29th 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.
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