Nathan

Events, Personal

Last Saturday, Feb. 23, I attended the Conference in UP Diliman. It was a good thing my mom and I did not get lost in the labyrinth-like road network in UP (no offense ). I arrived at the venue right before 9:00 am. I was resigned to the fact that I would be alone the whole time. Thank goodness I found Ms. Yamie (Dr. Suarez now ) and I stayed with her almost the whole time. Registration was not very organized. Actually, most of the things were not organized, I am sorry to say. I saw Mr. Henry Adorna, who asked me if our adviser would be coming. (I found out later that he is my adviser’s adviser, cool.) I said he wasn’t, because he is leaving for something he needed to do. He said in not the exact words, ‘babatukan ko yun eh, dapat kakausapin ko siya’. Hehe. Oh well, Sir Bart can’t be around at that time after all.

On to the NISMED auditorium where the start of proceedings took place. Introductions were made, blah blah.. And more of the “unorganized-ness” shown. I remember around during this time Ms. Yamie whispered something to me (unfortunately I can’t share). I expected that by this time, I will start to feel sleepy, because I really lacked sleep and I am so stressed. However, that was not the case. Surprisingly, I was keen at listening to the speakers, which was odd, since I should be thinking about how tired I am. Haha. I guess one of the factors was that Ms. Yamie was beside me. But on another hand, I guess that’s not it. Haha. One thing I got from the speaker was – when you have nothing to do, or you are simply bored, start thinking of optimizing the sorting algorithm, since there is still an open problem, that is to make the sorting at least .44n more efficient. Really something to ponder upon, but which I won’t do.

The talks were somewhat interesting, but very complicated in nature, since they are not really my specialization. But nevertheless, I somehow understood what they were trying to say. On another note, It took me some time and talking before I was able to get my temporary receipt for the conference (apparently, they either ran out or forgot to bring enough receipts to the venue). During the first snack break, I was introduced to Darwin from DOST. Fortunately, I did not need to walk to the Computer Science building for the afternoon sessions, since I was invited, together with Ms. Yamie, to ride in Darwin’s car . However, Ms. Yamie and I were not able to count the number of steps, if it will really take 500 steps to go from NISMED to the CS building as the hosts said.

Since we rode the car, we arrived at the CS building pretty early, leaving enough room for chatting and being among the first to line up for the food. When we got back to the seat, we met with twins, both teachers in Ateneo de Naga. They talked about their experiences and their work, specially their system, which is the Test Checker and Item Analyzer and Statistics for Beginners. They explained that they were promoting their work in the various regions in the country and selling books and CDs to help the teachers in their work, especially in teaching statistics to high school students. I was really amazed when I saw the book and their presentation materials. I can say that learning statistics during high school is really very hard and coming up with this kind of program or software to aid both the students and teachers is really brilliant. Everything is packaged into the system. What I am amazed more is the fact that they are sponsoring their own travels and publishing costs, just to promote their work. They said they had been to numerous conferences and at least 100 schools to give talks and seminars. Amazing indeed. (Follow the link to see their work – http://sili.adnu.edu.ph/~czar)

During the afternoon sessions, we parted ways with them and went on with the rooms for the parallel sessions. Most of the talks were about systems to aid in aspects of learning. Before that, Doc Caslon talked about graphs and 3D map traversal. After the afternoon break, Ms. Yamie had to leave. Good thing, the other DLSU professors arrived already – Sir Joel, Sir Clem, Sir Rigan, Sir Pants, Ms. Rhia (hope I did not forget to include anyone). In the room where I stayed, Doc Caslon, Sir Clem and Sir Joel were there. We were lined up one after the other. During my turn, at 4:30pm, I talked and talked and talked, and after 8-10 minutes, I was already finished and was already entertaining questions from the audience. The questions they asked were very interesting, only to prove that they were listening to me. Haha thanks goodness. After that, I felt lighter, as if a needle was removed from my body.

Before I went home, I was fortunate to be introduced to Dr. Naval, who was an expert in image processing. He gave me insights on what I might need to do for my thesis. After that, I went home. We got lost! And we got stuck in heavy traffic! All in all, I was very tired and stressed that day, and I was only able to review for my exam late at night.

Although I already attended other conferences in the past, this experience is nothing like the ones I have been to before. It was really a unique experience for many reasons.

P.S. I shall blog about Japan next. (Hopefully, before Tuesday comes)

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