Back from Kedah ICT Carnival 2007!

When I was there, Kedah was very hot. Which was one of the reasons on why we ate at KFC twice while I was there. It was for the air-cond. The Kedah ICT Carnival was a three day affair from Friday to Sunday (8th - 10th of June). It was more like an IT Carnival where various companies had booths to showcase their technology. Companies ranging from MDEC to MIMOS to TMNet. Our booth was by far the largest since it housed around 80 PCs for the Counter Strike 1.6 tournament and also some free play, courtesy of Valve and also Cubetech (Last Chaos MMO). The tournament was slated for 32 teams but in the end, only 17 teams registered and entered. The top teams Hybrid and DiV were there and also PwyH, which seem to be in every tourney we made. Although it was a three day affair, we came two days earlier to set up and make sure everything worked. Let me tell you, it was tiring carrying all the equipment and even more so when we set it up. Nevertheless, everything was ready for the event day itself.

The place where we rested. Alot of snores were heard from this room :P.

Being a guy, I couldn't help myself but to check out the Northern Malay chics there. There were a lot of pretty faces and most of them weren't that difficult to have a chat with. However, their northern accents (loghat utara) were quite thick and sometimes I had to stop to think on what they just said. Unfotunately, it was just short chats and therefore no numbers were exchanged.

This was where the Counter-Strike tourney took place. Not too shabby eh? ;).

The CS 1.6 tournament took off without a hitch although it did cause a small problem to our head marshall as he was thinking on what proper format to use. As the tournament went on, it was quite a straight forward affair as the top teams went on to the next stage, leaving the other teams in their wake. However, there was a major upset and surprise which came in the form of PwyH's victory over team Hybrid in the lower brackets. At first, Hybrid was pushed into the lower bracket courtesy of DiV which was quite a surprise as well but being Malaysia's number 1 and 2 teams respectively, the situation wasn't that big of a surprise anyway. But PwyH trouncing Hybrid to a 16-4 score was quite a phenomenal achievement! Its even more surprising that the night before the match, PwyH had an impromptu wrestling match amongst themselves (free-for-all-format) in their hotel room! Seeing the performance of PwyH, even DiV thought that they might lose. Unfortunately, DiV won for the finals, placing them champions with PwyH in the second place and Hybrid in the third place. Good game!

Me with the third place checque. I was sweating because the pic was taken during the tear down.

After that it was the closing day ceremony as well as the prize giving ceremony. Then it was the tear down of our booth and we had to move everything back into boxes and into the store room for transportation on the next day. On Monday we had our last breakfast at our hotel, which was the Grand Continental and proceeded to transfer the equipment into the lorry. Funnily, it wasn't as tiring when we had to set up the equipment. Some of us went back to the hotel for a last shower while I proceeded to go to the Pekan Rabu which was nearby to shop for some sweets and delicacies (kuih-muih). I bought some dodol and some other kuihs which I can't recall its name. Oh wait, one of them was telinga monyet and another was kuih cakar ayam.

I don't smoke but I had to take this picture! Vista enabled ciggies!XD.

We gave the lorry a two hour head start before we checked out of our hotel and went after it! Suffice to say, we got ourselves a speeding ticket and proceeded to go F1 all the way! We left at 1:30 from Alor Setar and reached KL around 5:30! Somehow, we caught up with the lorry near Rawang. Sheesh, two hour head start was too much.

The event was successful to me and here's hoping we have another one ... closer.