Week 12 Day 5

Today was a day for community work at Hort Park, and the entire workforce from IHPC was having a great time interacting with the children from Touch Young Arrows. Chittanya, Victor and me presented "Jumping CornStarch" to the kids, and they were like "WOW, I want to play! I want to play!", laughed straight away when I heard this, but it reminds me of my childhood, the times when I was obessed with Digivice, a pet (or monster) keeping device game from the popular cartoon, Digimon.

I must admit when at first I saw Kevin, Chittanya testing out the CornStarch experiment at the Pantry, I was not surprised of how it jumps as I know the science behind it. But seeing on this day how much fun, joy and knowledge it brings to the children, I must say the experiment is of great value and learning to the children.

The day passed fast and soon the children were at IHPC watching 3D movies and playing games using LightDraw. It was interesting seeing them playing the puzzle games and pinball using lasers, and we were so focused on how they were playing that many of us were telling them where to point.

In the blink of an eye, it was the closing ceremony of the ReachOut 2009 event, and I was standing in the training room as they were giving out presents, one by one, to each of the children. Some of the presents were so big that the children have trouble carrying it, and I was also surprised to learn that these gifts were the gifts the children have previously written on their wish list. This means that if the children request something expensive, IHPC will also buy? WOW how I wish I was them haha.

The end of the day ends with the Children returning home by bus happily. A joyful and meaningful day indeed, hope IHPC will have more of these events in the future.

==============Reflection=============
This week saw me being involved in integrating multi-threading to the rubic cube, and it was my first time doing multi threading for a 3D application. Although there are many errors I have encountered on the way, I have found programming in 3D not as hard as I initially thought.

This week's reach out was the most meaningful event that occurred throughout my internship. The whole IHPC workforce brought joy and gifts for over 60 of the children from Touch Young Arrows, and it was a great experience interacting with the children, seeing how interested they are in science, and their enthusiaism.