th. so i challenged victoria to a 1 on 1 5 min game, where the winner gets the 2 points and loser end up with none. coz only the winner of this round has any hope of winning sth. but victoria capt din want, coz they dint want to lose and drop in rankings. :( in the end we were ranked 8th. so sadd. in the individual section b4 i even checked the pairings, my opponent came up to me n asked for my name. i told him n he said he playing with me. lol he said 'wah lao!' n i was also very scaredd. the match started n ck was behind supporting me. but in the end i lost. 5 pts out of 7 games. checking the individual rankings, i was ranked 15th among the jcs and secondarys. realised tt if i drew wif him i wld haf gotten 50 dollars. lol. after the whole ting me ck n jon went to kfc to have lunch, n after tt jon and I went to bishan stadium to play badminton with some of the express frens. after 1 hr we rushed all the way to changi village to do beach cleanup, where doreen ang waiting for us. then after tt went back to campsite, and had our very first red cross campfire after 4 yrs........n it was really very fun for me. royce and guozhong cried. our last camp. n i wld really miss the time i spent with my squadmates, especially alvin and jonathan.

9th june was the start of my annual simo camp. caught in a massive rain and reached an ulu nus hostel drenched like a sponge. quickly changed up, n went for senior team trng. realised tt senior team trng can learn much more than national team trng. evening was soccer time, haha and playing wif them was fun cos there were always groans (from the opponent team) whenever the ball is under my feet. scored a hat trick:). this process repeated for a few days -- trng, soccer, night activity and cards...and WORLD CUP. one the days had vertical trng, where each grp supposed to solve the same 7 qns wif full solns. i did 3 qns, since every member of the grp is supposed to present at least 1 to the marker, i gave my soln for the number theory qn to my grpmate to present. other grps got the soln by hardcoring expansion but i had a simpler and 'funnier' soln, but nd to cheat a bit cos value of log23 nds to be evaluated in my case. the marker chose my soln to be presetned to the class, n my grpmate explained step by step, and finally reached a simplified expression where the nd to evaluate log2 3 comes in, n no calculator allowed! so he just explained tt it was a well known fact tt log2 3 < 1.6, but when further questioned, said tt you can try out values 1.5 onwards and realised this is indeed true. lols. but in the end this is still much easier than other solns. i wrote out my soln for another qn n my grp mentors, 1 j1 and 1 j2, say my soln was a bit wrong n told me to redo a part of it. but i dun understand wat they are talking about so after erasing my original soln i was a bit lost. then time ran out n i wrote back my original soln which im quite confident abt, n the guy even said tt i wld get lower marks if i do so. so when it was my turn to present to the authentic marker, the process was quite simple and convincing n i got my full marks. moral of the story: dont listen to others!
took the national team quiz for the 4th n 5th days for a total of 9 hours wif 6 qns. was very very pleased wif my score cos i managed to learn a trick and was the only 1 (besides an incredibly pro j2) to solve a number theory qn. only lost to weiquan (a genius from hci sec 4) among the secondarys in the national team. ranked 6th overall considering the j1s n j2s. nvtheless it was tyco. last night was a buffet dinner, n surprisingly i got a certificate of honourable mention for an asia pacific math olympiad i had taken in march. only other ri guy to get is jia han from sec 3 (jord shld noe), who is superduper pro in math. tink he got bronze. so was quite happy when i went back, n also wished the pple selected to rep singapore in the coming IMO good luck. played card games and watched world cup for the whole night, n returned home on the last day. now i must pray tt i will do well for the national team selection test tis yr cox if nt i probably will get kicked out:(.

i dun feel like doing hw. haha when u guys free again? just tag ur free dates, 'nd to do hw' is not n xcuse. k la besides kovan. probably we can go east coast n den lan again cos last time ben went holiday n i missed part of it...