A week like no others

A Dream Comes True

This was a week like no others. We still couldn’t believe that we had actually won a trip to Sweden. After fighting from the death pit---getting zero points for the first two rounds in the Individual round, this had shocked us to death, yet we miraculously emerged as the champion and be in lime light in that grand finale of the National Science Challenge. We were even crowned the champion by Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad himself.

We checked in the bazaar hotel, The Pan Pacific Hotel . Cool ~ , a five star hotel . Its lobby is very grand and the decoration of the christmas trees are sparkling radiantly . Whao, that is magnificent . That night  we dined in at the hotel’s cafe . It was a scrumptious buffet style dinner .  With that, here came. we. , together with Professor Helen Nair FASc and our teacher, Puan Kum Wan Thai, had our dinner while waiting for the officers En. Hafiz Ambar , En. Amirul , Cik Sita n the other companion .Their arrival didn't kill the excitement that had been growing since two months ago . Many experience and thoughts, even jokes gushing out of everyone's mouth making the atmosphere more lifely . Last but not least , they started explaining the schedule  to us and the  do and don't . Well, we didn't forget about the allowance we each got for the whole trip, >< €450. Woah  that was a big amount of money .

Jack and the Beanstalk with extras: the Ice dragon.

                At a little bit past midnight, in a state of high excitement, we bade farewell to Malaysia as we departed from KLIA and embarked on a journey to a faraway land, Sweden. 13 hours laer, we touched down at Schipol airport, Amsterdam.  However, our mystical journey to Sweden did not stay arrest. The Ice dragon, the real meaning behind it is the blizzard was striking at full force on the capitol of Sweden, Stockholm. We were stranded at the Schipol airport, Amsterdam.

   

         After almost half-a-day of flight delay, lastly, we were informed that our flight had been cancelled and needed to be rebooked. With that, we were led to take a flight to Copenhagen, Denmark first before continuing our journey to Stockholm. We were given some vouchers as compensation. Well that’s not bad.

A day without time

               Stepping down from the KLM airline at the Copenhagen airport, after an hour of flight. We headed to the flight reception to check the flight schedule. Yet, things didn’t go well. We needed to wait for another 2 hours to know the condition of our flight. We had been spending the whole day at the airport. We felt that we had kept lost with time. We didn’t have the chance to get a glimpse at the sky. It was just like a time traveller lost in the worm hole.

           So, since we were stranded from airport to airport, we had all the time we need to shop at the airport. We had almost shopped the whole airport. However, the notice that we were informed never got better. Our flight had been cancelled for the second time.

            We got another compensations, this time was a free stay at the hotel, Radisson Blu Hotel. We were lucky that day, we got the chance to be mesmerised by our first sight of snow. However, we didn’t have the chance to get hold of it that night, because we were taking a taxi to the hotel. However, we determined to not even touch the snow, we were even going to make our own snowman on the next day. Guess what, we did make our little snowman just outside the hotel on a bench. We realised that the snow is actually looked like the grinned ice of the Ice Kacang in Malaysia, but it didn’t melt in winter.

An eye-taking experience of the forest of classical buildings and NOBEL!!

               Finally, we got the ticket to Stockholm at 4.00pm. When we got onboard. We all gave out a big sigh. “At last, we are onboard .” We were so glad. When we arrived at Stockholm, it was night, even though it was 6.00pm. That day, it was Day 2 of our trip. We had lost two days. We were left three days to fit the programmes that we missed into the schedule

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On Day 3, when the sun was peeping from behind the horizon, we met up with the representative from embassy of Malaysia at Stockholm, Mr Christian. Well, From his name, you can guess that he is the native there. He was the one who helped us to arrange out schedule

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            We sat down on a round table and rescheduled the whole trip. On the very first day of the morning in Stockholm, we set out to pay a courtesy visit to our Malaysian embassy. Even though our arrival to Malaysian embassy was at last minute, we were greeted with a warm welcome by the remaining stuff at Malaysian embassy. On that morning, our ambassador, H.E. Dato’ Badruddin Ab. Rahman, was said to be busy. However, he managed to make it and spend some time with us. His attendance has lighten the atmosphere. Although he is our new ambassador for the Malaysian embassy in Stockholm, Sweden, he knew the culture , weather and their daily technologies well. It was really an interesting experience to be able to sit down and have a chat with him.

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         After a short meeting with our ambassador, we hurried to the Jacob Berzelius Lecture Hall Karolinska Institute to attend the Novel Lecture in Physiology and Medicine. Yet, our days never a normal one. The time we arrived there was actually two hours early from what we were being informed. Even though we were teo hours early, there were people started waiting at the doorsteps of the lecture hall. It’s insane.

            At first, we thought that there were a queue. However, as time passed , we realised that there wasn’t a queue at all! The friends of the people who were queueing started to cut the queue and chat with each other like they did nothing wrong.

            So, here’s some advice to the upcoming winners of NSC, never queue up if the lecture is to be held in a university with a small hall, especially mainly attended by teenagers, just like in the Karolinska Institute. Queue up at the doorsteps just like them. You shift away only when they said that there is a queue. Well, why I said so is because even though we were there 2 hours early, we ended up sitting at the other lecture hall and to be only watching the live telecast of the lectures.

            We had done our homework on the  background research that the Nobel Laureates had done, yet we were still at lost during the lectures. In spite of that, we still enjoyed the lectures. Unfortunately, this trip we weren’t able to get any of the Nobel Laureates’ signature because there were bodyguards around them, not allowing any commoners to get close to them.