Taylor's Race Across America ( TRAAM 2011 )

Well, I participated in Taylor's Race Across America 2011 ( TRAAM ) which was held yesterday at Taylor's University, Lakeside Campus.

We were required to form a team of five Form 5 students. My team consisted of me and four of my friends ( Lee King, Hari, Sehran and Kuok Fung ).

Guess what our team name and slogan is?

Our team name is "Super Nerds"! Haha! And our slogan is"we may be nerds, but we're super nerds!"

It's catchy, right? At first, it was just a funny joke during our team discussion on Facebook. But after that, no one even bothered to give any new suggestions for our team name. So, on the day of the race itself, we all decided to use the team name "Super Nerds"!

Oh, and we decided that our team colour would be red... It would turn out to be a good colour choice, because we would coincidentally be the only team who wore red shirts during the race! So, it kind of makes our team stand out from the others! Haha! [ smiles ]

Right, let's get started, shall we?

I arrived at the Taylor's University Lakeside Campus first. Sehran and Lee King came a few minutes later. The three of us went to register ourselves first. We were exploring the campus when Hari called. We met up with him and Kuok Fung at the Main Entrance later and brought them to the registration counter.

Then, we discussed about our team name and "cheer". Like I mentioned before, we willingly decided on the name "Super Nerds", and as for the cheer, it's so ridiculous that I don't even want to explain about it here! Seriously, it's pathetic! Luckily, we only needed to do the cheer once throughout the whole event...

During registration, the lady at the counter told us to go to Lecture Hall 9 at 8.30am for briefing. So, we took this time to discuss about some stuff and explore the campus a bit.

I managed to snap some pictures while we were walking around the campus.

Part of the Taylor's University, Lakeside Campus...

Team "Super Nerds"! Haha!

At 8.30am, we made our way to Lecture Hall 9 for the TRAAM briefing. We were given a short introduction about the Race, plus a little bit about the American Degree Transfer Program ( ADP ). Then, we were instructed to proceed to an open area outside the Lecture Hall for a warm-up session. After the warm-up, each team ( If I'm not mistaken, there are a total of 18 teams ) had to present their own "cheer".

After that, we went back into Lecture Hall 9. Here's some of the rules and regulations that I can recall regarding the race in general:

1. Teams will be given a special booklet, also known as a "passport". Teams must bring their passports to each checkpoint ( CP ).

2. After completing the challenge at each CP, teams must let the ADP students in charge of the CP "verify" the passport by imprinting an official chop on the passport. They must also jot down the marks that the team has achieved at that particular CP in the passport.

3. Teams must proceed to each CP in a specific sequence as written in the passport. Teams are not allowed to skip to the next CP without completing the previous CP before it.

Each CP is named after a US State, for instance Utah, Maine, et cetera. The CPs are scattered all over the campus, and teams are required to locate them. Furthermore, the race is not about who finishes first, but is based on a point-accumulation system...

Right, the race was scheduled to start at 9am and end at 1pm, so teams are given a timeframe of 4 hours to complete all 15 checkpoints in their passports.

At 9am, all the teams in Lecture Hall 9 were shown a video clip about Taylor's American Degree Transfer Program. After watching the video, teams must answer 10 questions about ADP correctly in order to receive their passports. Luckily, my team was one of the first to finish the questionnaire, so we got a headstart! [ smiles ]

Okay, here's where the fun part begins.

Now this is a really, really long race! And we needed to do a LOT of running around in order to get to each CP!

I'm gonna explain about all 15 CPs and their respective challenges in point form, for your convenience of course! I know you guys just hate reading long-winded essays, so I'll have to break it all down into a simpler form...

Oh, and I can't recall all the particular names of the CPs ( Remember, I mentioned that each CP is named after a certain US State... ). I only remember some of them, so I hope you guys don't mind, yeah?

Right, here goes.

1. CP 1 ( Florida ): Mastermind - One of us ( in this case, Lee King ) was selected and given a piece of paper. There were four colours written on the paper. He is not allowed to show us the paper or tell us the names of the colours on the paper. Then, the ADP students gave us another piece of paper with five colours written on it. And so, our task was to guess the colours written on Lee King's paper. There are three important things to consider:

- The "types" of colours guessed must be correct.

- The specific "sequence" of the colours must be correct.

- Colours CAN repeat themselves.

If you don't understand, I don't blame you. This particular game is kind of hard to explain here. We had to let the ADP students at the CP repeat the rules twice before we finally understood what to do. What I can tell you is this game tests our ability to analyse and try out different possibilities. In the end, we managed to guess the colours on Lee King's paper correctly, and we did it pretty quick too! Even the ADP students were stunned that we finished so quickly! It's either we're plain good, or we just had a lucky guess! [ Points: Maximum ]

2. CP 2: Name the Movie - This one was a nasty one. We were shown short video clips of several movies, and we had to name the movies that the clips were from. There were 11 clips in total. And there's a catch: we could only name the movies AFTER the video clip sequence was finished. So this game tested our memory as well! Unfortunately, my team only managed to name a mere 4 movies ( The Dark Knight, Toy Story, Inception, Titanic ). The other 7 movies were "old", classic movies! We couldn't even guess what the names of the old movies were! So we had to go through a one-minute time penalty... [ Points: Decent amount ]

3. CP 3: Calculation - Yay! I love Maths! And this CP was all about Maths! A little bit of Add Maths and a little bit of Modern Maths here and there. We managed to get through this CP with little trouble. We are the "Super Nerds", after all! Haha! However, we didn't have enough time to finish the "Kakuro" puzzle, but we still got a substantial amount of points for that. [ Points: Almost maximum ]

4. CP 4 ( Maine ): US quiz / US MAP Puzzle - Okay, here, teams had to answer as many questions as they could regarding the US before time runs out. Then, teams had to assemble a jigsaw puzzle of the USA, with the US States as the jigsaw pieces. Here's where I thought to myself, "Yes! Thank goodness I actually memorised all the US States AND their locations in the USA!". I practically had the US puzzle in the bag!

But, we were stuck here for quite a long time. Almost half an hour! Wanna know why? Because there were 2 teams that were already there when we arrived, and they were taking their own sweet time trying to finish the jigsaw puzzle of the USA! So, we did the US quiz first ( we got 7 correct answers, which was tolerable ), and after that, we still had to wait for the other teams to finish completing the US jigsaw puzzle!

They were allowed to peek at a map of the US if they didn't know how to arrange the US states in the puzzle. It was pure torture waiting for them to finish that US puzzle! When it was FINALLY my team's turn to do the jigsaw puzzle, I unleashed my fury by completing the puzzle in record time. I didn't even have to refer to the map they provided! The ADP students were awe-struck! At least my efforts of knowing the names and locations of the US States by heart finally paid off! [ Points: Almost maximum ]

5. CP 5 ( Utah ): Fill the Cup - Teams had to fill a cup with water using only their hands. The worst part was that the pail of water was 15 meters away from the cup! Only one team member could transport water from the pail to the cup at any one time. And halfway while you're running with the water, the ADP students will ask you questions regarding the state of Utah! If you answered correctly, you could proceed and deposit the water you were carrying into the cup. If the answer was wrong, you had to drop the water you're holding and start all over again!

I tell you, this CP was frustrating! In the end, we miraculously managed to fill up almost 75% of the cup. And we got extra credit from the ADP students because we sang and danced for them too! Haha! So we got like 10 extra points for that! [ Points awarded: Almost maximum ]

6. CP 6 ( Nevada ): Fear Factor - Well, our team got to do Fear Factor. There's actually 3 different challenges in this CP: Worms, Fear Factor and Fashion Catwalk. We had to role a dice to determine which one we would be doing. So we got Fear Factor. There were 4 boxes, each containing unknown "substances" inside them. Each box was for one team member, and each team member had to guess what was inside the box. The so-called "substances" were actually salt, tomato, cincau ( black jelly ), and egg. I was unlucky, because my box was the one with the egg! Ugh! And it doesn't end there. The team then had to finish drinking a cup of revolting bittergourd and banana juice! For some reason, Sehran volunteered to finish it all by himself. After he gulped it all down, he seriously looked like he was about to throw up! But then, he surprised everyone by grabbing another cup of bittergourd+banana juice and finishing that one, too! The whole room literally burst with laughter! Though I'm not sure if my team got extra credit for Sehran's heroic act! [ Points awarded: Almost maximum ]

7. CP 7: American Idol - Yup, as the name suggests, this challenge is all about American Idol. But we didn't know about it until AFTER the challenge was complete. When we first got to the CP, two of our team members were selected, Hari and Sehran. Both of them were brought into a room. Kuok Fung, Lee King, and I had to wait outside. When the three of us asked what the challenge was about, the ADP student in charge outside the room said that he couldn't tell! We only knew what the challenge was when Hari and Sehran finally emerged from the room. The two of them had to match American Idol contestants with their respective seasons. Apparently, it was easier said than done, and unfortunately, Hari and Sehran didn't manage to score any points for our team in this particular challenge. It was a real let-down, but oh well... This setback actually made us more determined and drove us to do better in the following challenges. [ Points: No points awarded ]

8. CP 8 ( Hawaii ): Sumo-wrestling - Well, I'd say this one was the most fun. Three of us had to put on a sumo costume and try to wrestle with the ADP students. We had to do it one-by-one. And man, I seriously underestimated the opponents! They were huge, and I'm guessing quite buff, too! We had to push them down on to the mat in order to score points. No punching, kicking, shirt-tugging, and tripping was allowed. Fortunately, our team managed to get the highest score among all the other teams in this challenge! Hari's match was legendary! He literally lifted the guy up and slammed him to the ground! Pure awesomeness! [ Points: Almost maximum ]

9. CP 9 ( Illnois ): Balloon Game - This CP was handled by a group of Korean ADP students. We had to blow as many balloons as we could within the time limit. The balloons had to be big enough, otherwise they don't count. Oh, and for every five balloons blown, we get to answer a bonus question for bonus points. Overall, our team managed to blow a decent amount of balloons, and we managed to get some bonus points for answering the bonus questions, so the points we got were quite okay... [ Points: Decent amount ]

10. CP 10: Jeopardy - Ah okay, we had to run all the way upstairs for this one! It was seriously exhausting! Right, Jeopardy is a gameshow which is remarkably similar to "Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader". But there are a few differences, of course. There are 25 questions ( 5 categories with 5 questions each ). Each question in each category is worth a certain amount of points ( 10, 20, 30, 40, and 50 points ). The higher the points, the harder the question. The categories are US History, US Presidents, US Authors, US States, and US Singers.

If you answer a question correctly, you get the points that the question is worth. Example, you answer a 40-point question correctly, your team gets 40 points. However, if you answer the question wrongly OR you don't provide an answer within a 20 second time limit, points will be deducted from the team's total points. Which means it IS possible to get a negative score! Luckily, teams have the option to drop out of the game at any time if they are comfortable with their current score. Many teams left the gameshow with zero points, but thankfully, my team managed to get a decent score of 40 points.

At first, our score lingered around zero, because everytime we answered correctly, we would then answer wrongly on the next turn! But luckily, we made a breakthrough: Lee King answered a US Singer question correctly ( Beyonce Knowles ), Sehran, Kuok Fung and Hari, answered something regarding Elvis Presley, and I managed to give the correct answer regarding the US State Massachusetts. My team decided we were comfortable with 40 points, so we decided to drop out with this score... [ Points: Decent amount ]

11. CP 11: American Football - Well, we actually got to play American Football! Well, not the full game anyway, just part of it. We learned how to "pass" and "punt" the ball. Of course, they let us practice for a while. The challenge was to complete 5 passes, and successfully punt ( kick the ball ) 5 times. Points would be awarded for every successful attempt. Our team did quite okay in this challenge, considering the fact that it was quite windy, and we had to adjust to the football's trajectory. There was even a time where Hari kicked the ball so high that it actually went all the way over the fence! Haha! [ Points: Decent amount ]

12. CP 12: Spell-It-Right - Here, we were given a bunch of cards with different letters written on each of them. We had to spell out the names of US cities using the cards provided. For instance, if the ADP student told us to spell "Syracuse", we had to find the correct cards and arrange them in the correct order. This challenge was rather easy, since I was quite familiar with the names of the US cities that he told us to spell, such as Milwaukee, Honolulu, Minneapolis, and several others... [ Points: Maximum ]

13. CP 13: US States - Alright, this was my time to shine! In this challenge, there's a map of the USA on a table. Each of the states was covered with a flap, so you can't see the names of the states. We were given a map of the US, then they gave us some time to memorise the states on the map, especially their locations. Of course, I didn't have to do that, since I already know the US States like the back of my hand! When the time was up, an ADP student would read aloud the name of a state, and we had to open up the correct flap on the US map on the table.

I was practically doing this challenge myself! I got each and every single state correct! Everyone was astonished! Someone even asked me "Are you a robot or something?". Haha! This particular challenge was a breeze, and I actually enjoyed it. I managed to get a perfect score for this challenge, and my team was awarded maximum points! Hehe, I feel so proud of myself! [ Points: Maximum ]

14. CP 14 ( New York ): Snakes & Ladders - Well not exactly "Snakes & Ladders", per se. Okay, this game involves 1 Jumper, 1 Dice-roller, 1 Runner, and 2 people to answer questions. The jumper has to hop across the "game-track" on only one foot. The dice-roller, uhhh, rolls the dice. The Runner has to collect slips paper containing questions from the ADP students everytime the dice is rolled. Then he has to pass it to the 2 people who are tasked to answer the questions.

In this case, Sehran's the Jumper, Hari's the Dice-roller, Kuok Fung's the Runner, and Lee King and I had to answer the questions. The questions are regarding mostly about the US Economy. Points would be awarded for each correct answer. Overall, we managed to score a tolerable amount of points in this challenge. [ Points: Decent amount ]

Alas, we never managed to complete the challenge at the 15th CP ( Oklahoma ). By the time we finished the 14th, it was already 1pm, so we had to make our way back to Lecture Hall 9. This is partly due to the fact that we were delayed at the 4th CP ( Maine ), which is the one with the US quiz and jigsaw puzzle. Too many teams were bottle-necked there, and teams had to go "one-by-one", so it was agonisingly slow, and we lost a lot of time there. But even if we did get to the 15th CP, some people say that it has something to do with dancing...

At 1pm, all the teams returned to Lecture Hall 9. We were debriefed and rested there for a while before we were allowed to go for our lunch at the campus' cafeteria.

Here are some pictures I took...

Behold, Lecture Hall 9...

The organisers...

It's Sehran!

Guess who?

Seriously, this wantan mee was delicious! The best part was that it's free!

Part of the Taylor's University, Lakeside Campus...

Team "Super Nerds"!

After lunch, we went back to Lecture Hall 9 once again for the closing speech and prize-giving ceremony. Dr Reinier Bouwmeester, the Dean of the American Degree Transfer Program, gave the closing speech. Then, the prize-giving ceremony commenced.

Only 6 positions were available. 1st Place, 2nd Place, 3rd Place, and 3 consolation prizes for the 4th, 5th, and 6th Places.

My team managed to get 5th Place! [ smiles ]

Well, we did do rather well, getting nearly maximum marks for most of the CPs. I guess the challenge that really dragged us down was that American Idol challenge. Oh well...

Dr Reinier Bouwmeester during his speech...

Way to go, "Super Nerds"! Haha!

After the prize-giving ceremony, there was a brief picture-taking session. Then, we were allowed to leave the lecture hall and go home.

My team and I lingered around at Starbucks for a while, chit-chatting and talking about the Race. Then, Lee King's sister sent us back to Bukit Jelutong. I waited at Hari's house for a while, and finally, at around 4.45 pm, my parents came to pick me up...

Well, conclusively, it was a really exhausting, but fun-filled and interesting day! I had so much fun and I managed to learn a lot of stuff about America. TRAAM was a really interesting experience and I enjoyed it very much...

And of course, I would like to thank my friends ( Lee King, Hari, Sehran, and Kuok Fung ).

Great work, guys! We made a great team!

Thank you so much, yeah?

Woah, this is an extremely long post!

Yeah, yeah, I know I promised to keep it simple! Haha! Sorry, yeah?

Well, I guess that's it for now.

May the Force be with you...