Judging day!... Actually, I've been rehearsing my presentation many, many times before this day, but I can't exactly remember when those times were so I didn't blog about it. But anyway, I felt more or less prepared so I enjoyed my breakfast at Denny's again. We found an interesting brochure on the table:
Front (click to see in more detail)
Back
What I ordered was rather healthier. I had resolved to take pictures of food, but when the mouthwatering dish arrives, recording its image becomes the least of my concerns and I only remember to take photos after a few bites.
Omelette with tomatoes, vegetables, onions, mushrooms and cheese inside as filling. Grits at the back and two slices of toast at the side.
It's quite torturing to blog about tasty food when I'm recovering from the food poisoning I got a few days ago, and I have to watch what I eat. After breakfast we proceeded to the exhibit hall for judging.
A ton of souvenirs left by various agencies ^_^
Sharp observers will notice that the color of my mouse had changed. Indeed, the night before, I had left my laptop at my exhibit for the round of judges who skim through posters at night (and leave souvenirs), and some stroke of folly made me bring my mouse back to the hotel. When I realized that I had forgotten to bring my mouse on judging day, I managed to keep my cool and contacted my supervisor, who passed me his own mouse outside the hall. Thank goodness he had one!
One floor above the entrance to the hall, there were windows like the above photo allowing judges to look into the hall from their rooms. Interestingly, a couple of judges were waving to some people in the hall and taking their photos.
The following is my judging schedule. Every finalist gets a card like this that tells us the names and allocated slots of our scheduled Grand Awards judges. Each session lasts for 15 minutes, and at the end of every session. a hall-wide announcement is made asking judges to move on to their next poster.
During Session 1, Other than the three judges on the card, some unscheduled judges interviewed me as well, including a team from the Association of Computing Machinery.
I was fascinated by the display on my left:
CS011 - Additional POV Display for Your Computer
Dmitry Alexandrovich Kabak, 17, Junior, Polytechnical Gymnasium N6., Minsk, Belarus
Dmitry's project was about Persistence Of Vision (POV) devices. He built the following device, a rotating cylinder with three columns of LEDs (each column being red, green and blue respectively). A user draws a design in his computer program, and the cylinder spins on its vertical axis while the program causes specific LEDs to flash at the appropriate moments so the persistence of vision causes the user's design to appear. The following is a video showing the device in action (He saw my name from my lanyard while I was gawking at the device):
A small portion of Dmitry's poster
I also a took a video of a finalist juggling a few green balls (they flash in different colors on impact - free gifts from Google), and later, his mobile phone as well, but Blogger rejected the video -_-
Some people were really carefree during judging, probably owing to the long free periods between judges. During one of those free periods, I met Dr. Wulf Hofbauer, the Singapore Science and Engineering Fair (SSEF) judge sent to judge at ISEF.
The finalists all had lunch during the break (1145 - 1315), and the supervisors of Team Singapore bought lunch for its finalists. I had a sumptuous Japanese meal: rice with salmon, tempura prawns and vegetables.
In the second period, only the scheduled judges came to my booth.
Interesting mode of transport
After the second period, there was a break (1515 - 1615) followed by a period for "Unscheduled Interviews" (1615 - 1800). Up to about 1730, my only interview was by a judge from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Society, but in the last half an hour a sudden crowd of Grand Awards judges interviewed me. I could feel that those Grand Awards judges were more high-level now, as they asked more probing and difficult questions than previous judges. Interestingly, one judge's name was "Demain". It was a real pity that they came so late, because I still had more to say when they had to leave for other interviews. While I was packing up at 1800, a final Grand Awards judge came up and interviewed me. Ironically, because the time was up, the time restriction no longer mattered and I spoke with her for very long, telling her all of the additional information about my project.
In sum, all of the judges were very nice people ("reward the best and encourage the rest") and it seemed like I did okay in impressing the 20-odd judges who interviewed me.
Finally, we could relax!!! Team Singapore went back to Hotel Figueroa to change to more casual wear. Soon after, we set off for LA's Universal Studios!
One of those photos that can prove that you've been there
Straight from the program booklet:
7:00 p.m.–Midnight Intel ISEF Night at Universal Studios Hollywood
For one night, Universal Studios Hollywood belongs to Intel ISEF. Only Official Parties will be admitted to the park. Buses will start departures from the Convention Center at 6:00 p.m. Departures from all of the official Intel ISEF block hotels will begin at 6.:15 p.m. Guests will enjoy exclusive access to rides, including the Simpsons, Revenge of the Mummy, Jurassic Park the Ride, and Shrek 4-D. Studio tours will be running until 9:30 p.m. Concession stands will be open and will offer a variety of dining options at no charge. Guests are also welcome to visit Universal Walk, where they will find a number of shopping opportunities as well as restaurants and nightclubs. Universal Walk is open to the general public and is NOT for the exclusive use of Intel ISEF participants. All activities in Universal Walk are at the expense of the participant and not Intel
ISEF. Transportation back from the park to all block hotels will be continuous throughout the evening until midnight.
In short, ISEF Finalists and their supervisors have free admission to Universal Studios (which has been booked by Intel solely for ISEF Official Parties), free rides and free food! We all got a special lanyard:
The paper in the lanyard is actually a folded map of Universal Studios.
Surprisingly, since I'm not really in touch with movies and that kind of culture, the displays didn't really draw my attention. My supervisor and I had dinner first:
Black tray: my supervisor's meal - fried chicken and fries in a basket, a plate of noodles with sweet and sour pork, broccoli and cauliflowers. Foreground: my meal - chocolate cake underneat the kosher label, a pretzel (also kosher) on top of a "mystery package" which contains:
Rice, salmon and long beans in some nice sourish sauce. Very hot and tasty.
The lighting in the area was woefully inadequate, and I had night blindess, so it was a little hard to move around. I went on the Jurassic Park ride, which was around my tolerance level (which shows how low it is). I really liked the Simpsons Ride, because there was a solid storyline that was slowly revealing itself to us (through surrounding TV screens) even while we were queuing up for the ride. Too bad the screen was too large, and I had tunnel vision, so I couldn't catch everything.
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