It’s like hitting two birds with one stone. During the 3^rd International Math Contest that was held in Singapore, last August 16-21, 2007 two siblings were able to get the gold and bronze medals in their respective fields. Alyanna Uy who was in her first year in high school got bronze in her level and her brother, Harvey Uy got gold in the Grade 3 level. Both joined the contest for the first time, and among a number of participants from China, Malaysia, India and Singapore, they were able to return home as winners.

They come to know about this competition when the MTG (Mathematics Trainers Guild of the Philippines) distributed application forms to all schools nationwide. Harvey’s school gave him an application form because he belongs to the top 20 among his batch. Alyanna however was not able to receive a form because her school does not participate in such events, but knowing about the competition thru her brother, she tried out for it as well.

After the initial qualifying exam, these two went thru a lot of trainings and numerous qualifying exams to be able to qualify for the international competition. Since September 2006, they were being trained by the math coaches of the organization (MTG) every weekends during school days, followed by a 3 day in-house training in Iloilo for Alyanna and Subic for Harvey, and an intensive 6 weeks training during the summer to prepare them for this event.

Though their respective schools was not able to show any support for this competition, they were able to receive enormous support from their family, not only financially but morally as well.

Combining school work and training is not a problem for this two, they were able to balance school, training, play and time with their family and friends.

Being in this competition gave them an opportunity to travel and meet new friends. The only difficulty they encountered was that the location of the competition is too cold for them, but obviously, this situation did not stop them from winning.

To all students who are having a hard time in Math, this is their advice …

“Math is not as hard as they think. They should learn to think out of the ordinary. to get to answer most of the questions and just keep on practicing.” Cited Alyanna

“Math isn’t really very hard. Sometimes the hard questions comes from simple problems, they just make it more complicated” Added Harvey

At this time, the two children, Alyanna and Harvey are preparing for their next year’s competition.

From all of us, Congratulations Alyanna and Harvey! You made every Filipino proud!