Phys-Math Showdown (PMS) 2014

Poster.

PMS. Maybe when you hear those three letters the little voice inside your head goes like: "Post Menstrual Syndrome?..." if it says that, well I have news for you. Good news and bad news. Bad news first, okay? Bad news: you got it wrong!; good news: it has nothing to do with a woman's emotion before she has her monthly menstruation. It's far from that, OK? 

It was Mr. Aidil's idea to make the sound of the competition a bit catchy, and he made up the name. At first I thought about how weird and negative it sounds, but now I think that the competition's name is the highlight of the competition itself.

You see, my school is not the most crowded school ever. In fact, it is far from crowded. If your school consists of 200-500 students, mine consists of 18. *and the crickets start doing their job when everything goes silent*

But that is no matter, for we have found a way to fix this uncrowded-ness of this school which I know has a bright future in front of it! My father has long said to me that we could do a bunch of fantastic stuff with what the school building's got to offer. Then, an idea of making a cerdas cermat (Indonesian term for a competition which consists of teams competing in who's the smartest and the fastest button-presser) was born. I don't really know the details and whatnot, but eventually I got to be the time-keeper of the competition (that sounded really special but I promise you that it's not).

The last day of the competition was today, and I am really grateful of how the competition turned out. Even though- as we are all human- it had some flaws, everything ran smoothly. I hope we will do better in the events that are to come.

(There will be a line of crappy photos after this sentence. Sorry.)

Kana does not like getting her picture, but apparently Icha does.

I guess also Amel does.

A big smile from my new friend, Riski. :)

The banner and places for the competitors at the Serbaguna room.

I got my box of snacks so, what's your problem?

Adji

Rani was the MC of where I did my job.

Competitors!

Mita had a headache so Ina decided to give her a pat-pat-pat.

Look, it's Ms. Time-keeper! (Who has a messed up hijab)

It felt like a huge responsibility to keep everything fair and square with the timing, I thought I did a pretty good job. I messed up a bit, but while I was handling the time I was also pitching in to make things run better.

Seeing those junior high school students competing also brought flashbacks on me. I remember the times when I was in their position, in my junior high school uniform, trying to answer questions that sounded so challenging yet so frustrating, not to mention the little amount of time that were given. But man, those were the times. I am one of those girls who like adventures, so venturing outside of ordinary routines- getting out of school because of a competition- is very special to me.

But now, I am one of those high school girls who were a part of the committee, like the ones that I saw when I was participating in the competitions of when I was still in junior high. Level up? No?

Making this competition a reality could be shortly described as getting through a long twisted maze. We cheered Mr. Aidil from when he announced about the concept until the end. We supported his ideas, and we tried our best to help out on the promotion (because our school is not widely-known for the moment, we needed extra extra efforts to promote about this amazing competition), and yeah, I'm very grateful with how everything turned out. Even though it's not exactly as planned, we ended up rounding 6 schools, each sending 2 teams. Words cannot describe how that felt like a miracle to us.

This photo is so cute! (credits: Cita)

Today was a very nice day. Another day, another thing to be grateful for!

I would also like to congratulate the winners of this competition, who won a flattering amount of money and swimming vouchers to Hotel Mesra. I hope the rewards are to be a good use, and I hope that this history will be repeated... with better planning and better results, of course!