PanaGeek final round experience

It was a rather unlucky day. I got up late, went almost lost searching for PRDCM office. But when I finally found their office, I can't help but noticed the nice view throughout. It's Cyber Jaya after all. When I step into the office (nice office by the way) itself, a bunch of people has already arrived.

When it was time to begin competition, we are given a short tour of the office. Looks good, I saw some huge 24" Dell LCD lying around. We were then proceed to the conference room where we have our round 1 assessment. This is where we are given a scenario and are asked to come out with some ideas for it. I believe I have given a OK idea, although it may not be exactly feasible right now because it involves something as elusive as AI (Actually to be frank, I do not think it's all that hard but somehow I don't think my ideas fare very well in the feasibility department). Due to my deep interests in AI (which happens to be my final year project topic), my idea somehow revolves around it and this competition sort of reflect that.

When it comes to the 2nd round, which is a group assignment, we were randomly group into 4 teams (with 5 in a group) and are assigned a mini project involving some basic socket programming, a typical client/server application. I can say that it's a very simple task if we know socket programming well. Unfortunately, none of us actually do, nothing beyond a last-minute read on socket programming tutorial, that is. The encryption/decryption part could be harder, due to the fact that you need to be able to convert your mathematical skills into programming codes. Which might not be easy if you do not have some background in AI (AI people tends to be good in implementing an algorithm after reading a whitepaper, something that I still have much to learn in this regard). On a side note though, I believe for one to be a good AI researcher, one needs to be an excellent programmer. But that's story for another day :).

At the end of all this, our team got the best team award (the prize was a hamper). And I was awarded a second runner-up, while the other of my team member got a first prize. Congrats Aik Keong! It's a real pleasure working with you. And don't forget my treat after getting your 5k ya, :D.