Totally done with GEMASTIK!

October 10, 2019

GEMASTIK XII is coming again this year! This time Rifqy, Raihan and me joined it again to bring back Padjadjaran University name in GEMASTIK. We thought so hard to choose the category that we wanted. We didn't choose UI/UX Design category anymore because I believed that it would be hard to get the same 2nd winner or even the 1st winner. I thought the 2nd place was already our peak and we didn't have a very good luck LOL. Also there were a lot of my friends who wanted to join UI/UX Design category. Maybe they were inspired by us and ADIKA team who could be the finalists last year so I wanted to give a chance for them to shine as well.

At some point we decided to choose Smart City category because we wanted to gamble and we were all the students who chose AI as our interest. We also changed the team name but we kept the Spongebob theme. We used Salty Spitoon as our new team name and Mr. Asep as the guiding lecturer. Goddamn, the website was very bad in many ways. The design that they used was a template and there's a lot of bugs we found and it was so annoying. Since we registered our team in early time, we got the account faster than other participants from our university. Too bad the luck didn't stay for a long time because Mr. Asep was chosen to be one of the judges of Smart City category so that we had to re-register our team. Well it was our fault that we didn't have a talk to Mr. Asep first before we registered our team. That time when I was told by Mr. Setiawan about Mr. Asep's condition, we really didn't have any idea to get a new guiding lecturer. So basically there were already plotting for some lecturers to guide some categories but since we were the only team who registered for Smart City category, there wasn't any guiding lecturer for us. After re-register about two times, finally we got Mrs. Helen as our guiding lecturer and because we couldn't use the same team name, we decided to use Kahuna Laguna as our new team name.

And then one day, Mr. Setiawan asked all of the students in Research Methodology class that he lectured to join GEMASTIK in IT Scientific Paper category. It was optional for those who already registered for other category, but my team decided to join this seriously. The guiding lecturer was exactly Mr. Setiawan himself and the team name that we used Weenie Hut. Yes, it's still Spongebob reference.

The idea for both categories were not my idea but I was lucky to have Rifqy and Raihan. For IT Scientific Paper, we used our random thought about one ID card for all uses like identity, membership, government programs, and payments. We thought about that idea when we were in our way back to Jatinangor after Shopee interview. For Smart City, we used Rifqy's idea about smart transportation system. I added some features to make his idea better. Raihan also came with the name of the system: "KeCe" as "Kendaraan Cerdas (Smart Transportation)".

This year, we didn't make the proposal in rush like in the last year so that we had some time to discuss with our guiding lecturer before submitting the proposal. We took a weekend on September 20-21 as our serious time to finish the proposals and we did it in RAID laboratory. That lab actually could be opened because Raihan had the key and he had the key because he was one of the members of Mrs. Mira and Mr. Erick's VR team who always used RAID laboratory as their workplace. We got a permission from the security staffs too and the fun moment began when Iyon and Fauzi joined us. They didn't come for GEMASTIK proposals like us but they had their own works to do.

In the midnight, we watched "Us", a popular horror movie that was booming for a long time before. At first we all watched it seriously but gradually in the middle one of us fell asleep LOL. In the end, there were only me and Iyon who stayed awake. After the movie ended, Iyon slept. I tried to make the proposal as much as I could and finally decided to sleep as well. We woke in the morning. Fauzi and Iyon went back earlier but Rifqy, Raihan and me still continued to finish the proposals till the evening. Well the proposals weren't 100% finished but at least we could show them to our guiding lecturers.

On weekdays after that day, we met Mrs. Helen and Mr. Setiawan to discuss about our proposals. In the mean time, Rifqy worked on the video for Smart City category's submission. On the next weekend we finally finished them in time yeay.

Several days later, there was a gossip that the finalists were already leaked. We entered the website and found that we made it for IT Scientific Paper category. We were so happy but too stupid to realise that GEMASTIK website was a trash. I got the info from Ganendra, one of my friends I made during Kargo's second internship season, that the website announcement was fake. We already talked a lot about GEMASTIK since internship time. The official announcement from the Instagram official account came several days after that leaked gossip spread and wow we lost for both categories. Well well our journey was ended here.

Oh yeah by the way, that wasn't the most surprised thing we got. It was the fact that there was only one team who made into final from our university! I couldn't believe it myself. Was that because there was an arranged plot from the committee? Or just because we were not too competent from the others? Fuck this is so sad. Our university sent many teams, we even became one of 5 universities who sent the most teams, and yet we only sent one team into final stage.