In conjunction with Cempaka's 25th anniversary, an Inter-house Maths Olympiad competition was conducted on 23 May 2008. It was the first Cempaka’s Maths Olympiad and the points are counted in for the House Cup.
All the maths teachers in the school helped in a way to make the Maths Olympiad a success. And it did indeed turned out to be a great success. At 11.20 am, the Maths Olympiad started off right after break.

Helang, Seladang, Harimau and Beruang were all seated in separate groups as each group cheered off madly for their houses. After all, every house wants to win the House Cup at the end of the year, right? Banners were put up and the loud cheers were booming in the hall. There were mixed feelings of tension and excitement shown on the faces of the participants.

Dr Rizal, Puan Farah and Puan Sapura were in the hall to witness this grand competition to see which house is the better ‘mathlete’ The competition started off with an opening round of 25 questions as it is the 25th anniversary this year. The audience can only answer these questions. Some questions were tricky, some were just weird and funny. Some had even silly answers to throw the participants off guard! And it did fool some of us.

After the opening round, round one finally began. There were three rounds and only the participants could answer them. There were five participants in each round and each of them represented their Form. In the first round there were 10 questions to be answered. All the participants had to show their answers written on their ‘board’ when the third bell was rung. They had to show it all at once.

Then moving on to round two also known as the individual round. It had 20 questions and each participant in each Form had to answer once. In round three, it was all based on teamwork. There were senior and junior questions. And more marks were given for the senior questions which were of course much tougher.

Finally, there was the Kakuro and the killer Sudoku for the participants. And there was also a Sudoku question for the participants. No one could answer this round. No wonder it was called the killer Sudoku.
And that concluded the competition. As students headed out to donate money for the earthquake victims in China and get cupcakes in return outside the hall, the scores were being calculated.

And I’m proud to say that the winner of this year’s first Maths Olympiad is…Rumah Beruang! Followed by the mighty Harimaus, Seladang and finally Helang. Everyone did a great job and it's clear everyone was a winner on that day. It was a great competition and showed that a Cempakan is not only good in sports but also in academics.

The captains of the winning house were surprised and happy that Beruang won. I’m not surprised Beruang is in the lead this year. Juanita, a participant representing Form 4 for Rumah Beruang said she was nervous before the competition. “It was right after the mid-year exams so I had to be well prepared,” said Juanita, “ and the questions were quite tough and tricky but they were answerable”. She herself was quite shocked with the results but happy because the bears are going to bring the cup home! Well said, Juanita. So congratulations once again to all the houses and good luck for the iMovie competition which is the final competition for the House Cup.