ACt III, Scene 2: Playful Practice

My alarm rang today at 625 at which time I woke up and not feeling like getting up myself, started waking up the others, saying “Hey, its 625! Wake up; wake up!” and “Only 5 minutes left till 630!” which got Nikhil in particular very irritated. At 630, Rudy's alarm on his phone began playing The Corrs' Erin Shore and I found myself trying to figure out the notes of it in my head, while failing miserably.

After freshening up, I took a photo of my broken mirror. It was a nice compositional photograph, in which I drew a heart on my notebook and showed it as a broken heart in the reflection. I'd like to caption it as, “Mirror, mirror on the wall. Tune mera dil tod diya!” meaning “Mirror, mirror on the wall. You have broken my heart!” We later left for breakfast and registration at around 730.

The registration itself was hardly anything as compared to last year. Here, they just took our names, and took our reference documents and pointed us to our bags. It turns out that there was some Travel Grant form which we could have used to get our travel reimbursed, if it was filled in and attested by our Team Coach. Somehow, this formality slipped our notice, and we hadn't made anything of it, alas.

During breakfast, we found ourselves discussing a particular sci-fi cum evolution theme. That man would one day fill up space and then would have to go back in time and squeeze out the life of everything. Or perhaps go back in time and help right our wrongs. We discussed Aladdin's one-day-repetition movie – the one where the wise old guy says in the end, “What was meant to be, was meant to be. And the young man and his friends, were meant to be, ... Heroes.” In fact, it got so involved, with theories of physics, relativity and quantum entanglement, and other such mysteries that in the end, Nikhil suggested to me that we should a scifi story on this. A long one – about 10 pages. I agreed that it was an interesting prospect and that we should do so, but told him to make a note of what all we had discussed for our setting, since my memory was most pathetic for all these things.

After breakfast was the opening ceremony. We made our way to the hall, where we were being anointed (I can't find a better word for that red and yellow mark they put on your forehead) as we entered, with me taking photos of the other two as they went. Nikhil had his hand on his head, which Rudy found funny, and I found funny except that I thought it was done to brush back the hair from his forehead, however Nikhil maintained that its a standard custom to be done when you're being anointed.

The ceremony itself was boring. The initial part consisted of the lamp-lighting and a Bharatanatyam performance by these two girls, and this was itself quite interesting. However, later there came a few speakers who waxed eloquent on such topics that we couldn't (or atleast I couldn't) care to bother about. One of the sponsors – ipinfusion – had come with some pamphlets of their company. Reading it was a fair distraction from the proceedings. Rudy pointed out however, that among the three pamphlets that they handed out, all three had the same text, but just had difference in layout and graphics. Amused by this, I took a few pics of it as well.

When we were finally done with the opening ceremony, we headed to the practice contest area. The practice contest is where you test all the facilities and the robustness of the system you are given, and the online judge, and ask questions and pose feedback. One extremely irritating feature we noticed this year, was that they were disallowing two submissions of a team on the same problem within a short time frame. In cases where you get to debug your code, or see a very stupid error immediately, this would prove a huge hinderance, and our queries about the same seemed largely unresponsive. Also, there was one funny thing happening with the time: we had just submitted our third solution at 33 mins, but found submissions of some other teams at around 45 to 50 mins time. It turned out that that was probably due to a different contest schedule between Amrita and Coimbatore. In the process of testing all the features of the code, we even gave a Java “.class” file to be printed! All in all, the testing went well, and except for the 'too frequent submissions' issue, we were by and large happy.

By then it was already 1 and we ended our session with a few rounds of Mines, and our stomachs were rumbling when we left the hall. We quickly collected our Directi T-shirts for this year and then headed off to lunch. After lunch we had initially decided that we'd go back to the room and watch a movie – something like Into the Wild, but we turned it down in favour of browsing the internet. After a brief check around the place for where the Internet Cafe was, we sat down to some. I checked my mail and a little bit of facebook, while Nikhil and Rudy began solving the Kanpur regional. Later I called Ankita and wished her for her birthday and spoke about arbit stuff for a while, before getting back to the cafe and joining them in the problems. We just met Arijit and Srivatsan before leaving the lab, and we wished Arijit a belated birthday too.

On the way back, we stopped by Amma's and bought some biscuits and Lays in the vague intent that we would watch a movie and the snacks would come in handy. However, when we got back, we ate the snacks, and then began discussing a problem or two, during which time I fell dead asleep.

I woke up finally in time for dinner – even a bit late as such, and we went there to find it an outdoor buffet. The food was good, especially the Gobi Manchurian, which I have never had in Delhi and which I largely miss about Bangalore. Apart from the Gobi Manchurian, they also had paneer (which sucked), rice, noodles, sweet (which I thought was soup; or maybe it was some sort of sweet soup), and ice-cream. Rudy had had three rounds of ice cream by the time me and Nikhil went for our first. When we went, they had changed the containers they were being served in, since the plastic cups that they had been using were over. When I got back to Rudy with the steel cup in my hand, he was like, “Oh, you're getting what now? Gulab Jamun?” and seeing the opportunity was too good to pass by, I played along with him for a while, disappointing him that he could not have his fourth scoop.

In the end though, I did mention it to him, at which point he promptly ran off to get his scoop. Somewhat around this time, a Chennai team came to us and said “Hi! You must be Rudradev... you must be Pradeep – naiveAlgorist” etc etc. I knew it was inevitable that we'd be known by various people we would not know, but having such an encounter was still a bit unpredictable! After they left, Rudy said that he wanted a fifth ice cream, which Nikhil and me felt was pushing it too hard, and he carried on, “But isn't four the unlucky number? Like in The Atlantis Complex, Artemis Fowl feels four is unlucky, whereas five is lucky” and with that he trudged off for his fifth. The dinner ended with the three of us sitting and discussing Bangalore restaurants – the Spanish place that Rudy had a Microsoft intern party at, the Fraser town places that Nikhil loved, and ice cream joints like Corner House and Ideals (which is in Mangalore, but anyway).

We got back, and Rudy went off for a bath, while me and Nikhil began discussing his smart phone. He mentioned at this time that he had a tuner which could tell you what note you were singing. I was astounded and very happy with this and insisted we try it out at the earliest. We managed to get even a Perfect Ear training app on it which interval determining exercises and other awesome things that I keep doing in my piano class. Finally, we start playing this 'reaction-game' on his phone which is kind of like Jam, except that its not with grammatical errors but rather with a whole range of spatial, general, mathematical, and reflex action questions. I then head off for a bath myself, noticing that I'd left my soap in the bathroom from last night, and then start filling in this entry before sleeping.

Act III, Scene 1: Goodbye Delhi, Hello Amrita

10th Dec, 2011.

I begin with our contest the night before – the final contest before the Amrita ICPC Regionals. We decided to have it at 9, and I had got my mom's guesthouse to book me a taxi from there to IIT after dinner. However, the taxi decided he'll make himself a bit late, and turned up himself at around 920. However, seemingly in penance for his lateness, he decided he'd drop me off at IIT as soon as possible, thus embarking on one of the most frightful drives I have ever been in. He wormed his way between traffic at high speeds – honking, accelerating, braking, and accelerating again; changing lanes while I sat behind swinging with the centrifugal forces and having my heart all the way up my throat.

After having dropped me at IIT at 930, I went to my room and decided to say a few late goodbyes to friends. They all were very oh-hi-how-are-you-now, what-are-you-doing-here, and other bouts of embracing and hand-shaking. In the end, I managed to extricate myself from there at 955, after having messaged Nikhil that I'd join 'em at 10, putting my batteries on for charging and getting back my pen-drive which I'd lent out before the end-semester exams.

As soon as I arrive at the gcl, Rudy says, 'Look at problems H, I, J...' A brief glance over H, and I announce that its brute-force simulation and definitely codeable. Rudy has a second look, I explain him what is required and how I would acquire it, and then sit down to code, only to realize that – wait, I have got the conditions down, but I have not got the step from one iteration to the next. Rudy then looks at it, and we start weighing different options, before he comes up with a simple, fairly elegant, and workable solution to the problem. Before he starts searching for a better more elegant method, I overrule him and tell him this'll work.

About 5 to 10 minutes later, we are sitting pretty on H solved as well. I look at problem I, work around with one vague idea, see it doesn't lead much anywhere, and then go to J. Now the problem J looked like a very slight modification of a standard algorithm, and after consulting with Rudy for a moment, we formulate a robust method of running. 10 minutes later, we have coded it, submitted it, and found it gave a TLE. As soon as we saw that, Rudy said, “Oh this is due to the negative cycles in the graph” and despite our efforts to work around it, we find ourselves hitting dead ends.

In the meanwhile, Nikhil has been working on problem B. He has working and working and has very nearly got it. There are a few bugs in his Java code, but otherwise, it would not take much time to get it working alright. With Rudy bearing down on the code, we get clear of all the bugs and make a submission: TLE. Seeing this, we try to convert the log(n) matching of the map to a O(1) matching of a hashmap. However, we are unsure of the syntax of writing hash functions and need to do a little research on it. After all this, we code it, and submit: Runtime Error.

By now, we are wondering what could it be, and we start trying various optimization approaches to help save our hide. Somewhere along the line, Rudradev says that maybe it is overusing Java's stack and causing an overflow error, that c++'s stack is much better and that we should shift to it.

Thus began one of our most strangest shifts from Java. We coded C++ pointers – something that we hadn't done since 12^th std. except for a recent foray of Rudy and Nikhil in their placement interviews, and transpose the code line by line to C++. What manifests is a mountain of errors. Each attempt at clearing the errors seem to alert the compiler of newer classes of errors that it hadn't even bothered to check in the earlier compilation. What seemed like a battle against outnumbering forces, we fought our way through until it finally managed a compilation. Running the code on the sample gave no error, so we submit it. And get a TLE. Finally, we decide that we need to clear the pointers that we are using, and hence we do so. After a hesitant, “Should we submit?” we do so, and find ourselves shockingly surprised to get it AC. This turned out to be the Problem of this Year's Training, having us encompass knowledge of C++ pointers and memory allocation techniques which we have never had to resort to earlier.

In this spurt, we see a fractal problem, and after little discussion on displacement, distance, rotation and scaling, we set about coding it. The code is simple – straightforward, workable, and on the whole very doable. After a little while we run the code, and it gives us wrong answers. Fearing a change in our angles being of the wrong sign, we try other permutations of changing the signs of the angles involved to little effect. Finally, Rudy spots the error in the number of iterations of the fractal, and we find that it is now giving us perfect answers. We submit, and get it AC as well.

With just 5 minutes to go, we decide that okay, lets return to hostel and think over some problem on the way. So we discuss the problem I, where we have construct any non-intersecting polygon from n vertices. We discuss some basic strategies which we were trying to implement, but were failing on. One of which was, whenever we come across a segment intersection, we 'do a switch' so that the segments don't intersect. This somehow rang a bell with Nikhil, and he said, “Why don't we just go for TSP approximation? The bitonic path thing?” and me and Rudy look at each other and see that this is indeed good enough to give us our answer!

We reach back to our respective hostels at around 230; they go to Nil, and me to Jwala. I go to the night mess and order a Maggi, since it would be a long time since I would get it again – not that it is anything great or anything. After the Maggi, I go back up to my wing, and find blaring music of Alter Bridge's Open Your Eyes. Knowing only one person could be playing it, I go down to Raghu's room, and after he doesn't respond to my knocking, I start singing some of the lyrics from outside his room, at which point he opens it and we have our hi-byes. He says he needs some Fin Math notes and I give him whatever I have from my room.

Next is Gainda in his room; with Akash. We go there and find them just beginning to watch this Tarantino movie – True Romance (or something like that) and we sit down with them to watch it. After about 10 minutes or so though, I get a call saying that the taxi has arrived at Nil, and go to pack up by battery charger and everything and go.

The taxi arrived at around 315. We left IIT at around 330. We reached the airport before I could even close my eyes, at about 340. I remember commenting to Nikhil how I had set a timed message for 3:46 on my mobile to send to my mom that we were in the taxi, and about how it was ironic that it wasn't even 3:45 and we were already in the queue for the boarding pass!

At around this time, me and Rudy got into a discussion on Inheritance. We mainly covered the point that Eragon was Brom's son, and how people had speculated this from the first book, and how I had gotten clues and where I had gotten them from and everything. We discussed various aspects such as the Vault of Souls being a trove of Eldunari and other such fanciful theories about the final dragon egg which would have completely ticked off Nikhil, who was interested in getting the internet working and doing some coding.

We then decided we'd better get ourselves a bit considering we were unsure of doing so in the flight. So up to the food court we make our way, only to find that all the shops would open at 520, while our flight was at 555. At this time, I decided I couldn't stay awake any longer, and promptly put my head on the table and had a nap, while Rudy and Nikhil were if I am not mistaken, discussing a problem from the previous day's contest. I wake to find Nikhil gone to the toilet, while Rudy was saying that our boarding call has come with two trays of KFC food in front of him – for myself, him, and Nikhil. When Nikhil gets back, the 3 of us make our way down to the gate, with the food in our hands, virtually rushing since the call had already come while I was napping.

Our seats were right in the middle of the flight unfortunately. With the window view showing mainly the wings. Of the flight itself, there was hardly anything eventful, except for in the beginning during the sunrise Rudy pointed out the colours of the rainbow in all their vivid glory on the horizon and I began to wish that I'd had my camera in my hand baggage instead of checking it in. We had a talkative pilot on our way to Mumbai, who began telling us how happy he was to have us on the flight, that we were over Jaipur, and that this was the first time his dad was traveling in the flight piloted by him, his son. Of most of the remainder of the journey, I fell into a deep sleep, with my mouth wide open and my legs wide open and my knees jutting into the aisle due to the leg space being cramped in front by the laid back seats of the people ahead.

Apart from a few spurs of wakefulness during the journey, I finally woke up about an hour before landing in Kochi. We were then flying over Mangalore and the pilot there made note of that fact to us. It was then that me and Nikhil got into a discussion about writing techniques and stuff and he showed me this book by Ursula Le Guin about how to write with all its exercises and everything. I looked at it, and went straight to the chapter on POV having George RR Martin's Song of Ice and Fire series in mind. We discussed various aspects of Nikhil's story, that he'd sent it to his English teacher who spotted the Machiavellian in the narrator while the rest of us could not, and about using a different POV for the same situation and what would it entail to the reaction of the reader.

The flight took off early, and landed even earlier. We found ourselves waiting just outside the airport for our pickup. The corridor was long at the other end there was a crowd, so I thought that maybe he'd be there. However when reaching there, I found that was the departure gate, and I found it indeed funny that there would a crowd of people waiting outside the departure gate peering inside while the arrival gate was empty except for people from previous flights waiting outside for their own respective pickups.

When our pickup did arrive, we bundled ourselves in, and found that we barely had enough space for the three of us and our luggage. Then the volunteer who came and picked us up told us that we'd be picking up another team of 2 from IIT Bombay! In any case, we managed to squeeze here and there and adjust ourselves as best we could before stopping for lunch. Here Rudy and me had masala dosa, while Nikhil had a biriyani, and after that we topped it off with good ol' South Indian hot coffee. The rest of the journey took about 3 hours and was a bit more comfortable, and we landed up at the accommodation at around 3.

After relaxing in the room for a little bit of a while, we decide to go and find the main building and explore the old haunts. There we bump into Vallath Nandakumar, the Regional Director and we discuss various things like the ICPC Committee arriving for the event, that India would be bidding for a chance to host the World Finals some time, and a slight look at our possible competition from the site.

On the way back from the main building, we stopped at Amma (restaurant) and picked up some snacks consisting of a Lays, some biscuits and a Mirinda. After getting back to our room, we start munching on our snacks while simultaneously discussing another problem from the contest. After making much headway into it from various directions we find ourselves slightly stuck yet at the same time with somewhat a good solution in hand. Later Nikhil checks the official solutions and finds that it is one of the approaches that we had discussed.

At around 6, with about 2 hours to go for dinner, we decide to watch a movie. So taking Nikhil's external, we browse through the movies, stopping at one Fever Pitch which seemed nice it had a school environment in it somewhere. It was not a great movie, by far. But considering that it was about football fandom, and that I could not relate to it, makes me feel like I do not have the right to judge its merit as a movie. After the movie we went for dinner and registration, only to find that it had closed. Post dinner, we are too tired to do anything. I talk to Sandeep over the phone about his upcoming interview for nearly half and hour, and then decide to write this and sleep.

Intermission

Hey, wait - what?

Sorry folks, the show's been postponed. But don't worry, we are going to fast forward you a few acts and when time permits will get back to filling in the nitty-gritty's of all that you're missing out on. Stay tuned...

Act 1 - Orlando

Act 2 - Mumbai interns

Act 3 - Amritapuri Regionals.

Act I, Scene 5: Universal Studios, Florida

1st June, 2011.

'Journalizing' is a tough, exhausting job. It is very easy to fall behind on schedule, and in the process, even forget some things. It is already June 6th while I attempt to narrate the events of June 1. Rudy might manage to fill in some gaps if possible.

So, back a few days, and we wake up at about 730 am on the 1st and our plan is to go to Universal Studios / Islands of Adventure. Nikhil gets up with diarrhea and opts out of coming. That prompts us to take up the theme park that is less likely to be good (Universal Studios) and leave the other one for the next day when he'd be around. The three of us go down to breakfast, find ourselves having some mere “sweet bread” int he name of “Danish Cheese” or “pretzels” or “honey buns” or whatever, but nothing really what we should be calling breakfast, and a little fruit juice. We enquire about the time that the bus would arrive to take us, and finding that there is sufficient time, I go take a shower.

Waiting in the lobby for the bus, we find ourselves along with a Spanish family: a young guy, along with an older female and a slightly elderly lady. The bus is scheduled to arrive at 9, but well past 9 and it still hasn't arrived. We also find someone from another ICPC team: USP-IME come down for breakfast at the same inn. Getting impatient, the Spanish family asks the receptionist about where the bus is and why it hasn't yet arrived. The guy calls up the bus, and after a little conversation, announces to us, “it'll be Ten minutes”, then shows up his fingers and pointing hand-by-hand says, “Sincho, Diehs”. About ten seconds later, the bus arrived.

When we got on the bus, we saw that it was already half full. When it carried on to other inns and places, we realized that today was probably an extra-full day for the bus and that it was probably gonna do considerable more running around. Now, I expected that since we were in Kissimmee and Universal Studios was like about 9 mi from where we stayed, that we'd reach there pretty soon. But the bus kept on picking up people from more inns, till we had a line of people even standing in it. There was an Indian family of four behind us, two girls in short shorts who were standing just next to me (one was wearing a Spotted top and the other was wearing a “I <3 TING” top). There was also this colourful-top girl sitting next to the Spanish guy, apart from others. Now I knew that the Spanish family were going to Seaworld, and since we'd already visited Seaworld, and since the bus seemed to be getting no closer to Universal, I started getting worried. I kept pestering Rudy next to me and he kept reassuring me that it would go to Universal. That the worst-case scenario I was trumping up wasn't gonna occur. We drove past International Drive and the Peabody, and then arrived at Seaworld. There, half the people got off, and the two girls with short shorts asked the colourful-topped glares-wearing girl if the bus was going to Universal. That got me reassured then.

We arrived at Universal Studios finally at around 1045. After getting down from the bus and walking towards the entrance, Rudy looks at me and says, “Aren't you taking photos?” and I look around and say, “There's nothing here. Its just a bus stand.” Later on, after getting through the walkalators, we arrived at a place full of shops and something which I'd term “Universal Citywalk” though that was the name of a particular shop itself. There again Rudy asked me about taking photos and I'm like, “There's too much here. There's nothing specific that I can take!” Eventually, the first picture I did take of the day was a board of a shop named “Bubba Gump Shrimp Co.”!

After getting the tickets, we took a picture or two of us at the entrance, with a revolving Universal Studios globe in the background. We entered to seeing the RIP Roller-coaster right in front of us. This is a coaster where you get in, select a song, and it takes a music video of that song and you while you listen to it and go flying all about the place. We just saw it, but didn't go on it ourselves. After a little roaming, we found ourselves going for The Twister show. Inspired from Twister, a movie about tornados, its basically a vague simulation of what tornados can do, when you're in the midst of one etc. So we go in, get into the line and everything, it warns us that we'd get wet, so we gotta keep valuables inside bags, and then we notice that it has started pouring outside. Ironic. Well, we went for the show, which was good, but not that great (they had a cow-model go floating across and we could see the strings that were carrying it!) and we come out to find it cloudy but by and large the rain has reduced to a mere drizzle. This was our first introduction to the Florida cloudy erratic weather. The rest of the day would show us much more.

Shortly away from the Twister show, we went for Mummy Returns. For this we needed to keep our bags in the lockers, and it was the first time we got to see how thier locker system worked. You basically had to use a touchscreen to rent or unlock a locker, and then use your fingerprint to authenticate yourself. Then you would get a limited time free rental of the locker. This ride was where we were introduced to the concept of “Single Riders” - where you get to skip the long queues, but your party would be separated and sent separately. Its definitely worth it though, because its not as if you're going to gain anything great by being in your group. What we did not know though, was that this was an indoor coaster ride. We noted that roller-coasters aren't that bad, so long as you know that you're getting into it. This one was very interesting. Unlike the Kraken, where you could see where you were how and how you were going, this one was done in darkness. You had fire and steam and mist blowing out at you from time to time. Initially we went straight ahead, stopped, reversed at high speed and fell backwards. In the end, Brendan Fraser goes like, “Thanks for completing the tour of the mummy's tomb successfully...” and while you're heaving a sigh of relief, Imhotep tears through and says, “Now you will lie here forever!” and you go spinning off in another heart rending moment before you actually finally complete the ride.

After the Mummy, we went walking along and inbetween the streets, taking photos. The place was like a city-set, in some places you had high-rises and ancient Greek temples, in other places you had narrow dingy streets with eighteenth-nineteenth century streetsigns. A little way off, we started seeing a lot of 'Amity'. Now, my cousin goes to Amity University in Noida, and seeing a whole load of 'Amity' all over, I naturally started clicking photos of it. Consequently, we found ourselves next to a whole shark-based theme place, and realized that this was about Jaws. There was a boat-ride, where you do get wet yes, and where they take you along the place of where the shark had attacked some people in the 1970s on 'Amity island' and which was the inspiration for the movie Jaws and its sequels. On the ride, they steer us safely and comfortably in the beginning, but then they have a loss of communications and end up steering us straight towards the shark zone. The captain however, is armed with a grenade gun and after some running around and being attacked by shark dummies, and firing back, we end up killing the shark by firing it into a high voltage something thats in the middle of the sea. An interesting ride, all in all mainly because we got to go boating.

We then made our way to the corner of Universal Studios, and the place we (or atleast Rudy) were looking forward to most: Men in Black Alien Attack. This thing is basically a ride where you get to blast aliens with lasers and try to increase your score. Its like laser tag, except you're against aliens, not humans and you're in a ride that sends you spinning round and round while you have to get your aim right. We went under the single riders quota, and managed to get seats next to each other incidentally. So I'm on one end, Rudy's in the middle and this other chap who has apparently done this a few times is on the other end. At the end of it, I score some 75k, Rudy is at like 35k, and the other dude is at 240k. We decide that one time is not enough and that we've anyway rented the locked for that much more time, so we have a second round. This time we do get separated, and I end up with a mere 22k, while Rudy manages some 47k.

If our locker had had more rental time, we would have gone a third time, but since it was gonna be touch and go if we tried a third round, we decided we'd move on from there then. It was at this point, that Rudy decided that he'd had enough rides for the day. The spinning of the MIB Alien Attack ride was the last straw, and we thought we'd take a little rest before going on anywhere else. We moved on and landed up in front of Krustyland, the Simpsons theme place. The mouth of Krustyland, had a head of Krusty with revolving squint-eyes, and whose entrance was Krusty's mouth. It seems that that too was a ride, but unlike The Mummy and the MIB ride, this one allowed you to take your belongings in with you. After a short stop and rest, we decided to go in, after all Simpsons cannot be that bad, since they are after all allowing you to take in your belongings and all. This too had a Single Riders queue which we took, and on the way we read the warning-signboard which said that the ride would indeed have sudden forces and accelerations and that people with seizures and pregnant people etc should not ride. Even so, we convinced ourselves it wouldn't be too horrid and carried on.

They had this entire storyline of an escaped convict who is out to kill the Simpsons for inadvertently putting him in jail in the first place, and of a nuclear reactor which causes things to grow mega-size and into which the Simpsons baby (Lisa?) went in. After introducing us to the storyline came the ride. Basically we had to 'keep our belongings' at the side of this 'cart' and then get in. The cart then rose, and in front of us was projected a scene of what was happening. It was the most amazing thing till then: a 3D-like scene being projected in front of you while you move along in it. It was a totally virtual realistic roller-coaster. We flew into the air, landed, got bombed away, fell straight down facing the incoming ground, smashed into virtual boulders but whose effects were timed with such precision that it was as if the boulder really did smash into the cart, got picked up by a giant Lisa and thrown across the virtual city apart from various other monkey-tricks. I was at the side of the cart and had a little leaning space in the beginning to get used to what the hell was going on, but Rudy, who was next to me, held onto the back of his seat in order to prevent himself 'falling out of the cart and down toward the ground'. It was a simulation-based ride, but unlike anything we'd ever faced before and had easily risen to the top-of-the-day ride.

While getting out of Krustyland, it was raining, so we waited for it to cool out a little bit. We decided we'd go for lunch then, and when the rain did ease up a bit, we moved off. Even so, we did get ourselves quite wet because the place we wanted to eat at was quite far from Krustyland, so the rain merely took its own sweet time to get our heads soaked. I started feeling cold at this point, and added to that was the fact that the restaurant was cooled. We ordered ourselves a large pizza and two large cokes. While initially we thought that the pizza would be too large for us, it turned out that the cokes were what kept us busy all the way. During the lunch, Rudy suggested using the tissues to wipe our heads, and that really did serve us well, considering that I used two tissues and that the first one was reduced to a pulp by the moisture in my head. It was in here that it actually struck me (or rather, the fact got digested) that everyone was in shorts. The guys in knee length ones, and the girls in 6inch denims. Everywhere you looked, you'd see legs. And we took our own sweet time drinking the large cokes away and observing. It was so much to drink that inbetween Rudy tried using Binary Search on the length of his straw from which he was able to drink out of the plastic glass. I was like, “no need to use binary search, just use linear search” and all the way to the end we were comparing lengths of straw.

We decided we'd attend some shows at this time, and not go on any more rides. The Beetlejuice show (which was some something starring Dracula, Wolfman, Frankenstein and 2 others: Beetlejuice and Mrs. Frankenstein) was scheduled to start at 345 and we ended up having a little free time with nothing to do but roam a bit. Just at 315 though, we saw that there was this other Horror Make-up show that was to start, and we just made it in time for that show. There they had models of various scary looking heads and knives and body parts. It was hosted by some make-up guy from Hollywood and one Universal Studios chap. The make-up guy entered wearing a shirt through which a knife-handle was pierced through his chest and red blood was all over the shirt. He walks in, stumbles, crawls, and just generally calls out for help. He even asks a lady in the front row to help him out, who refuses him, and he ends up 'dead' on stage. This was just his entry.

They went on to a have a show of extreme humour, where they asked for volunteers and these two kids in the front row kept volunteering, where they finally got this lady Patricia from Uruguay to come up and have her hand 'cut' by a knife, where the guy went strolling about with a knife slicing his head, where they had videos of the history and development of horror make-up and showed models of how things were done 'mechanically'. The front row kid's name was 'Matteo', and the Hollywood guy looked over at him, got his name, and said scarily, “I'm watching you” to him and his brother. That became a motif through the remainder of the show and added to the humour of it all. They ended by having a 'model' of the Wolfman who was wired into this device and which was controlled by someone on the other end wearing that device over their hand. They used Patricia again to demonstrate the use of the device. As a parting shot, while disconnecting the thing, the Wolfman comes to life and goes crashing through everything and tries to grab at the Hollywood host. A scary thrill at the end to an extremely enjoyable show.

That show ended just at 345, and we found ourselves rushing over to the Beetlejuice show just then. We made it just in time, for Beetlejuice (a chap in some weird coloured hair wearing a black and white striped outfit) was introducing who he is and all. Then one by one he introduces the Dracula, the Wolfman, Frankenstein and Mrs. Frankenstein. They all come, do some funny scary movements, and then Beetlejuice is like, “whoever heard of a rock show by dead monsters, eh?” at which point they get hidden by this column of smoke and walk out with guitars and everything. It follows into a show where they sing and dance to songs like “Lets get it started”, “Its raining men”, “I will survive”, “You give love a bad name” and others which I didn't recognize. A vague storyline went behind it wherein two hotties (one white and one black clad) also joined in and various weird love triangles and frictions were eing shown between dracula, mrs frankenstein, frankenstein, the hotties etc. They finally ended with ACDC's “You shook me all night long” and left us feeling we did have a very unique experience.

Roaming again. We got some nice pics of a pair of squirrels a little off the road at this point. There was this “Drive-in” also where “The Vinyl Group” was playing oldies like “Eight Days a Week”. When they shifted to “Rock around the clock”, passers-by all over started skipping in their steps, clicking their fingers and just generally walking in the rhythm. We also got to see models of the Fast Five cars, and had some pictures taken here too.

After a little more wandering, we found ourselves at the Terminator 2 3D show. Here, they had 3D glasses outside and a presentation on Cyberdyne. During this time, Rudy filled me in on the entire Terminator plot and series of events. The Cyberdyne presentation involved a lady in a red Cyberdyne uniform and who explained how Cyberdyne was powering the future and other such forward-looking campaigning. We then walked into the 'theatre' hall, and seemingly unfortunately, found ourselves seated at the side of the theatre (they asked us to move all the way down to the end). Later on, we would realize that even the sides aren't bad. Anyway, the screen was made up of three separate screens, each extremely wide. There were also models of the Terminators standing on the sides.

When the show began, Connor and his mom land up and try disrupting things, and the (evil) Terminators get up and start firing and everything. Then Terminator (Schwarzeneger) turns up and throws the Cyberdyne lady off by her neck. The next thing that happens, is a portal opens up on the screen and Terminator and Connor go flying into it, and into the screen. The show then becomes the most 3D like show ever. It was the first time where I got to see things as up close as that. Its like generally in 3D, you get to see things at varying distances, things coming close and all, but this time, the little flying robots seemed to fly right out of the screen itself. The show ended with this massive CPU of Skynet moving about like a Spider, extending its legs straight towards us, firing at us while the theatre would have red lights turned on and heat turned up, and also going from one screen into the others while all our heads would turn a whole 120 degrees to view it. It was indeed amazing that no matter from what angle, or from what distance you viewed the show, it still seemed like amazing 3D. The effects were also more 3D like than anything I've seen before and this thing hit the top of my best-of-the-day list (due to a minor lapse of the memory of Simpsons).

After this show, we decided we were up for perhaps one last thing, the 4D Shrek show. I'd heard about this 4D thing and read about it in the newspaper once and all, so some of the suspense was not quite there, but even so, witnessing things first-hand was something else. In the room just outside the theatre, they introduced us to the story by having characters like Pinocchio (trapped upside-down in a barrel with only legs protruding), the three pigs (trapped in chained cartons with only eyes visible), Gingerbread man (trapped in the dungeon only visible through the dungeon camera) and the Mirror on the wall (who narrated the entire set of events and why they were like so). The show follows a story of the bad guy stealing the princess and Shrek running after him with Donkey and the dragon. Two of the most unforgettable 4D moments were one, where Donkey sneezed and you had water sprayed onto you (I'd heard about this one before), and two, where a bunch of spiders fall from a tree, and the next thing you know, you're tickled all over your ears and neck by I-have-no-idea-what.

After both Terminator and Shrek, we were totally overwhelmed. Walking back, I just noticed a bunch of stars on the ground, and names of actors and actresses like some Hollywood walk of fame or something. None of the names I recognized (there was Lauren Bacall and some others) except for Julie Andrews. Seeing her, I got all excited and everything and asked Rudy to take a pic.

With this, we ended our day at Universal Studios. The last thing we did was pick up souvenirs (Rudy got a T-shirt, and I picked up a Simpsons mug), and then headed back toward the bus stand, it already being 650, and our bus was expected at 715. I looked back at the largest Hard Rock Cafe and wished that I'd had enough time to walk in. Thats when I started taking pictures arbitrarily of shop-names on the way. We took a wrong turn (or rather, we went straight instead of taking the right left-turn) and found ourselves nearly entering Islands of Adventure. Realizing we were off, we retraced our steps while Rudy kept saying that he finally managed to get us lost, while I kept blaming my own desire for photography that led us off. Eventually, we landed at the stop numbered 71, and Rudy was like, “this is the stop that the bus was at in the morning”, and I said, “you noticed even THAT?!” After a glance about, and finding the two short shorts girls with the spotted top and the “I <3 TING” top, I said, “yeah, we're at the right spot, cuz those two girls were also on our same bus”, to which Rudy fired back, “you noticed even THAT?!”

After such a long wonderful day at Universal, it is only a feeling of duty that I have to actually complete the day's events that keeps me going. We landed back at the Red Roof Inn, and told Nikhil he missed the probably better of the two but since we were looking for Islands of Adventure for all these months, he wouldn't notice or anything. We then went to the Indian Restaurant across the road – the Taste of Punjab – and there we had our dinner. Again, Nikhil ordered himself extra and suddenly inbetween announced, “I'm done”. He didn't have his lunch, barely had a breakfast, and still he was 'done'. Anyhow, he said he'd have a Snickers after the food and I said that we'd get it at 7Eleven, and he also wanted to buy a T-shirt from some place nearby while I felt like having a walk, so the two of us ended up going while Rudy went back and crashed.

The T-shirt shop was a highly Disney-based one, and we ended up not buying anything since it was either too costly or too kiddish. Then we walked into a gadget store and I asked about Sony cameras in the range of $200 for Nandu, but the shop guy was like they have only started from $400. I also asked about iPods, and he said they were sold out. We again left empty-handed. We were nearly at 7Eleven (just hadn't crossed the road) when Nikhil said that he'd rather just go back straight. So we went back, and on the way decided we'd try for a Snickers at the reception. They did indeed have Snickers and incidentally, the receptionist spoke Hindi (with a American accent) and we ended up having a long long chat. He never stopped talking. Went on and on and on about being born in Karachi, parents from Gujarat, landing up in the US at 10, about this and about that. He even said “Ok you guys carry on” atleast three times before continuing with a new topic like why we were here, and where we were staying and about his studies and his work and everything. It was a nice chat and Nikhil felt all rejuvenated and all (it would later turn out that Nikhil would have the most chats with arbitrary people). But long, really really long.

We got back to the room after that – the receptionist even offered us a free Snickers, which we couldn't accept – and found Rudy already asleep. Shortly after, we too crashed for the night.

Act I, Scene 4: Goodbye Peabody, Hello Red Roof

31^st May 2011.

Last night Rudy had slept along with us in our room. We woke up today morning to the feeling of having missed something. Also, there was an accounts bill of like $19.45 for some apparent in-room movie that we had ordered on the 28^th. The thing is, we hadn't ordered any of the movies, but had just browsed through whatever was there. And yes, it is possible to order Adult Content from your room in the hotel. No, we did not order any. So we thought we'd first meet NG since he was supposed to be leaving before us, and then we'd head down to breakfast. When we went to his room though, he was taking a shower, so we decided to just proceed on down to breakfast.

During breakfast, we discussed a number of things. Rudy said that next year's ICPC would not be as grand as this since it would be hosted in the University of Warsaw, and not in some grand convention hotel. “It would just be about monuments and history and art and all, not like rides and theme parks etc.” I argued that the 'crowd' would be better in a University. Rudy started arguing further, but Nikhil got what I was hinting at. “Its not as if you're gonna be served by old uncles and aunties in brown costumes all day...” Later, after the main food, Rudy took a bowl of milk, and looking at it, said, “This is so beautiful. Look at it, so pure and white.” We picked that up and started calling him a racist, to which he responded that its his personal preference what he likes and what he doesn't, and that that should be called racism. Nikhil then pointed out that its not a personal choice of what you like, but its the twisted nature of that personal choice, and the fact that the twisted nature comes out of what society defines as being twisted and harmful.

After breakfast, we bumped into NG in the hallway, and he told us that last night's trip was lots of fun and that he too enjoyed it. After the short chat with him, we went up to the lobby and got the accounts sorted out. We explained to the girl at the counter that we hadn't ordered for any movie, and asked for some details of the movie that we had supposedly ordered. She pressed some buttons on the computer and after a little while of button-pressing, she said that she had canceled the account. Its an interesting culture that whatever the customer says is right, or whatever the tourist says anyhow.

Having finished that, we thought that we should atleast do some exploring of the place before leaving. We explored the lobby level, and found an artificial waterfall place next to a little fountain kind of thing (not a fountain, but rather the flowers in the middle with water around it on the lower level). There was a piano near, but I didn't feel like trying it then, having no camera on any of us. We further went up to the mezzanine level, and got a better view of the place from there. Further up was the Recreation level which had the pool, the tennis court, the “duck gardens” and a lounge and all. We toured that place a bit and then decided to head back to our rooms to pack and all.

Packing is truly one of the most procrastinatable jobs in the history of to-do's. We delayed it till around 11 am and had the cleaning lady knock on our door before we decided to hurry up and clear out. We finally did check out of our rooms at 12, and then went around taking photos of the place. By then however, the piano was put on automatic-mode and was playing stuff on its own. We did manage to get photos of the Peabody ducks at that water-place, wading about, drinking lazily. The view of the buildings from the outside, at the tennis court was also extremely brilliant. They also had a miniature model of the entire hotel on the Recreation level which we captured.

The Peabody Ducks

Miniature model of hotel.

We finally headed back to our luggage, after all the pictures, and decided to sit online for a little while since we didn't want to end up arriving at the next hotel too early. In the end, after Nikhil's laptop battery ran out, we left. We went to the concierge to ask them to try getting us a cab, and they said, “Just walk out and the valet will call a cab for you there.” We had slight misgivings that this might be a private car that the 'valet guys' would call out, but it turned out to be a normal public cab only. We told him we wanted to go to Red Roof Inn at Kissimmee, and he keyed it into his GPS system, and we were off. Its very interesting the way they work with GPS. Its like every single thing, upto which lane to drive in, how far to the next turn and what you are turning into etc, is all described vocally by their GPS system. Its funny imagining how they got by a few years ago before all this GPS thing. The driver was very friendly, and was asking Nikhil about India a lot. He couldn't seem to believe that India had some stuff as good as America though. Like highways. He was very obliging and gave us a booklet of all tourist attractions around Orlando for free.

We finally reached our hotel, the Red Roof Inn which is a far cry from the grandeur of the Peabody. The guy at the lobby was very helpful, (er, i mean very enthusiastic), and for every little bit of information he gave us, he was nodding his and bobbing his head like its a very important tit-bit and should be paid heed to sincerely. Enthusiastic indeed. We reached our room and again I started taking photos, this time as a kind of contrast show.

Peabody vs Red Roof Comparison

Rudy then spotted an Indian restaurant from our balcony: Taste of Punjab. We went there at about 2: 40, and they had this special lunch menu that was till 2:30. We anyway managed to get our lunch orders through, because the guy was again, very helpful and accommodating. He asked us about drinks, and the menu offered us “Imported beers like Kingfisher for $4.25” vs “Domestic ones like Buddweiser for $2.99”. Me and Nikhil went for the Bud, and he asked for our ID's. I gave him my passport and after looking at it for a moment or two and doing some calculations, he said, “Oh, so you're just about age!” :) He then looked at Nikhil's ID and said, “Oh, but you're not.” And Nikhil was like, “Its just two months, is that going to be a problem?” and he said that it was, but that I could get two instead and then give Nikhil one and it would then be my problem. Which was cool by us, really. During our meal, he came up once or twice, and asked us about India, and about what we were doing in Orlando and how we found the US etc. Meanwhile, me and Nikhil were going on about all kinds of stuff with the beer and all, and I was taking way too much time to eat, but finally we finished. Good Indian food after a long while: half a week. Butter chicken, kheer, naan, papad, onions. Brought a very satisfied smile to all our faces.

After getting back, we slept. Crashed. Woke up at like 10 pm because I was way too thirsty. Went down to the lobby to ask for water and he directed me to the water dispensing machine at the pool. There, I couldn't get water because it was sold out, so when I went back, the guy at the lobby directed me to this '7Eleven' place just opposite the road. It was only then that I realized what an amazing place we were located in. Burger King, Pizza Hut, Smokey Bones, Laptops+Tourist Information, and other places, all just on our side of the road, or opposite.

The 'road' in question, is actually a highway though. And I having worn a dark outfit thought that it'd be rather danger to cross without a proper signal or something. So I walk up to the zebra crossing, and wait for the signal for pedestrians. I wait and wait, and an entire round of the signals goes by without coming for the pedestrians. Confused, I look about, and find that right underneath the traffic light, is a button which says, “Push to cross”! I push it, and after the signal finds the road relatively clear, it gives me the cross signal, along with a countdown of like 35 seconds. Crossing the road I feel really guilty for making all the cars wait at the signal for so long, since I could cross in a maximum of like 15 seconds itself.

After going about and finding all these cool places nearby, I walk into this 7Eleven. Now, this 7Eleven is actually like this mini – supermarket next to the petrol bunk. And it was interesting to watch how guys get out of their cars and handle the filling machines themselves, while the girls go into the shop to pick up supplies. I go in myself and have a nice look all around for what all is available. Quite enough to be called a mini supermarket indeed.

I get back to my room using the same “Push to cross” buttons, feel all awkward and guilty and everything all over again, and just when having crossed the road, I look back in a kind of “I'm sorry” parting glance, when I see this amazing open-roof car at the junction. Its too dark to make out the exact company, but it was awesome. When they got the signal, the car turned into the road I was in, went a little way ahead of me, and turned back and went off.

Back to the room. Drank a little water (incidentally, the tap in our room doesn't work!). Now ready to close up for the day.

Act I, Scene 3: World Finals

30^th May, 2011.

The previous night, Nikhil said he'd be up and ready by 6 a.m. for the contest. What did happen though, was Rudy kept an alarm for six on our Speakers, Nikhil got up at about 3 a.m, and was awake till like 5. He had planned on getting himself ready then, but instead decided he'd just have a little nap.

When the alarm rang at 6, it was the most beautiful sound to my ears: English music. I spent about the next ten minutes just relishing the sound of American radio, before getting myself up and taking my customary sunrise pictures. This one however turned out amazing since the sun had not yet quite risen, and there was this red line all over the horizon with the moon shining above.

(panorama of sunrise: red glowing horizon)
(the red sun with the moon shining from above)

We did get ourselves ready earlier than we normally did and had a light breakfast in the dining hall. After breakfast, was the contest. In the coding hall (hitherto refered to as just 'hall'), Bill Poucher (Executive Dir. For ICPC) had us all call out “are we ready or not”, going through each set of ten teams. “Hundreds, are you ready?”, “Nineties are you ready?” etc. One time he called out “Sixties are you ready?” and just one team shouted “yeah!”, causing a bout of laughter from the rest of us. The seventies were the most ready as far as the are-you-ready chants went. We had thought it was getting late and all, but they had a timer which counted down to the start of the contest, and we all did a countdown in the hall for the last 10 seconds.

It started off as usual, with me firing away at the keyboard typing out our templates, while the other two began reading the problems. Problem K was the simplest and got the first submission in 11 minutes. Having spotted that, we turned to it and solved it first at about 40 something minutes. By then the contest had heated up, with Tsinghua having solved problem C as well and then K even. We were solving our own problems rather slowly.

Halfway through the contest, we had solved 3 problems, with one having been attempted. It turned out that that one (problem J) would unfortunately take up most of our remaining time. We did try our hand at E as well, but did not manage to get far. In the end, after finally having got J, with less than half an hour left, me and Nikhil started looking at A, while Rudy began coding some solution he had of G. In the end, we had about halfway solved A, Rudy had got a vague inefficient solution for G, and the contest closed with us at having four problems.

The most interesting phase came after the contest when they were showing the “Pending Judge” solutions. A little briefing on what this is. The contest standings are in general made public. By that I mean that one gets to see who all have solved which all, and in what time. This scoreboard however, is frozen an hour before the close of the contest, to allow for people to not get all dejected and everything in the end. After four hours, all one gets to see is how many submissions one has made on the remaining problems, but not whether those submissions were judged correctly or not. During this phase, one got to see all sorts of teams climb up the ladder etc. While Tsinghua was the only University to have 7 problems solved to their name before the 4 hour freeze time, we got to witness exactly 12 teams (medal winners) solve 7 problems, with U Mich at Ann Arbor making it to 8 first. They were the only team to have 8 problems, and except for 2 other teams who were on 7 and had one pending judge result, it had seemed that they had won. The first team to be judged, turned out to have a wrong submission. For the other team, Zhejiang University, the announcer built up the suspense and everything, and finally let out that they had got their submission correct and they beat U Mich on time. Applause was long and loud as everyone finally had their suspense revealed.

After the contest, and a light lunch, we got back to our room, we had a long discussion on how we should improve, how we should practice, and what all we should do. Later, while I went online and facebooked a bit, Nikhil and Rudy started solving the remaining problems. After I went off the net, Nikhil went online and Rudy and me began watching How To Train Your Dragon on the HD TV. Nikhil in the meantime went ahead and saw Petr's solutions and the official solutions. Apparently after coming back to the room, we had over-50% solved 3 more problems. But I guess thats how it is. If you get stuck on a single problem for too long, then you can't even try others or get anywhere.

After the movie, was dinner cum Awards ceremony. Nikhil bunked it saying that he was too tired and that if he didn't sleep then, he wouldn't be able to come for the Universal Studios excursion later. Dinner was in total Harry Potter theme.

They had a Dumbledore and a Harry Potter as MC's, and the tables were all lined up as banquet tables, unlike the standard round-tables that were put up for the usual meals. It was an interesting time where they also felicitated a bunch of 'volunteers' along with the First Solution prizes and the winning team. The girl from the Zhejiang team was wearing shorts that came to about an inch lower than her shirt, and she was in the centre for all the pictures being taken.

(the [Petr] shirt worn by Petr Mitrichev at dinner)

The entire thing, after having eaten all chicken fry, chicken breasts in honey sauce, mashed potato and whatever else, ended at 9:10. We were supposed to leave from the hotel at like 9:30 for Universal Studios' Harry Potter and Marvel Superheroes Islands. We went back to our room then, and I said I'd take a little nap for fifteen minutes, being too tired. Rudy said that if we take a nap, then there's no way we'd get up in time. I asked him that if that was the case, then it'd be better if he stayed awake and woke us up in fifteen minutes. Just before dropping off, I tried calling out to Nikhil thrice.

I wake up. I look at my watch. It says 11:00. I'm in denial – I tell myself, hey its saying 10, don't listen to it. For about 10 minutes I contemplate various options including running down to the reception and asking for a cab or something. I am in total shock. How could this happen!

Eventually, I go online. Facebook. Omegle. In fact, I end up chatting with the same guy on omegle twice (definitely a first). Finally, at 12:45 I get back to bed. Nikhil wakes up as I get in, and asks the time. I tell him. He's like, “so we haven't gone? We've missed it?!” and I say yes.

We would make it to Universal later on: our plan is to visit on 1^st and 2^nd. But it'd be just the three of us, and not like in the crowd of ICPC contestants. We have definitely missed something.

Act I, Scene 2: Practice

29^th May 2011.

Today was a relatively straightforward day, with just the practice contest really being the only thing worth mentioning. We got up later than yesterday, and made our way to breakfast just at the very end. The hall was quite packed. It was a little trouble finding a seat, and after a slight amount of digging, we found two tables, one half filled with Chinese, the other half filled with this one young guy and an old guy and an old lady. Rudy suggested the Chinese table (since it was closer) but for me, the young dude was familiar, so I went to that table.

We said our hi's and then they said they were from Australia, or to be specific that the lady was the regional director from New Zealand, and that the other two were from Australia. We introduced ourselves to be from IIT. Then I asked the guy, “So, you're Jack Murray right?” And he's like, “yeah... we met at ..?” “IOI 2008, in Egypt,” “Oh yeah yeah... But I changed my name. To Kitten. Like as in baby cat?” and I was like, 'waaat – whyy?'

And thus I found out that NSW had all three from their IOI '08 team: Jack, Jarrah and Xi – Gold, Silver and Bronze. Ok, but seriously, what sorta name is “Kitten Tofu” huh? So anyhow, the breakfast was merged into this Opening Ceremony where lots of people came up, spoke for about 120 seconds each, welcomed each other, had a few claps ring out, and finally Bill Poucher declared the World Finals open.

After that, we went to the Orientation. Thats basically the part of the contest where you get to sit on your comps and get to know whats going on and all. Where you test the system for various errors and where you get to ask questions about the environment etc. It went off okay for us, our coding was quite substandard, but otherwise yes. The only two questions we asked during the contest were what are the time limits for the problems and whether we could shift the equipment slightly into a more favourable position.

Most questions were answered in the post-lunch 'Answers to Questions' session. However, during lunch, we had a nice time watching the ICPC Challenge Tournament. It was basically a game, where you had three pushers, and three markers to begin with along with a bunch of neutral markers already on the board. The board was this terrain consisting of polygonal areas, and you had to basically push the markers such that you capture as much area as possible. Markers convert areas, and areas convert markers too. It was a great watch of all the teams, but we were totally rooting for National Taiwan University, which put on the most perfect show in their first round. In the end, Leiden University won. Both the original Egypt ICPC Challenge (which was used to seed the current ICPC Challenge) as well as the current ICPC Challenge.

The 'Answers to Questions' session was a bit humourous – the way the organizers were giving their answers. To questions pertaining to the judge system, their answer was, “The judge will be identical to your own machines. The only thing that will possibly be different from your machine and the judge's, could be the test-data.”

After that, we had the practice contest. That was sweet, because I saw Team Proof get back into its well-oiled form. We were jumping about, shouting about, and enjoying ourselves. Ended up at some rank 45, but we were coding throughout the 2 hours, so it was well worth it.

We were totally tired after the contest. Came back to our room, did some internetting, watched some television, and then went for dinner and came back and slept. I woke up after about three hours and thought to post some pics and a blog post while I'm up, so here I was.