It is most definitely not possible to make an exam easier than this

"We have covered all this work all semester. It is only from the work we have done in tutes. It is easier than any of the labs we've done. It is most definitely not possible to make an exam easier than this. You have 40 and 10 minutes. That's 50 minutes. Five zero minutes. You can start now. Make sure you don't forget how easy this is. You should be able to know how to do this..."

The comforting sound of a highly over-enthusiastic computing tutor in an adjacent lab was more than sufficient to send the entire IOI team into (uncontrollable, for some) laughter. The (rather bleak) scenario we were faced with were 3 problems with not-so-good-actually-sort-of-half-decent-maybe-bad-ish-English from the Japanese Olympiad in Informatics (JOI) for five (point) zero hours.

Some hours earlier...

Waking up 30 mins late and only spending 85% of my breakfast voucher, we proceeded to the computer science building (known as K17) to discuss the terrors of the B-Session (pronounced ber-session or bee-session if you are feeling agricultural today). After wrestling with 300 lines of code for 3 hours in order to find the largest square for an Egyptian Pyramid Base (IOI 2008), finally scoring 100% was highly gratifying.

(Chris don't read this) After almost forgetting to collect a receipt from the Jewel of India, and dumping my bag in ERHU for the JOI, I did more than enough exercise for the week by disregarding the lift and acquiring running up and down 12 flights of stairs and across University Mall simply to fill up my water bottle.

* * *

After figuring out how to connect points on a plane to form a non-self-intersecting polygon (and not much else), the contest ended. The six of us headed down to Cafe Ciao for Italian (!) where I struggled to find an answer to "How do you order something that you can't pronounce?" Heading back to the Lodge, where we have been going for over 2 hours playing Contact (a word game) and blogging before realising it was already 2300 and we have an exam tomorrow. And with that, I'll wait for someone else to order and "Could I please have that too?".