Wow! It’s a little bit funny, I think it’s my first time when all my YM buddies (168) off at the same time (starting about 10.30PM until this post published), hehe… So lonely, maybe all are busy preparing the new year (except me?), hehe…

Hi, 2007 will soon be gone! But I think the memories that I made will not.

Well, thanks God who gave me a good year and now let me have a little review about this, two thousand and seven…

1. In the early of this year, I had 7 days trip to Bali with my school, it was such a great trip, Bali was so beautiful, and so were my friends (I have posted about it).
2. Soon after my trip to Bali, it was getting very busy. Due to my plan to go take NTU and NUS entrance exams, I had to join 3 private courses (Mr.BoenFie’s and Mr.Kheng’s for mathematics and Mr.Yosef’s for english).
3. February 10, my school had a Valentine Night Event, but sadly I couldn’t go there because in the same time I was on Canisius College to take NTU entrance exam.
4. I think March and April were the two busiest months in my school, yeah, I’m talking about final national exam and its preparations.
5. After my last exam, I was directly go to the 2nd National Computer Olympiad Team Training Camp in ITB, there was something sad for me just before the camp and that was my first time blogging. Passed the selection, a week after that camp, I went to 3rd camp. In the middle of the camp I have to went back to Bandung having ITB entrance test (without any preparation, hehe…).
6. Juni and July were full with my preparations since I passed the 3rd camp which mean I would go to IOI, yeah, at last!
7. Maybe August was the hottest month of this year because I went to IOI 2007 and thanks God I got the bronze! Besides that, it was my first time go to university, thought I won’t graduated from the same university (yes, it’s about ITB).
8. After that, I also invited to OSN 2007 as a jury there, an extraordinary experience.
9. Surprisingly, soon after my IOI, I got mail which said that it’s possible for me to be NTU’s student of academic year 07/08. I met NTU’s Dean of Admissions in Soekarno-Hatta and had a deal, not only that, I also got the ASEAN scholarships for my study there.
10. I passed October and November with my “short” study in pure mathematics faculty in ITB, not bad, I got new friends, new knowledges and get closer with someone (although, problems really did headache and heartache to me).
11. Finally, December, I spent my time mostly in the 2nd National Computer Olympiad Team Training Camp as a coordinator of assistants. Without any serious preparation after the camp, I went to Singapore joining ICPC Regional Contest. Not really bad, we got the 9th place.

Several special facts about this year:

1. There were 3 international competitions (APIO, IOI and ICPC).
2. Though overall I only got 7 achievements (not as 2006 when I got 14 achievements), 2007 still the best so far, coz I got my best medal so far, bronze IOI 2007.
3. Thanks God that gave me good health so that I could travel a lot. If I count every single way that moved me from one city to another one (went and back again counts as 2 single way), I did 41 single ways in 2007 (it tooks about 160 hours on the move - about 2% of the whole year): 6 Bandung-Jakarta, 7 Jakarta-Bandung, 1 Bandung-Surabaya, 1 Surabaya-Bandung, 1 Jakarta-Surabaya, 1 Surabaya-Jakarta, 1 Bandung-Bali, 1 Bali-Bandung, 5 Bandung-Depok, 4 Depok-Bandung, 1 Depok-Jakarta, 3 Jakarta-Singapore, 3 Singapore-Jakarta, 1 Singapore-Frankfurt, 1 Frankfurt-Singapore, 1 Frankfurt-Croatia, 1 Croatia-Frankfurt, 1 Bandung-Purwakarta, 1 Purwakarta-Bandung

Well, I think that’s enough “A Brief History of Brian Marshal in 2007″, hehe… Soon I’ll try to write about my resolution in 2008, but first let me thanks for everyone around me, my family, my friends, and you (who read it) for your supports and affections, without all of you the history might be different. Thank you. God bless you all…

A nice picture-story-book made by b.wing. It was a little bit weird when I first saw its pages, it only consists half or one sentence for each, moreover some pages just left blank. But I do believe you’ll get something when you focus on its background. A picture is worth a thousand words, hehe…

Can I have you back?

I can’t play alone

or I must call in vain through the long long summer hours?

You may see often this sentence in my YM status “Occupé mais disponible” and also you may wonder what that means? The sentence is French which means “Busy but available”, yeah, recently I was very busy with my tasks but I always manage to be available in case there is something urgent to talk about.  Well, about the French, I really want to learn more about it, hopefully I can learn more about it in NTU as an elective subjects (if I’m not too busy with the core subjects, hehe…).

GKI Sudirman will held some Christmas event, you are all invited to come…

December 23, 7-9AM, teens’ event with theme “SAR (Search and Rescue)”

December 24, 7-9PM, Christmas night celebration.

December 25, 5-7PM, the main Christmas celebration.

May we all can celebrate the birth of the holy child, our God, Jesus Christ who have come down to this world as a human just to pay our sins.

Intermezzo : during the preparation, committees often took photos, you can click here to see more.

–

All I want for Christmas is a testking study guide guaranteed to help me pass the actual test in June. Passing the mcse certification exams is no small task and takes mountains of time in preparation. Preparing for the comptia a+ exam however is a vertical exam that will accompany any Microsoft exam and solidify your certs.

Yeah, it was so great, 19 alumni plus 1 coach of TOKI (Indonesian Computing Olympiad Team) were met at the ICPC Asia Regional Contest Event. Sonny Budiman Sasaka was the one who I missed in my previous post. Hopefully I can see you all again in the next ICPC!

While I participated the ACM ICPC Regional Contest, I took several times to go to NTU for some administration stuffs and did my medical check. Something that make me shocked was the general doctor’s words about problem in my heart. I never heard something wrong about my heart before and also I never had heart attack. Because of that, I have to meet heart specialist in Bandung. I went to St.Boromeus last week. I met cardiologist, dr.Angke Widya, and I have to take an ultrasonography (USG) test to check the anatomy of my heart. Thanks God when the doctor said that there’s no problem, just fact that my heart-valve is a little bit not in proper place. The doctor said that as long as it works well, I don’t need to worry about my heart. Phew…

(team photo : Roberto - Brian - Evan - Kevin - Dr.Liem - PanYue)

The Annual ICPC (International Collegiate Programming Contest) Regional Contest was held again, this year one of the hosts was National University of Singapore (NUS). The ICPC Regional Contest is one of ACM (Association in Computing Machinery) program for collegiate students to compete their problem solving skill. This competition use team-system, a team consists of 3 students from the same university.

Happily, it was my first experience in ICPC (just about 4 months after my IOI, hehe…). Though next January I will officialy be NTU student, I was representing ITB in that contest. My team’s name was Ganesha ITB (we were also use “Ganesha” t-shirt for the first day of the event). It consists of me, Kevin Tanadi (IOI 2006), and Evan Gozali (IAO 2004-2005). The coach was Dr. Inggriani Liem. Not only four, we also went to Singapore with Roberto Eliantono (IOI 2004) as a reserved contestant.

The event took 2 days. The first one for opening, practice session, and some technical lectures. And as you predict the second one was the competition and awarding day. Every team was also guided by one committee along the event, Ganesha ITB’s was PanYue (I thought she came from China).

So happy, the event also attended by so many alumni of TOKI (Indonesian Computing Olympiad Team), in total there were 19 alumni including me plus 1 TOKI coach (Dr.Liem). Little bit dissatisfied since Dr.Setiawan (TOKI head coach could not attend the event). [you can see my previous post]. I will post about it separately for more detail.

The competition ran for 5 hours long and served 7-”not so hard”-problems (you’ll know after you see the problem-set). Just to make it simple, here is the list of the problems:

A: MODEX -> the easiest one, classic-divide and conquer-problem, I told Kevin to code it before the computer completely-logged-in, but one tiny bug was there in our code so that we got accepted in 13 minutes. due to the easiness of the problem, the committee was busy to give the balloon in the first 15 minutes, hehe… (Ganesha : accepted)
B: JONES -> controversial problem! so many teams got wrong answers including my team, that was really confusing since the problem was easy (many teams must got accepted). until the awarding event no one knows what was wrong with the problem. (Ganesha : wrong answer)
C: ACORN -> an easy DP, if you used to deal with DP problems you will be able to solve it quickly, the dimension and complexity of the DP was N^2. (Ganesha : accepted)
D: TUSK -> it such a geometry problem and not so easy, some teams solved it with N^2.logN solution. (Ganesha : didn’t submit)
E: SKYLINE -> until know still not sure about the solution, I think it was the hardest one from the contest. (Ganesha : didn’t submit)
F: USHER -> an implicit problem, but if you can figure it out, it only about shortest path, my team solved it with dijsktra algorithm, but so fool, I could not code it “one-shoot” since I rarely code in C. (Ganesha : accepted)
G:RACING -> an implicit one too, it was about maximum spanning tree, my team solved it with kruskal algorithm, so fool again, I forgot how to code disjoint set so that I did some bug first before got accepted, hehe… (Ganesha : accepted)

Well, if you count it, you will automatically find that my team only solve 4 problems. But several days after the contest, the committee repaired the ranklist, they repaired the status for problem B (JONES) and my team got accepted, so happy! Finally, Ganesha ITB officially solved 5 problems and got the 9th rank.

Overall, I think it is not so bad for my team to solve 5 problems and got the 9th rank since it was the first ICPC contest for all of team’s members including me. Next year most probably I will attend the contest again but representing NTU. Whatever it will be, I think both me in NTU and Ganesha ITB will get improved and hopefully can achieve more than this.

To see the full problemset you can click here. And click here for the full ranklist.

It is something that I didn’t tell you in my previous post. Because of the electricity in ITB was off until in the morning of the second contest day, I decided to held the second contest in the computer laboratory of SMPK 1 BPK PENABUR Bandung. It was Mr. KuangSin and Mr.Rusli helps that make it possible to did the evacuation. Not forget also thanks to Mrs. Lovanka, head of SMPK 1, who gave me a permission to directly borrow the laboratory. Some uncomfortable act most probably happened on situation like that, but thanks God coz overall the second contest was held successfully. Something that also amazed me was that committee’s plan like automatic judge and the additional problems (hehe…) was still ran well, though the scheduled was somehow delayed

At last, thanks to SMPK 1 BPK PENABUR Bandung, I don’t know how things would going if I couldn’t borrow the laboratory.

The first National Training Camp TOKI 2008 finally ended. The result was directly published on the closing day and here is it:

P080101 IRVAN JAHJA 9486
P080109 RICKY WINATA 5751
P080102 RISAN 5398
P080119 SAMBYA ARYASA S 4716
P080111 ANGELINA VENI JOHANNA 4471
P080103 REINARDUS SURYA PRADHITYA 4375
P080124 GERRY YULIAN 4347
P080105 MUHAMMAD IRFAN AF 4345
P080116 JANSON HENDRYLI 4023
P080106 JAMES EDWARD THEDJA 3996
P080121 YUDI UMAR 3888
P080110 CHRISTOPHER HENRY PRIYONO 3821
P080123 BAGAS ADI WICAKSONO3816
P080108 LISTIARSO WASTUARGO 3620
P080120 YUDA WIRAHADHI 2879
P080114 AMAL SYAHREZA 2708
P080104 AFFATH FIRDAUSI
P080125 AHMAD PRIATAMA DWI KSATRIA WIBAWA
P080117 TIMOTIUS NUGROHO CHANDRA
P080112 HILMAN MAULUDIN
P080107 MADE EDWIN WIRAPUTRA
P080118 AZLAN INDRA
P080113 FITRIANA PASSA
P080115 RYAN ELIAN
P080122 PRIHARDONO ARIYANTO 

You can click here to see the full ranklist.

After all, congratz for all participants, it’s not a big problem weather you passed the selection or not, however you have got something good for your skills in programming and problem solving which will be very helpful, especially if you are going to take computer/informatics faculty later on.

Additionally, for the best sixteen who passed the selection, it was not the end, you will still face some training camp and selection, you all still need improvements so just keep on learning and practicing. I hope some of you will achieve more than me in the next IOI. Besides that, thanks a lot for all other assistants (Roberto, Petra, Damas, Jansen, Kevin, Khandar, Satrio, Aris, Dito, Fanny, Firdi, Praba, Eka) and staffs who has supported this event. I think we all also have to thanks to Mr. Adi Mulyanto and Mr. Wikan as the director of the event. Not forget to all lecturers Mrs. Inggrianie, Ms. Fazat, Mr. Imam, Mrs. Masayu andfifteen Personally I want to apologize in case I did some mistakes. It was my first experience in coordinating an event like this and I think it will be memorable for me. Hope to see you again later. Viva TOKI! Go Get Gold! (TOKI’s classical motto, hehe…)