30th 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 1st and 2nd. But it'd be just the three of us, and not like in the crowd of ICPC contestants. We have definitely missed something.
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