Taipei

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On the first day, we (Lim Li, my mother and I) caught the 5.15 pm SQ 28 flight. The flight took about 4.5 hrs to reach the Taiwan-Taipei Tao Yuan International Airport, and we reached the Chien Tan Overseas Youth Activity Centre (our hotel) at about 11 pm. So, we hardly did anything. My father, Lim Min, Derek and Jeremy Sim (Clarence's brother) took an earlier flight, since they were taking part in the WRO 2007 (World Robot Olympiad). I had no idea what they did earlier at the hotel (perhaps preparing for the competition).

Second day, the start of the competition. All of us went to the competition venue at National Taiwan University (NTU Sports Centre). Our robotics team was assigned the J03 booth. The team beside our booth was really awesome. They were from Philippines and I thought we had no chance against them. I just looked around to see what the other teams (from some 13 countries) were doing. By the way, I saw a robot that is able to solve 3x3 rubik's cube. I was really impressed. I also saw a robot with a "remote control". I tried to challenge the rubik's cube robot, but the robot had problems scanning the colours correctly. The judges soon came to our robotics team booth. Lim Min, Derek and Jeremy gave a presentation and demo of their fireman robot to the penal of 3 judges, who asked a lot of questions.

Our booth.





Our neighbour's booth from the Philippines which looked pretty impressive!


At about 5 pm, we left and returned to our hotel. At night, we walked to the Jian Tan Metro Station and visited the Shilin Market which was just across the station. We noticed that in Taipei, the cars didn't stop for the pedestrians even when the green man was flashing, it was so scary to cross the road. The green man flashed for 99 seconds for us to cross a short road (unlike in Singapore, which is like 10 seconds or so). The Shilin market was extremely crowded, I hated all the hustle and hustle of the market, and we quickly left after having our dinner. Derek and Jeremy "da-bao" the oyster mee-sua back.



Third day, competition was still going on. I challenged the rubic cube robot again. That time the robot worked. I won the first round. On the second round, I lost. My excuse was because the creator was the one who messed up the cube. Third round, I messed up the cube for the robot. I won. I went back to our booth. My father was trying to sell the omniwheels/holonomic wheels and the plego fields invented by him. At the end of the day, my father managed to sell ALL the holonomic wheels he brought (about 100 of them). During the prize giving ceremony, they announced the winners. Our team emerged second in the Open Category! If we got second, who got first? I'd give you a hint, it's from Philippines. It's not the team beside us (surprisingly they didn't win any medal), it's the team beside them. After the ceremony, we went to a National Palace Museum （故宫）. There's nothing much to talk about it, so I would just skip to the part when we went back to the hotel. Well, there's still nothing much to talk, so I'll talk about the next day.

Fourth day, we visited one of my mother's relatives. After that, we went to Taipei 101. It looked so grand and tall. It was one of the most famous buildings in Taiwan. Yet, inside it was just like any shopping mall. After that, we bought food from the Taipei Shilin market before going back to the hotel.




Taipei 101

Fifth day,(yay, I'm almost done) we went to the science centre... and I lost my specs. We searched high and low for it. We wasted so much time. If we didn't reach the airport on time, we would miss our flight home. We just gave up after a while and took a cab followed by coach to the airport. We reached home at exactly midnight.

The best thing about this trip was ... we got to play video games in the SIA aeroplane for a total of about 9 hours.