Akkarawin Meechai

Sangdad adheres to a motto: “If you can do it once, you can do it again”. When he was young, he found an arcade rhythm game at a mall and it looked fun to play. He remembers it looking like a washing machine, and the game is called maimai. He tried the game out, starting on lower levels and playing his favorite songs. He developed his skills over four years and in 2023, he won 1st place in the national finals competition of the game. There is one song in particular which is considered very demanding on stamina, skill, and technical work. It took him a long time to be able to achieve an All Perfect+ (101% score), but he didn’t stop there. He played it over and over again until he became consistent in achieving that score. Today, he has achieved that score a total of over 300 times. He would like to apply this philosophy and persistence to solving global issues, and many of these issues will be testing his limits. 

 

Currently, Sangdad is pursuing an interdisciplinary approach to his academics, selecting subjects such as English Language & Literature HL, Japanese Ab Initio SL, Business Management SL, Physics HL, Maths Analysis & Approaches SL and Visual Arts HL. Outside of school, he is a full fledged young musician, engaging in String Ensemble (1st Violin) and String Quartet (1st Violin). He has achieved the following: ABRSM Grade 7 Violin (Distinction 130/150) and Trinity Grade 6 Piano (Distinction 98/100), and in the near future, he aims to secure ABRSM Grade 8 Violin and Yamaha Grade 5 Piano. He has even traveled to the Netherlands to perform in a String Quartet for a music competition at Amsterdam Concertgebouw.

 

Outside of the aforementioned activities, Sangdad enjoys going to the arcade at MBK Center to work on his skills in maimai. He will be competing as a finalist in Chunimai Championship ‘24, and he aims to qualify as a competitor in the official tournament in Japan (King of Performai the 6th) hosted by SEGA. At the arcade, he gets to meet others who share the same interests in both mobile and arcade rhythm games.He used to play football in his school’s team and he swims as a leisurely activity. 

 

One interesting fact about Sangdad is that like most youth, he enjoys traveling to different cities across the world - the reason for doing so is slightly different. It is borne out of his fascination with elevators. When he was 3 years old, he found a glass elevator in a mall where he took his piano lessons. It sparked his interest for elevators, since he could see the mechanisms and workings inside which makes the elevator possible to move passengers up and down the buildings. He would soon find out that every elevator is different, in terms of design, physical capabilities, and software which they run on. Now he enjoys traveling to different cities across the world to document the most interesting elevators he comes across. To gain real world experience, he recently interned at Jardine Schindler Thailand to install one of their newer elevator models from start to finish at their training center for 31 days.

 

Looking ahead, his goal in the future is to be an architect and pursue designing the future of urban development, with a few fun and innovative designs of elevators along the way.