They say you can only feel the heat of the pot if you get close enough to touch it.

Well, I'm pretty sure we're near the pot now then, because I can feel the blazing pressure coming off of it.

At the end of February, the long awaited CyberFair deadline finally arrives, putting all our efforts in the past month to judgement at long last. Me and my team mates have worked pretty hard for this. I mean, I was pretty much forced to learn javascript and CSS before we even started the lesson to make our site stand out and look like...well, a site, not like an HTML newbie's testing ground.

As if that wasn't hard enough, getting a hold of the Baguio Center for Young Adults-the people we were supposed to interview- was about as easy as getting a perfect score in the last Chemistry periodic exam (and trust me, my score there was BEYOND disappointing). We, or well I, tried contacting them through an e-mail ad my group mate Clarence found in the Internet. They didn't reply, so I sent it again. It was just a waste though, because I didn't hear back from them.

We didn't really think about that much...until the day Sir Tabor decided that it was time to hold the oral interviews. Being strict on his schedule, we only had one day to get an interview with BCYA, something we've been trying to arrange but failing at it for the past weeks. When the day finally arrived, I was thanking my lucky stars that they actually let us in their building despite their practical snub to our request for an interview.

However, I began cursing at them the moment a BCYA rep said that we had to "follow protocol" if we wanted a word with anyone in the organization. Protocol apparently involves writing to them prior to actually going to them. After painstakingly explaining that we sent them an e-mail, their director finally recognized us as the 'third year researchers from Saint Louis University Laboratory High School' that I mentioned in my doubly-ignored e-mail. Yeah, okay, so they didn't really ignore the e-mails...they just didn't reply to them.

I was happy with that answer as long as we can finally hold the interview. Surprisingly, it went well and we got more than enough information. The folks down at BCYA even gave us some photos of their old projects and vids of their past presentations.

After that hurdle was done and over with, a new one came up, this time in the form of the Project Narrative Video. Man, was that grueling as HELL. Not only was my camera on half a battery with a fifth of memory left, but most of my group mates weren't even around for me to shoot them (with the camera, of course). One of them was absent because of Dengue while the others were...I dunno, up to playing hooky?

That left us with about five people. However, some of us weren't even that cooperative! In plain Tagalog, kakaunti na nga kami, di pa mag-participate yung iba. We managed to scrape some good shots of us though, and we managed to do it without my camera dying nor with the memory giving out.

For me, that seems like a lot of challenges overcome already. However, the fun's only just beginning. The real party starts when we finally pass our website and final project narrative. The pressure on us is pretty intense, especially with the school being the previous flag bearer in the International CyberFair. Since the last batch was able to reach that milestone, everyone expects us to do the same.

Aside from that, the people from BCYA are pretty willing to put some pressure on us as well. When we mentioned that we were competing, they were excited at seeing the site and was willing to buy it from us when the competition was over so that they could continue to run it without us.

Still, despite all of the obstacles we overcame and we will overcome, I'm happy to have the experience. Like I said before, I love me a challenge. If this thing ends up an awesome (but medal worthy) disaster, then all the hardships, frustrations and head aches I've encountered would be well worth it.