The Final Round of the Game

CS3216 = a fun and tiring game... we survived to the final round!

The Change of Project Teammates

Why am I in another team? Some of you are puzzled... Initially i was in my Facebook group, and so i rejected ppl's offer cos of I alr have a team. But now I end up in another team!

Actually initially our Facebook grp planned to come together again for the final project to continue our Facebook app. But seeing our app after release to the Application Directory has its popularity shot up so high and dropped drastically the next day (remaining low subsequently), then perhaps the viral element of the app is not there.

Then we plan to build an app on a phone... But we actually have not enough time to discuss more abt the idea, when everyone in the group is busy with other stuff.

The change in situation started when one of our teammate decided to join another group to work with more ppl. He felt bad about it, but we didn't blame him. In fact one of CS3216's purpose is to make us work with more ppl right? Then not long after this happened in that day, a teammate from my current group appeared right in front of me to persuade me again to join his group. Being able to participate in the Imagine Cup is already attractive enough and that they seemed to be quite prepared (written partial proposal, did research etc). Furthermore, isn't it meaningful to be involved in "saving the world"? Plus the fact that he approached me at the right time, when there is a change in suitation in our group! In the end, I join their team. Initially I did felt bad abt it towards my previous teammates also. But then again it may be good for everyone to be a part of different teams in the final project so tt we get to work with different ppl and probably find different opportunities? Let's move on!

Microsoft Talk & Final Project pitching party

I combined them cos i find them got overlapping parts...

I think the Final Project Pitching Party is the best session I seen so far! It managed to capture my attention even it is already so late at night. I think the most important factor was the interaction part. One comment by another, so interesting.

In the meanwhile, i divert a bit to the Microsoft Talk on Mon. The guy has a weird accent (i am glad his collegue agrees with what i thought), such that I find it hard to follow what he said.

I caught what he said about do what we are good at, so that we don't get just in-between skills (this is an interesting phrase i nvr heard before, so i remembered). But then if we do not try out various things, how do we know which we are good at and which we are not. In-between skills is unavoidable. Most importantly is to get involve in something you love and u feel it is worth spending time on.

Then also about people being not the same as you. Truth is sometimes we made too much assumptions based on our limited scope about others when is not true. Just like rich people cannot understand poor ppl and visa versa. Even u r once poor but now u r a rich person, there is no guarantee u will rmb what it was like being poor and is still able to understand poor ppl.

Back to the Final Project Pitching Party. I am actually quite amazed by the preparation done by some of the group. For eg. Supremacy. They already have the cards designed, wow. The more wow part was they actually have so many ppl in their team! I think i heard someone mentioned about culture... Actually i think using Ben Leong's photo is probably not a good choice to bring the game public. In our MisMatch, we thought of using Prof Ben's photo + 2 horns for the devil cards before. But with second thoughts, we decided not to. The reason being the players don't know who is Ben Leong. As Prof is someone who is famous mainly in the academic and business aspect, ordinary folks probably don't know him. So in this way, there is a culture difference, hence it may be difficult for them to find meaning in the game.

The treehouse presentation was done very well! Even though Cedric, the presenter had a headache, the presentation shows the fact that well preparation is essentially for good presentation. Yes I agree, the relationship we form through Facebook and Twitter are very superficial. People change because of certain incident or life experience, if we do not know how they change and why they change, we get detached from them. Not seeing each other for quite some time can drift relationship apart. IMO, any technology device substition is never adequent to maintain a relationship, we need to see each other often... If really cannot see each other often, then there leaves no choice to depend on technology. But I think it may be difficult for Treehouse to get users who don't like to write and don't have photos or videos to substanitate their thoughts...

World issues such as poverty, diseases and natural disaster are difficult issues to solve. They definitely cannot be solved in a single Imagine Cup project. These problems need many many years of hard work to be eradicated slowly. But if we can make a difference to just one, why not? Remember the starfish story? “Well, I made a difference to that one!”

Then at the end, this collegue from Microsoft convey the message of "穷则变，变则通，通则达，达则久，久则穷", i tried to search online for the "offical" definition of this word, but can't find. This phrase looks really interesting (Orry says it is recursive, true leh). So I went to research online, but it seems like it is difficult to search for the whole phrase, ppl usually leave out the last phrase. So to get the result i want, i had to just search for the last phrase. I realised this phrase is from 《易经》,and according to this link, we don't know who wrote this book, so may not be Confucius.

For more info on this phrase, u can check it out here:
 “《易》穷则变，变则通，通则久，是以‘自天佑之，吉无不利'”。这就是说，万事万物发展变化的规律，就是“分久必合，合久必分”，“穷则变，变则通，通则久，久则穷”，是一个太极循环格局。当然不是简单地重复过去，而是螺旋式上升，不断向更高层次发展变化。所谓“生生之谓易”，“天行健，君子以自强不息”。

The meaning of this phrase loosely translated for those who don't understand it is "If u reach a bottleneck, u hv to change; if you change, things will go fine; as things go fine, u will gain success; as you gain success, this will go far; if you go far, u will reach a bottleneck again". Good food for thought to end off this blog!

Last but not least, thanks for the food!