First milestone
One of the milestones that changed completely (!) my perception of Math is my first trip to Hong Kong (it was also my first trip abroad so I did have a lot of memory). I remembered when the bell rang, a teacher approached my mom, who was standing next to her motorbike waiting to pick me up. So curious, I hid behind the trees, watching and guessing about their conversations. Just when the teacher left, I ran toward my mom to ask who she was.
She was the vice president of Hanoi Ams, one of the most prestigious secondary schools in Hanoi, the school that I failed to get enrolled in and she was inviting me (I did not know the reason why she was inviting me; later when I asked her, she just said she saw a potential, a pretty general answer that still made me confused🙂) to participate with another 3 students (2 from her school and one from Cau Giay High School) in the Po Leung Kuk, which later would be held in Hong Kong. Still, there was one thing that I felt not comfortable with: dancing practice. At that time, we had to do art practice before the math competition as we were all representatives of Vietnam and each international team must have its own cultural performance. And we as a team danced to the song “Hello Vietnam”. (Don’t misunderstand, I was a naive child then and I do not have much interest in art 😀)
It was also my first flight to a different country and I did not know if this would be fine or not but my parents were all busy and what I had to do was follow my advisor, who was also my supervisor (He was just a little bit older than me; unfortunately, he was not in picture). On the first day, we checked in at the Panda Hotel (The first time I have entered such a big hotel. It was absolutely enormous!), visited a nearby mountain, and went on my first trip to Disneyland. The second day was much more stressful: both the individual and the team tests are held in only one day and the results will be held after the gala dinner and the cultural performance (somehow when I finished my test, I was expecting a pretty high score as I was doing with flying colors). After the team exam, we got our results immediately as each team’s advisor was called into the meeting. I got 13 out of 15: a bronze medal, which was something that made me down in the dumps. I expected a higher score and maybe a higher price. But: we were the champion of the team test, and somehow, although there were two teammates who did not achieve a prize in the individual test, we still laughed a lot and hugged each other. (Vietnam team was the only team that achieved this precious prize).
That dinner night when I saw the other team finished their performance, I was so nervous. And when we finished ours, standing in front of the crowds, I felt something so proud (the first time I had finished an art performance in front of the crowd, I was a shy boy then) and then I then just realized that: dancing was not that bad. After the closing ceremony, we all sat in one room to watch the World Cup final (I thought that Croatia would make an unbelievable tournament, but they lost 2-4 to France), an extraordinary night.
The bronze medal has given me more motivation to have a deeper understanding of Math as I have always wanted to achieve something more in another competition in the future. But somehow, that trip was still memorable and still became one of the first milestones for my passion for this subject.