“Youth Festival” Malaysia Highlights

On 12 October 2019,during the Term 3 holidays,  I arrived at the Mensa conference location really early because I was really excited to take part in the “Youth Festival” that were waiting ahead for me. I was actually the first person to be there but soon many more people arriving from around the world such as Japan, Korea and Malaysia. I am really happy to see so many people joining the conference from around the world. 

After an introduction from the festival organisers and program supervisors. We jumped straight into our first task. We were to do a puzzle with numbers to get from start to finish. It was pretty challenging but we worked in groups and attempt to solve it together. I am happy to say my group was the first group to solve it. The second task was a card game called “set”. The point of the game was to find cards that had the same differences and the same similarity from a set of cards. A set of cards is 3 cards together that has the same differences and the same similarity. It was a challenging task to win because the other people that were playing set were really good at looking at the sets that were hidden in the pile of cards. After that we had some recess and I met new friends from Korea and they were very nice to talk to. After that we did some more activities such as Tower of Hanoi with 9 wooden circles that varied in size. I then left back to my hotel waiting for the exciting games they had of to offer tomorrow.

The next day I arrived and looking forward to have more fun tasks that are waiting for me. The first task was a game called “Nim”.  It was one of the most challenging games I have played during the 2 days. The game “Nim” is a strategy game that is played by subtracting a number of coins in a few piles and trying to get the last coin to win the game. I actually managed to win a game against one of the teachers using an algorithm called “Nimsum” which uses binary numbers to make the chances of you winning higher than your opponents. The next task we did a game called “exploding dots” involved the aim of having one dot left in one box at the end. It is pretty hard to explain but here’s an easier version to understand. You start with a couple dots and there are three boxes and if there are more than two dots in one box you have to try and cancel the other dots out to try end up with at least one dot in any of the boxes – sounds interesting doesn’t it?

At lunch my Korean friends showed me some trendy music that is really popular in South Korea.  Later that afternoon we had a huge group photo and exchanged numbers to stay in touch!

I really enjoyed this Youth Festival in KL. The games were challenging yet fun to take part especially it involved using mathematics, tactics and algorithms. 

Attending this conference was really a great experience and a nice way to make new friends from around the world. I really look forward to attend another conference like this because you learn a lot of new techniques in math and problem solving.