Our project was named the Chromatic Differentiator, a color-sensing device assembled from Lego bricks and made possible by astute programming. T'was based on the principle that different colors reflected different amounts of light, so our sensor was programmed to identify colors from the amount of reflected light. As the project was sensitive to different background lighting, it was in quite a state when we first transported it to the Science Center.

Other schools were already exhibiting their finished product, but ours was still a long way off the mark. Buona Vista Secondary, whose booth was just next to ours, had a working but unimpressive traffic control system straight out from the textbook. Catholic High had a vertical crane while Raffles Girls had a small model of a bakery, complete with bread rolling around on conveyor belts. Pretty to look at, but it served little purpose.

The exhibition started on the 8th of December and ended on the 19th, so we had around one week to get things right. Half of the team were secondary three students. There was the chairman, "wimpo" Weishun from 3B, Kewei and James the loafer from 3L, plus a programmer and the eccentric Zhiheng the monk, a secondary 2 guy, as well as my classmate Haoxin. That was the original team as far as I'm concerned. There were just 7 of us, so there was a cozy camaraderie.

There was a time when it seemed that we wouldn't get a working model on time, but somehow things just clicked and we finally produced a bloody good project. The event was rather grand---the press were out in arms on the day of the judging, and photographers were all over the place, their incessant flashes creating a surreal adult atmosphere.

I was a little surprised that we'd won, but in the end was well pleased with our gold trophy. But the dramatic victory wasn't the most impressive memory of that day, t'was the way my dear chairman went on about the biased Indian lady announcer. Swallowing his words, he fired a rapid blurt, "when she said that it was a very close fight (between us and RGS), and dragged it on and on, I just knew that we'd won. It's so very obvious that she favored RGS. Well, we showed her who the best team was. Sorry to upset her."

My dear chairman's face was contorted in a quiet dignity, his eyebrows knitted tightly in protest against the biased announcer who tried to mar our win. I was barely able to contain my bemusement. Thought the RGS team had more reason to be peeved at having lost to the "laughing stocks on the first day we stepped in", as Haoxin called us.

My time for responsibility on the big stage would come. And our running competition with RGS would continue for the years ahead. But at this juncture, I felt that I'd taken my first step onto the national stage, and no number of biased announcers were going to mar my first national level victory.