Oct 5 Ego Back to Earth It's strange when you meet someone who totally blows your mind— when you thought you were pretty good in your field, when you thought you had talent, someone comes along to burst your bubble, to give your ego a nice kick in the behind. I met someone that brought me back to earth. She reminded me of the passion that consumed me when I was younger, a passion that was diluted by my encounter with everyday life. Although she didn't realize it, she made me look at my strengths once more— and because of her I told myself that I would be better than her. Strange Encounters Last Tuesday, I had the opportunity of participating in the first programming contest in my entire life. Our school was invited by the La Salle Computer Society to participate in an inter-college C programming contest. I was part of the team. There were three of us— me, Paolo Apolonio, and Anna Leigh de Joya— and we all had our strengths. Leigh was a great analyst, and could figure out the ins and outs of a problem, as well as the solution to it. Paolo was a solid coder, although he was more comfortable with Pascal and Java. I had experience in C, and had coded informally before. We came into that contest without any expectations. We thought we'd do it just for the experience. Personally, I thought we would even place last. However, we were caught off-guard. When the results were announced, we found out we had placed third, out of 11 teams. I was mildly shocked. The winning team was from Ateneo. Among them was a young woman by the name of Sandra Jean Chua. I had heard of her from a friend of mine. But what I had been told about her paled in comparison with the Real Thing. Gibberish To cut a long story short: