Third time's the charm

CGL was one of the four schools chosen to participate in the ASEAN quiz. 10 of us 'lucky' CGL-ians, including Michelle, Melanie and Shia Wen, managed to sign up for it. Why? The reason was clear. KK marks la. At first, when they announced it, they said that it was international level meaning that if we participated, we get 20 marks. It was an online quiz, meaning we get to do it in school and skip lessons. Now, who wouldn't want to join, right?

Anyway, we took part and I 'read' about ASEAN the night before the trial test. Yes, there was a trial test. For what? I have no idea. Which quiz actually has a trial? However, when we went to the computer lab to try out the quiz, it took ages just for the log-in page to load. After refreshing the page a million times, some of us lucky ones manage to log in. Then, it took even longer to load the questions.

The questions were totally crappy, though. About three quarter of it was general knowledge, which no one knows about. So how exactly is that general knowledge? We 'studied' (Ok, so maybe some people really studied for it) about ASEAN and only a few questions came out about it. After lots of Google-ing (thank the creators of Google), we managed to finish the quiz. But lo and behold, after clicking submit... PAGE CANNOT BE LOADED. What the heck?

So, our teacher called and tell the people in charge of all the problems we faced. Trust me, there was a whole long list of it.

The next day, was the real quiz. After the trial test, I didn't study anymore about ASEAN. I mean, what's the point? All they ask is how long is a baby kangaroo when it is born? Or how many gallons of milk can a cow produce? Bla bla.

This time, there were officers from the Jabatan Penerangan Malaysia. Meaning, NO Google-ing for us. But (there's always the but), like the trial test, it took forever to load the log-in page. This time around, I couldn't even log-in. Only 3 (I think, or was it 4?) of us managed to get in.

The questions were ALL about ASEAN this time. Darn. There was a photographer snapping away while we frustratedly tried to log in. After trying and trying, many of us gave up. We helped Google answers for the 3 of them who were answering and also played Rapid Typing (we were that bored). But (again with the but) after finishing the objective questions, they clicked the true or false part, yet again... PAGE CANNOT BE LOADED. Absolutely testing our patience.

Apparently, almost all the people taking part (which is approximately 3000 students from all around ASEAN) didn't manage to take the quiz. Problem? Overloaded server, failure to plan by the organizers.

So, today, we took the quiz - again. This time around, it was way different. I logged in within a minute and loaded the question page in another. Gulp. The quiz was really happening this time and I definitely wasn't ready.

Lucky for us, the questions were the same, meaning that we already saw it and we even helped Google for the answers. So, answering the questions wasn't that hard. And after the officers left, Google's page appeared on every computer screen. The essay was cleverly copy-pasted and we managed to finish the quiz in the one-hour time frame. The only glitch was that some of us couldn't submit the answers but after a few tries, everything was ok.

So, as the saying goes: Third time's the charm =)