Petronas Youngstars Day 2014 (Part 1)

When I was shortlisted for this Petronas Youngstars Day, I got really thrilled and nervous because it was the first time that I joined something like this. I had been interviewed once before in Form 5 for the Sunway Pre-U scholarship, but it was really different because it was only a one to one interview whereby the interviewer asked questions while I answered.

My first interview was for this.

Anyway before I went to the Petronas Youngstars Day, I googled up a few blogs of people who had attended this event before and absorbed in all the advice I could from their experiences. Their posts on this event are really helpful, so here they are: My Obscure Nook, Petronas Youngstars Day 2013 (Michelle Teoh), Petronas Youngstars Day 2013 (Gary Wong).

None of my friends were going with me to Petronas Youngstars Day, which kinda dragged me down cause of the fear of being alone. However, God knew that and He surprised me with a companion - Eunice!!! It had been a long time since I met her and she's attending the event on the same date as I was. I was so happy to have a friend there and that eased my pressure on this whole thing.

I was to attend this event on 15 April 2014. So on 14 April, my mum and I took an evening flight from Sibu to Kuching. We stayed at our grandmother's house as usual.

On the way to Sibu Airport

Random pictures on board the plane:

 Night view of Kuching from plane window:

On the morning of 15 April 2014, I woke up full of anxiety. After getting prepared and ready in my Baju Kurung, we set out to Pullman Hotel which was the venue of Petronas Youngstars Day. It was my first time putting on a Baju Kurung so I felt kind of uneasy and weird when my mum and my aunt and I went to a coffee shop for light breakfast.It's not common to see a teenage Chinese girl walking around in a Baju Kurung in Kuching. But it made me feel special too haha. Anyway when I reached there for registration, I could see Eunice already lining up and she waved to me and I waved back super enthusiastically. I could see that everyone was smartly dressed. The boys wore really smart clothes and many of them have that kind of "engineer look" that my engineer uncle has. And all girls wore baju kurung except one Chinese girl who wore a dress and a cardigan and leggings. She looks like a really high class executive or manager.

Candidates during registration. And I look like a blue jellyfish here.

During registration, the Petronas people gave us a recycling bag with booklets inside and our name tags.

They checked our documents. I saw a girl with incomplete documents talking to her mother on the phone about her problem. And I saw this one guy's envelop which got a "Incomplete" chop landed on it. Yikes.
After registration, we were provided breakfast which was really good. I talked to Eunice and caught up with her plans for her future. We talked about lots of stuff which killed off time until we were all called into a big hall for the briefing. Many Petronas people went on stage to brief us on different things. There was this one guy who asked "Who would like to work for Petronas in the future?" and once that question ended, EVERYONE in the hall shot up their hands like quicksilver except for me. Because honestly, I'm not 100% sure if I wanted to work for Petronas. But as everyone's hand was in the air, I raised my quietly too. Those who saw me probably thought I was one weird kid. But I'm being honest. Some would say that I'm being stupid I guess.

There were 3 groups this time, Group A, Group B and Group C. Eunice and I were both in Group B, which was a really big blessing for me. Group A was given the Verbal Test first, which was what you call the interview. Group B sat for the Maths and Science Test and the Critical Thinking Test first. Group C waited for both to finish. For the Maths and Science Test, the questions were from our Form 4 and Form 5 science subjects - Physics, Chemistry, Maths and Addmaths. All were multiple choice questions. OH YES WE WERE NOT ALLOWED TO USE CALCULATORS! Luckily only a few questions required counting (I suck at counting by heart). The Critical Thinking Test was kind of hard because it's nothing we learn in school. Before you sit for this test, please do some DIAGRAMMATIC TESTS online. They are a big help cause they'll open your mind to different ways of tackling those weird questions.

A diagrammatic test question:

Guess which pattern comes next?

(TO BE CONTINUED IN PART 2...)