My Pawikan Experience

Thanks to The Girl Scouts, I was able to visit many amazing places such as the childhood house of a president and many more! But it all starts at the house.. at 3:15 am.

We were to be picked up by the van at 5:30am at a place very far away from my house, so we had to wake up early. I, of course, set the alarm too early, so I woke up an hour earlier than I was supposed to. I meant to set my alarm for 3:50 in the morning, but I set one for 3:15 instead. Talk about a big brain moment. Anyway, I woke up at 3:15 and was unable to go back to sleep.

After a few minutes of lying down, I gave up and just ate a very early breakfast while reading random books.

When I finished reading, it was already 3:50, so I got ready. I packed my bag, got dressed, then woke up mother, so that she could prepare too.

At around 4:10am, we left to go get picked up, we were able to book a Grab driver very quickly, but something wasn’t right. When we booked the Grab driver, he was 5 minutes away. After 15 VERY long minutes, he was still 5 minutes away. So, we canceled on him and looked for another driver.

After a while, we were able to book one more, we got there somewhat early and stopped at Ministop to get food. When we were eating, mother noticed that her bag was strangely light. Apparently, while we were running, my jacket that she had borrowed, fell off. I was a very horrible start for a very amazing day.

When the whole group got picked up, we went to Museo Ni Ramon Magsaysay. We learned about his childhood, his family, his clothing, his house, and how he died.

The topic I found most interesting was how he died. He died in a plane crash. What makes it interesting is that they couldn’t determine the cause of the crash. Some say it was overweight because of the cargo being too much. Some say it was a bomb. Others say it was shot down. There is no way to determine for sure.

After waiting for a bit, we went out to go eat, I ordered Lechon Kawali (because it's my favorite food) and milk. The place we ate at had a very urban feel. It had no walls keeping it from the outside and the only isolated place was the kitchen.

After our little lunch break, we went to the beach where the main event will be held.

After a long walk on the coast, we arrived at an estuary. This is where the river meets the sea. Our guide jokingly calls it Alabang because the tubig alat and tubig tabang meets there.  We swam for a bit, tried to find fishes, and played games. I learned how to skip a rock there because our guide taught me. After a few minutes, we found a fish. It was very very small and pretty quick. After that there was not many interesting things that happened during the swim. 

After a while, we were called to a hut so that we could be briefed about turtles. The briefing was very short but I learned a lot. Like the difference between turtles and tortoises. Apparently, they were very different! We also learned about the 7 different Philippine turtles, how they lived, and what they do. Apparently, when the turtles are born. After 35 years they come back to lay more eggs.

 After the briefing, we were called outside to watch and protect the little turtles as they crawl into the sea. 

It was a very tiring day but I think it was worth it.

My Sumaguing Cave experience

 It was a bright day and sunny day, we were about to go spelunking at Sagada’s well known Sumaguing cave. When we entered just after 2 minutes of going down we could already see our breath! It was very cool (pun intended) because I have always been fascinated by weird Science things. Before we entered our guide told us to not hold on to each other and just use the rocks to stabilize yourself.

After a quick re-count we started to descend into the cave, it was very very dark. We couldn’t see anything if it weren’t for the guide having a lamp. After going down the cave for a bit we came across a few bats, they were very loud but they didn’t bite. It was very fun!

After a while we went into a part with water, the water was surprisingly clean and, of course, very very cold. We had 2 choices, either try your best to balance yourself and walk on the thin part of the cave or we could just walk through the water. I, being already very tired from the climbing, chose to go through the water. It was very nice, it was cold enough to not be that easy to walk through but it was warm enough to not be impossible to walk though.

After walking through some very cold bit we went deeper into the cave, we took a small break because we were all feeling a bit tired.

Then, we went deeper.. and deeper.. and deeper.. until we reached the very bottom of the cave. When we reached this part we took a few pictures. There was a corner that was very small but surprisingly clean, we held the lamps that the guides brought and took a picture there.

Surprisingly enough, there was an optional part of the cave that went deeper. The guide said it was very hard so I chose not to go since it must have been scary. While waiting for the others my mother felt really tired, so we drank Gatorade and waited for about 5 minutes.

The first thing we had to ascend was a rope on a slightly slanted surface, it looked very menacing but to my surprise it was very easy, we had to keep our legs apart and slowly climb the rope in order to progress.

After that it was climbing very steep and moist rocks  which was really hard since you had to pull your weight and if you fell you would get really hurt, which was easy since the rocks were wet.

After climbing ,for what seemed like an hour, we finally got to a part that wasn’t very steep. But we had to use a ropes, tires, and rope ladders to progress because it was very slippery. Due to my lack of core strength, or any strength at all, this was very hard.

Once the climbing bit was done it was just walking back to the exit, though you still had to be cautions since some rocks were slippery. One of my groupmates was to tired that they slipped and hurt themselves at the very end. I would guess that they were tired because they went into the hard part.

After a few we were able to exit, most of us still able to walk and talk normally. But some of us.. uh.. weren’t able to do those things quite as well.

Robotics Experience Part 3 (Semi-Finals)

After the Eliminations, we trained hard for the upcoming Semi-Finals. Since the drive to the place where the Semi-Final is being held was really long my father and I visited a nearby "Go Hotels" branch and stayed there at the night before the big event.

After sleeping in a surprisingly comfortable bed we went to SM North Edsa Annex to hopefully win the Semi-Finals and get into the Finals.

We arrived early because of the "Go Hotels " being, very conveniently, close to where the competition was held! When we arrived I saw Mattias there, before anyone else had been there. Mattias, not to my surprise, had made a presentation showcasing the improvements he had made to the code and what is left to be done.

After a while, Owen arrived and Mattias gave him a rundown on our progress. Sooner or later the rules for the competition was announced

The rules were the same as before, get the passengers to their respective places in order to earn points. The quickest and most productive robots win and get into the Finals! This time we only had 1.5 hours, I guessed its because there are fewer people now.

After everybody arrived at the competition the 1.5 hours began, we started building as soon as the bell rang. Surprisingly the build didn't take long! Considering that they changed it into a more complex build. There was a part I struggled with but Owen helped me because our sides were alike.

The eliminations basically repeated, I lined up while they made the code. We were able to run around 5 times so that was nice. We were pretty sure we would lose because there would only be 5 winners and everybody else was doing great, but we still tried our hardest.

After the 1.5 hours were up we waiting for our team to be called for the final run. I feel like Mattias and Owen had low expectations but I, for one, was still hoping to get in the Finals.

After a while our team was called, the 3 of us went to the course and we ran our final product. We did well and the robot operated as it was meant to. After the final run, we sat down and waited for the winners to be announced.

After a few snacks and chats the winners were announced, I was a little sad that we didn't make it but we tried our hardest. We also learned a lot too, all in all it was a great experience and I was glad to be in it.

The end

Robotics Experience Part 2

September 2, 2019

After many weeks of hard training, we finally made it to the eliminations! We arrived a little late because of traffic but there was no big problem. When I arrived I was directed to the table where my teammates were. I was paired with 2 people, Matias and Owen.

The ruled for the competition were simple, we all had 2 and a half hours to finish building, coding, and testing. After said time was up we will be called and one by one we will run our code at our respective course and determine our finishing score. There were multiple obstacles on the course, our course was very hard. It had many passengers in different places, we had to bring them to their respective locations in order to complete the challenge. What was so hard about this was we had to create a code that automatically detected the color (Their color determines where they are supposed to be) and has to have a pre-programmed code that makes it go to where they are supposed to be, so that means we need to make a custom code for all the locations in order to bring the passengers where they need to be.

Luckily I was teamed with 2 coding pros! When I arrived the competition already started and my teammates were knee-deep in code so I thought it would be helpful if I lined up before all the other teams did. Though there was already a huge line at least I made it before the others did. The line was really long! I didn't expect it to take 20 minutes to run just once! Because of this, we were only able to test our code out 3 times sadly, but the results impressed us!

After the 2.5 hours were up we were called one by one to run our final product and determine whether or not we got in the semi-finals, our code was decent but we didn't think it would make it. So we sat down and chatted while waiting for our turn.

After a while our team was called then we went to the course and ran our code. It did as planned, it delivered a few of the passengers to their respective locations, it's just that it missed a few thus lowering our score a bit but not too much.

After we ran our code all we had to do is wait for the winners to be announced and the awarding. This would take long but I had a really bad headache due to the stadium being too bright, so I slept through it all.

When the winners were announced we were surprised to hear our team name! We got through the eliminations!

To Be continued

My Robotics Olympiad experience Part-1

Hi! I am Alex, and this is my robotics olympiad journey in a nutshell.

Summer 2019:

I joined two ev3 workshops in iCreate this summer. These workshops were in preparation for the iCreate Robotics Cup. Each workshop ended in a competition and I placed first and second in them. The last preliminary competition was 2 days before the Robotics Cup. I knew that the course will be the same and my mom and dad told me to fix my code. I didn’t. I felt that my robot was already strong and I kept on beating the other competitors. I got cocky.

Robotics Cup 2019:

The competition started. I had high hopes because for the last few runs everything went fine. There were a few bugs in the code, but I didn’t fix it because I thought it was going to be okay. This lead to my failure. The first 3 winners in our category will be representing the center during the Philippine Robotic Olympiad. I came in 4^th. I went home and stopped thinking about robotics for a while.

3 weeks later:

I went back to the center to try and prove that I was worth picking to join the next competition. When I got there, I was surprised to see that the person who got 3^rd place wasn’t there practicing. I asked the coach about him and he told me that the other student dropped out because he couldn’t make it to the trainings. They also told me that they were considering me as a replacement! I was pretty happy when I heard this that I totally forgot about the fact that I hadn’t eaten yet.

To be continued.

Lessons Learned:

1.     Don’t underestimate your opponent

2.     Don’t get too cocky. There is always room for mistakes and improvement.

3.     Put yourself in a position where when the opportunity presents itself, you can grab it.