Finally, I got a chance to write about the Internation Mathematics and Science Olympiad (IMSO) held in Nikko Hotel, M.H. Thamrin Jakarta, November 12-17 2007.

What is IMSO?

It is an international scaled mathematics and science competition held for Elementary school students.

Who are the participants?

This year, 2007, more than ten countries altogether were actually invited to the competition, but South Africa, China, and Uzbekistan contingent couldn’t partiticipate in the end due to various reasons, leaving these nine countries :
1. Indonesia
2. Srilanka
3. Malaysia
4. Singapore
5. Thailand
6. Phillipines
7. Chinese – Taipei (Taiwan)
8. Hongkong
9. Brunei Darusalam

So what was there?

I got a chance to come to the closing ceremony of IMSO 2007, also the announcement of the gold, silver and bronze medal winners. And I noticed some important points, in the events :

1. Director General of Education Ministry was in fact not fluent in English, he even forgot to mention one of the participating country, and WORSE, he found difficulty in expressing apology since of course it was not on the paper he should read olala~.

2. The MCs chosen were not from the ‘outer ring’ of the event organizer, and their english was pretty bad I supposed, times I had difficulty in interpreting what they actually wanted to say, while most of the participants could speak fluent english. One funny thing when he shouted “Hey small one. I want you!” or “I don’t call him but he here.”

But they being brave to talk (point one and two) while their english was actually not sufficiently good should be given two thumbs up. I believe everyone should do the same. You can because you tried, right? So speak up! (Still IMHO, when holding this kind of international event, being able to speak fluent english is compulsory).

3. Indonesia was the major winner of IMSO 2007 (6 golds), while the year before had been beaten to the ground by Singapore (Indonesia had been able to obtain only one gold in 2006). So there’d been quite remarkable improvement this year.

4. The gold medalist also the ‘Best of All’ holder (Absolute Winner) for science, Erick, is from Pontianak, lol. (My ego told me to point this out)

5. While math competition is nothing new in the world, the international level science competition for elementary school is still quite rare nowadays, and IMSO is one of those rare competitions.

6. Every country should perform something to the audience, and most did traditional dancings or singings, and come to my amazement that those kids were not only talented in the term of academy. Some of those performance :

Folk tale from Sri Lanka.

The Indonesian students performed “Tari Saman” from Aceh Splendidly

Hongkong students performed oldies songs on their recorder very well (flutes that are used by elementary students in music class).

Taiwan students with their folk dance

‘Five stars rising’ from Singapore.

Hanoman from Indonesia.

7. And last but not least haha, me and my brother, silver medalist for the competition, while he had been a bit disappointed since he failed to get gold medal, we are still really proud of him!