Meeting Montichiari

Mon 24 Sep
Woke up early this morning for the buses departing at 0730 for Montichiari (the site of the contest). After a reasonably long wait both at the buses, and at the venue, proceedings began at the Opening Ceremony. The opening bell was tolled and "the games" (that's what the guides are calling it) began (may the odds ever be in your favour). Following this, lunch was served in the foyer. The welcome video was played on the big screen no less than 50 times during that day and the next (so much that we memorised every word and the theme song which we have now deemed worse than Etihad's).

After lunch, we entered the contest hall for the first time for the practise contest. We tried to "break" the judging machine in every way (whilst still abiding by the rules) in order to prepare and accustom ourselves to the system (and its quirks) on which we will compete tomorrow. Heading back and eating dinner, we headed off straight to bed, sleeping no later than 2100 - the start of the quarantine (they took our phones).

This is it. We are at the IOI!

Sun 23 Sep
Waking up early, we headed downstairs for a scrumptious breakfast in the hotel, followed by a 1 hour problem session, where we went through problems from the ACM regional, and the Belarus selection exams. By midday, we were on a trail from Milano Centrale towards Venice, but disembarking at Desenzano; the station closest to Garda Village (our place of stay for the duration of the IOI). We met our (awesome) guide Jake who is a native English speaker but has lived in Italy for most of his life.

Upon arrival at the Village, We were met with a large line of flags and IOI banners, we received an IOI bag of freebies containing an IOI hat, IOI shirts and Norton 360 (-_-) (and lunch), before playing bartog with the UK team (who actually say "bullocks") before a large dinner. Jake took us for a boat along Lake Garda (which is spectacular at night) to the Sirmione castle. Given a 20 euro voucher for the whole team (including himself) Jarrah instructed us that it was "our duty to our country" to "knapsack optimally", each spending 4 euros to get no less than 3 flavours of gelato. We found it really cool that the organisers went around the area and got local restaurants to stick up "IOI 2012" stickers saying they accept our vouchers.

Heading back to our rooms, we soon discovered that we did not have WiFi reception in our room. As a result, Goldy wandered outside, only to return and sit down on what he thought was our front porch (where he caught reception) for no less than 30 mins before seeing a bunch of curious Armenians peeping out of their window realising that it was their front porch.

Ciao Italia!

Sat 22 Sep, 0630 [UTC+4]
We landed in Abu Dhabi. Marvelled at the interior design/contruction of Abu Dhabi International Airport. Ate McDonald's (whose menu is 90% chicken) where they gave Jarrah massive shopping bags to carry the food in. Goldy tried being rebel and ordered beef, and was made to wait a long time. We found free WiFi at the airport and all who had a laptop immediately put it to good use. Took off for Milan!

Sat 22 Sep, 1330 [UTC+2]
Landed in Milan (Malpensa International Airport). Waited a while for baggage to come out, during which Chris discussed unit conversion and how waiting for baggage costed real human lives. When baggage finally arrived, walked to arrivals hall and met Prof Peter Taylor. After laughing at the use of 'Binari 4' (which means track/platform 4), we boarded the train for Milano Centrale where we checked into our hotel. We hit the town on the metro railway and visited the Duomo Cathedral (whose architecture is spectacular) then returned to the local cafe for an early dinner. As soon as the anti-curfew (Jarrah didn't let us sleep until 2000 to adjust to the local time zone) was over, I was fast asleep before 2030.

IOI Day

[B G#b E F#7, repeat as necessary]
[Andante, autotuned]

Carpe diem! Waking up in the morning.
Take a deep breath of Lake Garda's air.
Gotta caffeinate, gotta get to breakfast
Eat in parallel, take our showers in serial
Everybody knows that today's a big day;
Gotta get down to the con-test
File onto the bus and
ride to the end

And we've crammed our algos
Read up on our big Os
But our practice time's up--
will our hard work take?

It's IOI day, IOI day,
gotta ace IOI day
Contest starts; we've gotta hold back
from the keyboard, keyboard
"Patience," we say,
"pulls us through IOI day!"
And we find something we can code up
that's our reward,
Function here, function there (yeah!)
Reams of code, everywhere (yeah!)
** One, ze-ro, one,
** that's IOI in binary

What This Feels Like

Today, like most days, we woke up between 7:30 and 8:00. Our exam started at 9:30 and finished at 14:30. We then had a quick lunch, then a problem session where we went through the exam. Now, Jarrah has told us to go to the labs and code some more problems for a few hours.

Jarrah compared us to marathon runners. He says, like marathon runners, we do lots and lots of training before the event, then we rest for a week. He says this is the intensive training period. I said that it felt like every day, we run a marathon. Then we painstakingly track our progress in the marathon and note every little detail of our run. Then we are made to run on a treadmill for another three hours.

So.. so.. tired...

Goodbye, ERHU, UNSW and Australia... Hello Italy! (via Dubai)

Express blog post: we're about to say goodbye to the ERHU lab. We've had a great time at UNSW training over the last week and within a few hours, will be on board a flight headed to Italy! Can't wait ^_^

Curfew? What curfew?

So I now realise that our time at Perouse Lodge has slowly drawn to a close. It is a kinda sad and sorry sight to see only one breakfast voucher left on the table and to only have 10 minutes to write this blogpost. Jarrah's enforced a curfew (yes, you read it right a curfew <Ray>THE HORRORS</Ray>) because we have an exam tomorrow morning and will by flying out tomorrow night and he wants us to have every iota of sleep we possibly can before jumping on that plane.

Yesterday began with yet another exam, after which we successfully managed to prove an incorrect algorithm, or, a part of if it. Like seriously, who would think of such an atrocious thing as Computational Geometry (or Comp Geom, as it is affectionately called) which is purely maths on a computer (we're not kidding). Following a seemingly endless supply of family pizzas for dinner, we hit the sack for yet another day...

Today's exam was in some ways quite approachable and in many other ways the most difficult so far. For the first time, none of us managed to fully solve any of the three problems presented (my 95s were much to my chagrin) but were a little disappointed that we didn't see some observations that would have simplified the problem. Following a chocolate accumulating lab (1 chocolate for each problem solved ^_^) we headed down to dinner at the local Thai restaurant where we bumped into (ex-)HS1917 tutor Rupert.

It's time to get some sleep... hopefully I'll have net either at the airports in Sydney or Dubai or in Italy! The world awaits... the IOI is rapidly approaching... and we're all excited!