Hoping but Afraid to hope

Today I just learned that I had to stop being jealous of other people, but that doesn't make me "un"smarter it only proves that I have more space to develop my intelligence. I gotta be like Goku who likes to meet tougher opponents to improve himself.

(Warning I am not in a good mood right now, so my sentence will be heavily mixed with my feelings and incoherent so let it be a challenge to you if you really want to understand me.)
Now I am better suited to describe what happen to me during the past week(23th to 27th). Ok I went to UKM
and does it fills with flies during the night. Not just any flies, those who like to stick around the artificial lights. Ok but UKM is good too, it has nanotech in masters and PhD.(every university has it too.)
Oh well to get to the point I got to play with AC circuits stuff, stuff you don't play with in school. Like the oscilloscope, function generator, digital multimeter, ahh...... but the resistors, inductors and capacitors you got in school. Oh ya I can say that this camp wasn't as mind challenging as the last one. Well having said that I pay the price of not doing well in the two mechanics questions. Mr. Wee did a good job in teaching us electromagnetic. Dr. Sithi as usual make mechanics a tough time to endure. Here's a sample question. Prove that when a tall and short person walks, the taller one will be faster but when they run, the speed is independent of their height.
Try it, hint this he said is Olympiad level and use dimensional analysis.
In relativity class I didn't went there. I went for the IQ test instead. Took me quite a while to finish it too. Just too bad that I knew I could have done better, I got a few wrong. First she told me to state what's missing in the pictures. That's easy enough so long as you keep your calm, I didn't at the last few pictures. Then.... wait I shouldn't be telling you this, if you know what to expect, you will get an unfair advantage in your IQ test and it doesn't really reflect on your true intelligence. Ok before that I took some EQ test too. I tried to be as honest as I can. But the most unsatisfying part is that they ask about "Tuhan". Ya, they don't know that not all religion believes in an omnipotent god. I don't, so I put totally disagree.

Well now you should now where did I do the EQ test. On Wednesday night, in Zu Ming and Kent Long's(the one who went to the Olympiad last year in Singapore) room, while watching Alien Resurrection. Ok I am sorry to have brothered them at so late an hour. Here I express my feelings of sourness.

Now to the people. People that I share rooms together. There were 4 Muslims, including Adel.
they were in one room. And now the rest of us, nine that is share 3 connected rooms. Connected by toilets. It so happens that 7 out of 9 of us are from Penang. So since they wanna sleep together in 2 rooms, I agreed to switch places with them and I got a Kedah roommate. Well my Kedah roommate wasn't too happy about the penang guys, so I guess I got somewhat influenced by him. (Oh ya all 15 of us are males.) Which I resist and I actually befriended them. Well I do agree they had an "air" of arrogance about them but maybe it's because they are considered the best in their school and they had a lot of friends together which makes making new friends unnecessary. So if anything harmonious is going to exist it was up to me. And I say I didn't did quite a perfect job with that. Only a good enough job so that I could have showered using hot water (you see their toilet near their room has hot water but mine hadn't) but my roommate didn't showered a hot shower during the whole the camp so I feel quite sorry about that. I guess typing it down doesn't clear the karma I have now.

Interlude: They said they were going to videotape us during the experiments during the last camp, but they didn't mentioned it at all this time. However I managed to looked up and discover that they had 4 hidden cameras in the lab. The cameras are white and hemispherical shaped on the ceiling. It seems that I was the only one who noticed the cameras since when I told the others about this they didn't know. The book store in UKM Pustanika wasn't quite good since it doesn't have SAT and TOEFL books unlike UM.

Sooooo now Let's go to more practical things. On Thursday I sat for the IQ test and shortly after that went for the practical test. 4 hours for 4 experiments. And I didn't finished one of them. they require 5 readings but I only got 2 and sent in 1. Too bad lah. And after the test we were free for the night. I went on to venture UKM. Well I went on to the one way lane to the law faculty and had to go through a forest by foot on the road. Well as expected I had to come back by the same lane..... I ran back. That night, I got a late dinner and slept relatively early.
However I woke up sometime around 7 and slept back! So I wasn't angry at anyone went my roommate was panicking about being late. I calm myself down and walked there, being late for 30 minutes for the 4hours theoretical test. I considered myself to do quite well in controlling my feelings so I didn't think it was being late that make me didn't know how to do all of the questions.

Ok now I am chatting with Siraj. And I better say I enjoyed the camp too before I change my mind about it. Ahh.. yes the title, I hope I can go to Iran, cause the chosen 5 will be notified by 10th of May and they will go to Iran, representing the country and meeting Stephen Hawkings!
But I am afraid to hope cause I don't think I can be in the top 5 looking at my performance.......

Finished Manga

I just finished Pretty Face. It's a nice manga. I wish that it has a sequal.

I wanna see Spiderman 3 when it is released. It's gonna be a blast with 3 villains to fight, this movie is gonna win the Oscars.

UKM

See you there I am gonna do it.

How do you blog?

How exactly do you post in your blog? I post when I have the mood to write something cause I wanna make each post readable and meaningful. I also post whatever I feel into the post, so I only wanna post when my mood is good, no point remembering the unpleasant times in my life.

Mistakes are unpleasant to make and it is the hard way to learn. I had made some mistakes in my life so I would like to book it down in the form of what I learned from it.

• I learned that one should respect other peoples' privacy especially in one's blog where everyone can see it.

Perhaps this is a reminder of the words with great power comes great responsibility. With the internet around, we actually had great powers. Before the internet, the only way to tell everyone anything about you is through TV,radio,newspaper(which you can't get in unless you're important or famous), or by mail or phone(but this is only limited to some friends not all) or by books you published(but not everyone can write a good enough book to get published plus it takes money).
Blogging is the way people expresses their feelings to everyone and anyone in particular. Blogging can be long or it can be short and it is the advantage of it.
And about the responsibility part, be sure not to defame anyone in your blog if you really wanna vent out your anger, you may describe the incident you are angry with but don't mention their real name to protect their privacy.
Ok now I got no more mood to write and I'll just stop here.

IPhO or IChO?

Sorry for not posting for so long. Well from the title you can guess that I selected for both IPhO and IChO! So now I got to choose between those two cause International Chemistry Olympiad Second Camp(UM again) is on the 22nd of April to 25th of April while The International Physics Olympiad Third Camp(UKM new place!) is on the 23rd to 27th. Before I tell you which did I choose, you can read about what happened in the past few weeks and think about which would I choose.

After coming back from the last camp, I did went to MMU and lost badly in the Chinese Chess Competition which shows that I have a lot to learn some more. And nanotech is offered by MMU Cyberjaya. Well the Monthly test was worse than the first one. I got the 10th position in class by the grades but 5th by percentage. No matter now I gotta prepare for the Mid year test.

Now on the 7th of April, a Saturday morning, I when for an archery competition and lost badly(again) well on the night I went to a Buddhist charity concert of GBS and had a good time there I sold my 5 tickets(out of 10) to the audience there. Oh speaking of tickets there is a Fusion Fest tomorrow at Ping Ming School Hall, I will be one of the Rovers who are in charge in the hall. So Anyone who hadn't buy their tickets please do so from High School Upper 6.

On the 14th, (another weekend) I went to Royal Selangor Golf Club (near KLCC) for a MIT conference where the ex-MIT malaysians come to advice us on how to enter this prestigious University. My cousins were there too. William and Jia Long both are quite close and I am glad. It seems that being in the same class has that effect.

Another week had past and on tuesday, I got a message that I can go to IPhO. I went to the school library and returned Lady Luck(which I hadn't finished yet) to borrow up to two physics books. And on the next day I borrowed two more physics books from the library to read before the camp. Haha and now am I busy with reading. Just earlier today I got the news of IChO and now my fellow loyal readers I leave it to you to guess which one am I going to opt for. Leave it as a comment please and thank you.

Don't be afraid to be yourself.

I had just read Angel Dust, a manga. I learned to never be afraid to be yourself, to win, to be the best, even if it means having a lot of people jealous of you(just don't show off). This is inner confidance, this is real power. I shall be the best of me.

Back from IPhO

Now I am back...... With lots of things to tell but first, we start on Monday. On Monday, I just found out that Adel got selected to go with us too to the International Physics Olympiad training camp.
After school, At about 3-something p.m. we took off in a van. It has 2 seats in the front, 3 rows of 3 seats behind it, and when the bonnet is empty, an extra 4 seats which makes it a 15 seater.
Cool is it not? Well we took the old road to Port Dickson, no breaks ,no tolls. After arriving at there we are introduced to a new friend from Selangor. Then 2 more guys arrived from kedah. So us 8 guys are roommates. The first lecture is by non other than Mr. Wee from our school, he taught us about thermodynamics about engines, the second law entropy and the third law of no way to reach 0 Kelvin.
Next came the quantum mechanics, the lecturer gives us Schrodinger equation and on the third day how to draw graphs. That's the day Yip Feng and Gilbert came. Then came Dr. Sithi who trained us in problem solving in classical mechanics. Amazing that most of engineering is composed of this section. Some question are quite hard but overall it's good. He encouraged me to do my best in the Friday test, saying that I have the potential. Thanks to him my damped spirit is revived to blazing goodness. Wednesday evening we walked on the beach. The next day came Mr.Chin who taught us some simple Tai Chi exercises then another guy who was supposed to teach us modern physics which consist of
* Quantum mechanics
* Theory of relativity
* 20th and 21st century physics, in general including nuclear physics.
but we only managed to cover special relativity and some outline for quantum mechanics and this eats up the 3 hours that Madam Chin was supposed to take, shortening her lecture to 2 hours only. And do she assume that we had finished our syllabus for the form 6. That night I had to study a lot about electromagnetism, the circuits, and optics. So the monopoly I brought wasn't played.
Just Imagine my spirit sinking when I see that I can't solve the second half of the 60 objective paper cause it is in electromagnetism and nuclear physics I tikam about 20 questions all in C. The second paper are practicals where we are expected to draw graphs and do error analysis. I can only draw graphs, not analyse the errors. So goes the 3 hours that we are given to finished it, in misery. I was so convinced that I will not be selected for the top 5 that I didn't really did my best but then toward the end of the test, Mr. Chin told us that they are choosing 20 out of 55 students! Great, even now I am wondering whether I did good enough to get selected for the next camp.
After that we were given some papers and the closing ceremony was held. I took this chance to group together the guys who took Further Maths called networking, nice too the guys there said the camp should go beyond the 5 days, but create networks of physics preferably. Then it's back home as we know it after a lunch. Ok so I got it out now I will be going on with my life. Enjoy the pictures below.

The Eating Place, we had our dinner, lunch and breakfast here.

Me and My Lego haha my roomates were speechless too when I took out the lego.

Mat Gaya wanna pose with my lego creation.

Mr. Chin teaching us Tai Chi I had learned something new too. I guess he didn't noticed I played Tai Chi in the morning too two out of four days.

Roomates at the last day (that's this morning)

a swimming pool at the resort.

Port Dickson's beach notice the line of dirty waters right at the shores, I didn't touch the seawater during the entire stay.

At the beach collecting seashells and sands for our classmates

it's a bit dark since the sun is behind us
Posing by Calvin And Gilbert.

The main building of the small(relative to a University) resort we had spend our days studying physics

This is pretended studying for the camera posing

trying out my camera's timer

Yip Feng and Gilbert came to Port Dickson after schooling on wednesday just to see us. Nice too Yip Feng brought a nail clipper for me.

Warning: this boat is for viewing purposes only don't sit in it.

Lights up in the dark(it's the same ship)

Nice waterfall at the day

Look at it during the night

it's a bit blur but that's Mr. Wee there.

My bed in the masterbedroom

First sunset taken at the apartment.

Tough Physics

Look at the syllabus of the Physics Olympiad.

A. Theoretical Part

The first column contains the main entries while the second column contains comments and remarks if necessary.

1. Mechanics
a) Foundation of kinematics of a point mass Vector description of the position of the point mass, velocity and acceleration as vectors
b) Newton's laws, inertial systems Problems may be set on changing mass
c) Closed and open systems, momentum and energy, work, power
d) Conservation of energy, conservation of linear momentum, impulse
e) Elastic forces, frictional forces, the law of gravitation, potential energy and work in a gravitational field Hooke's law, coefficient of friction (F/R = const), frictional forces, static and kinetic, choice of zero of potential energy
f) Centripetal acceleration, Kepler's laws

2. Mechanics of Rigid Bodies
a) Statics, center of mass, torque Couples, conditions of equilibrium of bodies
b) Motion of rigid bodies, translation, rotation, angular velocity, angular acceleration, conservation of angular momentum Conservation of angular momentum about fixed axis only
c) External and internal forces, equation of motion of a rigid body around the fixed axis, moment of inertia, kinetic energy of a rotating body Parallel axes theorem (Steiner's theorem), additivity of the moment of inertia
d) Accelerated reference systems, inertial forces Knowledge of the Coriolis force formula is not required

3. Hydromechanics

No specific questions will be set on this but students would be expected to know the elementary concepts of pressure, buoyancy and the continuity law.

4. Thermodynamics and Molecular Physics
a) Internal energy, work and heat, first and second laws of thermodynamics Thermal equilibrium, quantities depending on state and quantities depending on process
b) Model of a perfect gas, pressure and molecular kinetic energy, Avogadro's number, equation of state of a perfect gas, absolute temperature Also molecular approach to such simple phenomena in liquids and solids as boiling, melting etc.
c) Work done by an expanding gas limited to isothermal and adiabatic processes Proof of the equation of the adiabatic process is not required
d) The Carnot cycle, thermodynamic efficiency, reversible and irreversible processes, entropy (statistical approach), Boltzmann factor Entropy as a path independent function, entropy changes and reversibility, quasistatic processes

5. Oscillations and waves
a) Harmonic oscillations, equation of harmonic oscillation Solution of the equation for harmonic motion, attenuation and resonance -qualitatively
b) Harmonic waves, propagation of waves, transverse and longitudinal waves, linear polarization, the classical Doppler effect, sound waves Displacement in a progressive wave and understanding of graphical representation of the wave, measurements of velocity of sound and light, Doppler effect in one dimension only, propagation of waves in homogeneous and isotropic media, reflection and refraction, Fermat's principle
c) Superposition of harmonic waves, coherent waves, interference, beats, standing waves Realization that intensity of wave is proportional to the square of its amplitude. Fourier analysis is not required but candidates should have some understanding that complex waves can be made from addition of simple sinusoidal waves of different frequencies. Interference due to thin films and other simple systems (final formulae are not required), superposition of waves from secondary sources (diffraction)

6. Electric Charge and Electric Field
a) Conservation of charge, Coulomb's law
b) Electric field, potential, Gauss' law Gauss' law confined to simple symmetric systems like sphere, cylinder, plate etc., electric dipole moment
c) Capacitors, capacitance, dielectric constant, energy density of electric field

7. Current and Magnetic Field
a) Current, resistance, internal resistance of source, Ohm's law, Kirchhoff's laws, work and power of direct and alternating currents, Joule's law Simple cases of circuits containing non-ohmic devices with known V-I characteristics
b) Magnetic field (B) of a current, current in a magnetic field, Lorentz force Particles in a magnetic field, simple applications like cyclotron, magnetic dipole moment
c) Ampere's law Magnetic field of simple symmetric systems like straight wire, circular loop and long solenoid
d) Law of electromagnetic induction, magnetic flux, Lenz's law, self-induction, inductance, permeability, energy density of magnetic field
e) Alternating current, resistors, inductors and capacitors in AC-circuits, voltage and current (parallel and series) resonances Simple AC-circuits, time constants, final formulae for parameters of concrete resonance circuits are not required

8. Electromagnetic waves
a) Oscillatory circuit, frequency of oscillations, generation by feedback and resonance
b) Wave optics, diffraction from one and two slits, diffraction grating, resolving power of a grating, Bragg reflection,
c) Dispersion and diffraction spectra, line spectra of gases
d) Electromagnetic waves as transverse waves, polarization by reflection, polarizers Superposition of polarized waves
e) Resolving power of imaging systems

f) Black body, Stefan-Boltzmanns law
Planck's formula is not required

9. Quantum Physics
a) Photoelectric effect, energy and impulse of the photon Einstein's formula is required
b) De Broglie wavelength, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle

10. Relativity
a) Principle of relativity, addition of velocities, relativistic Doppler effect
b) Relativistic equation of motion, momentum, energy, relation between energy and mass, conservation of energy and momentum

11. Matter
a) Simple applications of the Bragg equation
b) Energy levels of atoms and molecules (qualitatively), emission, absorption, spectrum of hydrogen like atoms
c) Energy levels of nuclei (qualitatively), alpha-, beta- and gamma-decays, absorption of radiation, halflife and exponential decay, components of nuclei, mass defect, nuclear reactions

You can skip to this part of course.
You see I am in a dilema now great, Now I only have a little time before the olympiad and I am at a disadvantage cause those others had already got the first training camp..... I hope reading books like "the great physicist of the 20th century" will help.

Busy and happy life

For the past few weeks, I had gone to a leadership camp, joined a scrabble competition in KL, when to KL to play monopoly with my cousins....
Well let me make this chronologically correct. After a week of Chinese New Year, I studied for a week finding out that I didn't get the no.1 but fall off at no.6. That weekend I when to the leadership training camp somewhere near Taman Rama-rama. In the camp, I got "humiliated" by one of the trainers but since I didn't felt like humiliated, I didn't mind much. I didn't get much reading done on my complexity through. And in an unrelated case, I betrayed my friend who let me take his place ...... so sorry Alex.
Ok now after another week of schooling, there's the march holidays. I started off with the scrabble competition which brings me to KL and I had an opportunity to play monopoly with my cousins in Puchong.And did we rediscover the joy of it! After that, I wished to play it again so at the next chance (it so happens to be another weekend) I went back and did it.
Now one week after school reopens, I am starting yet another weekend now I'm gonna busy myself for the float for Wesak day. I do think myself as a weekender.
The juice is still here, next week I am going to the Physics Olympiad training as promised(with Calvin, Kevin, Zu Ming, And Ai Yun) hahahahahahahhahahaha. After coming back I am going to enter a Chinese chess competition for the weekends in Multimedia University Melaka. Then comes the next monthly Test. hahahahahahaha looks like I hadn't study for it. Maybe I got some time....
All in all there's a couple more things here, first I got some taste of lego building for the lego competition, and you can bet it's nice to be able to handle sooooo cool things like gears, long sticks..... well you know. Second, to complete the Olympiads, I volunteered for the Maths Olympiad. Nice considering I gonna meet my cousins in University Melaya(again) when we go for the competition. Lucky for me through, I got my team of 4 very soon(all of them are my classmates and males) and 2 of us(including me) got Further Maths to back us up. And you bet I am very happy right now.
Bugs coming out of a orange ring, bites a carrot and says"That all folks!"

Just for fun

Yesterday was extremely long, I went to 13 houses with 20 over classmates and friends. I wore a batman shirt (just the logo in front) and a bag with a girl's picture which my cousin said is for girls.