Contest Day1: Stress, Excitement, Fun!

Tue 25 Sep
This is the earliest I have woken myself up (0530). Ever. It is insanely dark outside. There are stars outside. We have to be up this early because the buses to Montichiari for the first contest day depart at 0700. Or so we thought. Following breakfast and boarding the buses, the tyres did not move until 0800, and, with a police escort, we arrived there by 0830. Entering the contest hall at 0915, we were told that the contest would only start at 0930, leaving us wondering for 15 minutes why we couldn't have got up later. At 0930, the contest started. Well, for most people. I was hit with a series of 500 Internal Server Error messages for 3 minutes, much to my frustration. Australia ended up doing great as a team, with everyone well above the medal cutoffs so far. We shall see how we go on Day2 (Thursday). Despite the technical difficulties, the contest was made awesome by the large bags of lunch delivered to our desks by the friendly guides, which was an unexpected pleasantry.

Having no appeals, we boarded the buses back to the village. While the rest of my team decided to swim in the lake, I preferred to stay on land and headed out with Jamie (the NZ deputy) to the soccer pitch where we met some other nations' teams. I learned that at the IOI, Eastern European countries only care about two things: Informatics and Football. Teaming up with the Danish team, we managed not to score a goal in all 4 matches that we played, but was still fun. We headed over to the tennis courts, and met up with a Malaysian representative, finding out that this is the first IOI that Malaysia has competed in. Upon arrival at the dining hall, I discovered my team were ever-curious about my whereabouts. They'd been playing bartog with team NZ, which we continued with Logan after dinner.

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 ^_^