Week 13 was a tough week for my team. It was IDI week for most us, as we spent almost the whole day at IDI, touching up on our final products, taking photos of our products, editing videos, and preparing ourselves for the product launch on Friday. Having finished our products just a week ago, we had a lot to finish in a short period of one week. So we braced ourselves for what is to come- many sleepless nights at IDI.
Tuesday night, the night before our posters were due, the poster team, Jeremy, Sam, Ama, Mel, stayed up late in the IDI to touch-up on our posters. It was not easy, having to deal with so many photos in Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator (we had a poster that was 1 GB large!), and to deal with the rainbows on Sam’s MAC. I’m not sure what time they stayed up till, but when I returned to the IDI the next morning, I saw that the snacks on the table were already reduced by half.
Mari and Mel were in-charge of taking photos and videos of our products, so they set-up a small studio in our meeting room, made of white cardboards, to take product photos for our posters. Every evening, Mari and Mel would carry some products down for a photoshoot session. The photoshoot sessions were so professional, that even the timings mattered. Mari told me that if it doesn’t rain, the best time with good lighting was before sunset.]
Rachel, on the other hand, spent her week in her room, making the DIY kit. When I met her on Thursday, she told me that for the past few days, she only had 3 hours of sleep a day. And I only realized why when I saw the completed DIY kit- every page had to be printed, cut and colored strips had to be pasted on them. Not only so, the instructions had to match the strips. It was definitely not an easy task!
Looking at all the effort put in by my teammates, I am, on one hand, thankful to have them in my team and, on the other hand, even more spurred to perform my best in the final presentation.
Just a few days before the final presentation, the presentation team, Ming Kwang, Ming En and I, did some major edits to the ppt slides. It was rather risky, but they were positive changes, I believe. Thankfully, there was still sufficient time to rehearse a few more times with our new set of slides before we went on stage.
Finally it was the day of our product launch. We met in the early morning to load our products onto prof Jiang’s car to be “shipped” over to the venue of the launch. The 3 presenters also went to the hotel earlier to get a “feel” of the stage. As rehearsals were starting soon, I rushed back to collect my TaoBao parcel and grabbed two baos from FamilyMart for lunch. (I was actually feeling kind of full from all the butterflies in my tummy.) And before I knew it, it was our turn.
With everyone’s help, we also finished the group report the night it was due.
Looking back, week 13 is not that bad, everything went rather smoothly. (It was really the most work-intensive week in ALP.) But all these would not have been possible without great teammates! Everyone did their part to the best of their abilities, and I’m truly thankful to be in this team.
Cheers,
Ho Hui Qi
Life With Bamboo
ALP 2016
