Nimmy's Blog!

Programming Competition

Posted at 7:59 PM, Monday, November 19, 2007

Remember I mentioned a programming competition to be held in Abuja in one of my previous entries? Well, I have too much work on my hands and have decided that the best person to talk about what happened at the competion is Nino. Isn't that good for a change? You must be bored to death by now cos of my usual boring writing. So here is what Nino had to say about what happened:

The result wasn't as good as we expected. We came 7th (my fav number); surprisingly at the competition the number assigned to our team was also 7. I thank God for it as it was His will. Some agriculture university won the competition; good for them especially given they are just an 'agriculture' university. However, there were reasons for the competition and results ending up the way they did. The organization and the setup was not altogether as should be and this presented alot of road blocks for our team and probably others. On the whole if these problems in the setup has been prevented, it is hardly questionable that the results would have been VERY different indeed. There were 25 other universities altogether from across Nigeria who took part in the competition.

Nevertheless, having taken part in the competition was a great experience. Having the support of Dr. Kah and Dr. Fonkam was the best part. They both showed their appreciation of the effort we put in the competition. Despite our ranking, we all really felt very glad with the confidence our mentors put in us and their encouraging remarks. We are really blessed to have such people with us to be our mentors in AUN, who don't just excel in their profession but are such wonderful people. So you will see (from the award pictures) that we all looked happy at the end of the day!

Our team was in Abuja for four days. The compeition's results were announced on the third day's afternoon. After all the burden taken off our shoulders, we were able to do a little bit of sight-seeing in Abuja. Faiza took us around Abuja and introduced us to a lot of her family members; it was wonderful to meet them all and her brother and sister accompanied us on our trips.

Abuja is very scenic and beautiful especially the architecture and roads. The plantation is wonderful and the trees you see on the road kerb and with the street lights are not indigenous to Abuja, but I think were brought in. However, you can see them all around the city. Abuja is built on a town plan and all new building projects are aligned with this - a lot of construction is still going on there, so people say that it keeps on changing every visit they make. Among the places we visited were Wonderland (an amusement park) at night on Saturday, and the Ya'aradua center and The Millenium Park on Sunday.

It is a marvellous thing that the government cared to make the place look so grand! For me what I liked best was the rides and looking around at the buildings - banks, hotels, churches, etc and of course the stadium. However, I was so absorbed with just looking that I don't recall where what was located. I only remember that the entry point to Abuja city has the stadium. The smooth, three-lane roads are a complete contrast to Yola roads and so is the traffic. People are law-abiding in terms of driving rules and I think there would be little chance for road accidents if people in Yola were the same.

Isn't she just great? Maybe I say that cos she's my sister. All the same, I'm sure having a different writer made reading my blog a little more interesting, hmm? Ycan decide that while I finish the entry with pictures of the the event.

AWARDS