Biography - Ruohan
Name: Ruohan
Nationality: Chinese
Age: 19
Role: Script writer (almost everything can be done in JavaScript. Imagination is the only limitation here)
Hi my name is Ruohan, pronounced ‘Rohan’, like the kingdom described in the novel and subsequent blockbuster Lord of the Rings. My parents knew nothing about the book when they gave me the name, just a mere coincidence. My background is a bit complicated as I’ve been living in different cities. I was born and raised in Chengdu, Sichuan, a Chinese city famous for its spicy food and relaxed lifestyle. When I was in the 5th grade, my family moved to Philadelphia while my dad did his post-doc research in U Penn. We moved back to Chengdu a year after that and I carried on with my middle school education there. Upon graduation, I was fortunate to be offered a 4 year Singapore Ministry of Education Scholarship to study in Singapore. This is my last year and I am in Victoria Junior College. I’m proud about the fact that I’ve experienced three education systems so different in nature and that I’m able to draw upon the strength of each system and learn from that.
I hack, tinker with linux, code projects, and maintain sites when I have time and I am in the mood to do so. At other times, I play basketball, surf blogs, read books, listen to music and have a wide range of interests. For sports I played on my school’s basketball team and I am now a pretty good pool player.
I was introduced to Kishore, our team leader, by Mr. Gi, my computing teacher. Mr. Gi knew Kishore because they were both involved in ThinkQuest before. My role on the team is script writer and that hasn’t changed much. Though as much as I like to write articles to contribute to the team, I’m afraid my English is just not good enough. My General Paper (British form of advanced English) has always been difficult and has had an impact on my confidence level.
I’ve been working closely with Kishore to write code for the site and make it all work. There is a lot to do to tackle problems such as browser inconsistencies. Well, I feel obliged to make an assertion here: please support Firefox by using it because it is safer for you and saves me much trouble during coding.
Apart from that, the whole team comes together once every week to discuss new ideas and talk about what can be done to improve the site. That’s the most fun part about my work n the team. I like the feeling of having new ideas and see them come to reality.
This is the part where I learn from every member of the team. They are the best teammates I’ve ever seen. I’m really thankful that everyone is responsible and gets the work done on time, and is ready for the next step. The quality of the work is also fantastic. Everyone is so friendly and fun and I believe we have a great time chatting with each other. I have fun telling Harry something about Chinese language. I chat with David about his image website and I get insight into running a website from him. Thank you Taylor for the SAT tips. Thanks everyone for being a part of this team.
The challenges I’ve faced along the way vary. Technical challenges are the easiest to solve among all. But to find time to get the work done is a much bigger problem for me because I’m graduating this year and have loads of stuff to do. Further, being so far away from the shelter of home, occasional emotional turmoil creates the biggest challenge. I’ve tried my best to overcome them and emerge a stronger person after setbacks. I really like to thank all of you for your understanding and support.