From the 5th to the 9th of September, I was in school for the entire week. Why? Well, I was actually selected by my lecturer Dr. Chia for this selection training for a certain networking competition that goes on in a national and international level, if one ever did well!! Over here, I’m about to share some of my experiences that I have gained over the course of this one week. Are you ready? Here I go!!
Early in the morning, I reached school rather early as I did not want to be late or lost again, like the very first time I came to school, when I still did not know my way around. Although the situation is different now, the location that I had to report to was not a place I have been to before and so, I came early to explore! The school was strangely busting with activity when it was supposed to be semester holidays at this period. Students in group of four were dotted all around the fountain between South Canteen and Koufu restaurant, holding up a piece of paper filled with words. My guess was that there is some sort of talking competition going on as I can clearly hear the students memorizing off the sheet of paper. However, the time does not allow me to dally any longer and up I went, time for this networking thingy to get started!!
The location where I was to be, along with the other 19 candidates that comes mainly from ECC and MIT, for the next four days, was Room 34 of Block S level 5! It was a computer lab, with some flat screens computer but old processers. It was then in here, that for the first time ever, I was exposed to terms that I never have heard of before, like fibre, copper, splicing, termination, cleaving.. at loads more, but this should be enough of an example, is it not?
For the first half of the day, we will usually start with fibre, or more commonly known as the optical fibre!! In case you do not know, it is the great, great technology that will allow us to receive at least 360 bits of information at light speeds!! Why is it so? Well, optical fibre is actually an a glass rod that is ultra-thin, 9 micrometers in diameter, enclosed by a cladding, primary rubber casing, Kevlar then finally, a secondary rubber casing. Being a glass rod, it has a circular cross-sectional area, thus the 360 degrees angles are there for each small beam of light carrying information. Do you think it that it is fragile? Well, NO!! Kevlar is used as an enclosing material here!! And what exactly is Kevlar, well, it is JUST a material for making bulletproof suits that rebounds any small, deadly flying projectiles that are unfortunately targeted at you, thus saving your very life, nothing much!! And in this case, nope!! The fragile little glass rod is no target from the owner of deadly little projectiles, but instead a victim of breaking, as a result of being bend!! Kevlar deflects not projectiles in this case, but in fact becomes a shock absorber from the forces exerted on the tiny glass rod!!
What do we do exactly? Well, one of the first things to be learned was to splice the wires. Splicing the wires means to cut away all the layers to expose the glass rod. It may sound easy, but well, it is not the case for some other people that will tell you that it is no easy feat separating the coverings with the fragile glass rod without breaking the glass rod first. This feat, well it does not take a miracle to get it right the first time round, nor a lot of skill to get it right after some time, and so, we were all itching for the next step within an hour. Reluctant at first, the lecturer-in-charge finally relented and we started practicing inserting the glass fibre into the connecter. Why? Well, each connecter costs a shocking $5!! If by any chance the glass rod snaps inside the connecter, well nothing much can get the tiny glass rod out again, and a $5 connecter is wasted just like that!!
Following this, we learned to clean the glass rod with alcohol first, and then spreading a chemical on its surface. Why? Well, another type of chemical will be injected into the connecter with a needle and a syringe, and when both chemicals meet, magically within 10 seconds they will become strong glue that hardens almost instantaneously and combines both fibre and connecter to each other forever, for nothing can separate them in whole ever again… These 10 seconds is all we have to safely and successfully insert the glass fibre into the connecter, regardless of the tough texture within the connecter, and boy did we train hard!! The cleaving came next, as we have to cleave, meaning to sort of saw away the extra portions of optical fibre that is surely sticking out for good measure so that we will be able to polish the surface of the end of the optical fibre to the clarity we want, measured in terms of “DB” which I am, up till now, not too sure about what the units are.
Polish, there are two types of polishing methods. Dry polish and wet polish, where in wet polish, alcohol is placed on the polish paper to act as a lubricant that also removes away the fine bits of glass that are being worn off by the polishing. As a matter of fact, dry polish is in fact more effective and easy as you just have hold up the polish paper and move the optical fibre in a “8” shape, as there are scientific proving behind this particular action that says the results will be very satisfying. We have to use three types of polish paper, each surface finer than the last, and are differentiated by the colors blue, green and finally white. After the polishing is done, we just have to use alcohol to wipe away any fine glass bits from the end and, we are almost done!!
Oh!! And I actually missed out one important part!! We have to put in some rubber thingy called ‘boat’ into the length of the fibre before gluing on the connector, for this action is needed if we are to complete the final part!! First, the boat will be attached to the other end of the connector, and using the boat, the connector will be pushed into a connector head which allows you to connect the fibre to a sort of magnifying glass to check for any fractures of the glass. What you will see from an excellent result is a grey circle and a white ‘full moon’ at the center, for we dubbed a fracture ‘crescent moon’ and obviously a failed fibre ‘eclipse’. After this check, we will connect the fibre up to a machine that would tell us the “DB” of the fibre, results less than one being the goal we hoped for! Throughout the first four days, my new friend Justin actually managed to get a perfect zero!! He was so elated that he jumped non-stop as if he struck lottery!! And well, all this fibre stuffs are done for all the first half of the days we were there, and now, let us proceed to what the second half of the day is for!!
The second half of the day is let by two male lecturers, and here, we learnt about ‘copper’. We were to splice 24 copper wires in the actual competition and for practice in the first day, we tried 6. Within the copper wires, there lies 9 smaller copper wires, each differentiated by the colors of the wires. We have to untangle the wires and match them to a different type of connector head that shows two different color codes- we have to arrange the smaller wires according to the color code. Well, after some tries, it was not all that hard, just that we have to firstly arrange the cables neatly and fit them into a frame for the connectors. It takes some muscles for this job as the wires have to be in a tangled state to imitate the conditions of the wires in the actual competition itself. Over here, there was not much to be done, just that you have to be quick and be able to arrange things neatly.
For about the next four days, we were already training for speed as the skills were easy enough to pick up, just that the amount of cables we were to train with rose to a vexing amount. 12 cables!! Even though the actual competition requires the termination to be done at both ends with 24 cables, 12 cables at one end is 108 wires to put through connector heads!! By the end of each day, my shoulders were aching from having to bend them for about 2 hours continuously without the time spared for stretching.
Overall, it was a good experience for me as I have learnt something in the five days. The final day was where we use a tall rack to line up the cables and when we were tested for the quality of our work as well as our speed. I really hope to get in though, but the results will only be out on the holidays of my next semester so it would be a long, long wait for me… That’s it folks!! This should already be quite some things to take in, isn’t it?
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