Last updated 18 March 2018
Let me introduce myself, my name is Kenrick, and when referring to “programming” in this page, I’m referring to competitive programming. I started to join Programming Club in my school as an extracurricular activity at Grade 10. That time I was just in for the junior class, but I’ve also given the permission to join the senior class in one condition: I don’t ask a question there. Then, a senior approached me and my classmates, his name is Willy. Willy almost every day contacted us to remind us to solve at least a problem in any online judge. (and I was like trying to hide from him every time he is online, haha)
My first experience in competitive programming is “Pekan Prestasi Sutomo 1” competition in computing. (P2S1 for short) P2S1 is a olympiad-like competition in which every student represents their class in those competitions to win gold/silver/bronze medal. That time the programming competition was set by Willy and Yudi Umar, Willy’s senior. That competition was very strange to us as we can’t solve things that we are supposed to solve. I didn’t get any reward that time. Next competition was National Science Olympiad in the level of City/Regency (OSK), but I failed.
When National Science Olympiad (OSN) was held, I joined the Open-OSN competition after gaining permission from teachers (but not from headmaster, haha). After the result was posted, well, if I am in OSN, I think I can get bronze medal with that. Also that time I feel that my paper-test was getting a lot of progress.
After that, came BNPCHS. Many from Medan (and even Siantar) passed the qualification round. Binus Center Head Office sponsored us to join the final round in Binus University. It was my first experience joining competitive programming finals on-site. I didn’t get any reward there too. I also remembered that I and my friends joined Schematics National Programming Contest and were qualified to the finals but I forget was it before or after BNPCHS was held.
2012 may be the best year of me competing in programming, the ratio of success and fail was quite higher than the previous years. This year, I passed OSK smoothly. Then OSP was quite special because it was held on a hotel of a tourist city (Berastagi) for the first time in my region. I passed it also and in OSN I won a bronze medal. Because of that I joined Pelatnas 1 TOKI 2013, it was currently my highest accomplishment in my life. Before Pelatnas, I joined BNPCHS again and this time I almost got a reward as I ranked at 11. I failed the Pelatnas and then I focused things to the university entrance examinations.
During my times as undergraduate student majoring in Computer Science at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, I participated in few regional International Collegiate Programming Contests as a member of team of 3 with some of my friends that have competitive programming background. In my 2nd year, my team participated in Asia-KL and Asia-Bangkok regionals. In my 3rd year, my team participated in Asia-Phuket and Asia-Singapore regionals. All of which, we didn’t proceed to the World Finals (and actually quite far from WFs ._.).