First day in Canada

(Disclaimer: I am writing this after 40 hours of only getting 2 hours sleep, and slightly jet lagged, so please excuse all bad grammar/spelling)

So today/yesterday we left for Canada, waking up at 6:00 (Or 6:20 with Bernard frantically knocking on our door), and had a quick breakfast before catching cabs to the airport. Once there, we began the long process of checking in, getting past security and boarding the flight, all which took us right up to taking off. We quickly found out that this airline (Qantas), does not provide battle tetris, and so much disappointment was had. After getting over this, I watched some great movies, like Shrek 4, Greenzone, Iron man 2 ect. After realising that it was early in the morning Canadian time, I attempted to go to sleep.

Sleeping on planes is an interesting thing. On one hand, there is an incredible amount of noise, which hinders you actually falling asleep. On the other, after successfully dozing off, you will often wake up feeling stiff, dehydrated and incredibly cramped. All of these led to me only getting about 2 hours in total.

After waking up, and watching more TV and movies, we arrived at Los Angeles. The security there was immense, with all of us getting our fingerprints taken and taking our shoes off for the scan. Although this was bad, I was quite excited to be in a foreign country, and this woke me up enough for the next flight.

The actual trip from the US to Canadia is a bit of a blur. I remember dozing off a bit, but managed to mostly keep myself awake for the trip. We then arrived in Canada, went through its security and caught a bus to our hotel.

After dumping our bags, we went to a Canadian restaurant, which served a variety of dishes. I got a Thai red curry, while others got lasaga, burgers and fish and chips. This was quite a nice dinner, but by the end I was immensely tired and ready to go to bed (after writing this blog post).

On a side note, this was the longest Friday the 13th I've ever experienced.

Longest Friday 13th ever

Departures day... After some heavy door knocking 20 minutes after everyone was supposed to be awake, most of the team finally fell out of bed. That was almost 30 hours ago now on Friday the 13th, and there is still another hour until Friday the 13th comes to an end. It wasn't terribly unlucky though, except for Robert who somehow lost his shoes between Evgeny's room and the breakfast table...

Shoes recovered, we flew seamlessly to LAX about 16 hours later, where the team attempted to put on their best warrior faces.

After a brief lunch at some very American food chains and a fantastic game of Bartog (a first for the trip, surprisingly!), we proceeded on our way to Toronto. At this point, most of us had gone without internet for longer than we'd ever had since we were born. The toll this was taking on the team was evident on the flight as Luke struggled to stay awake, Evgeny spent 3 hours in the brace position, Kenneth crashed, and Robert examined the effects of the plane's banking on gravity.

We were all drained after such long flights and having been disconnected from the world for so long. Many queues and waits later at Toronto airport, an unexpected saviour cheered up the team - its effect appearing to surpass that of caffeine or any energy drink known to man. We found free internet!

The drive from the airport to Waterloo let us watch a marvelous Canadian sunset slide away over the landscape, hopefully setting our bodyclocks back into kilter. A delightful dinner finished the longest Friday 13th ever, with eight thumbs up. Ginger & pear juice... yum!

Living the dream

Back in 2008 I found the Australian informatics Olympiad on the Australian mathematics trust’s website, and inevitably came to the section about that year’s IOI team. I was astounded and amazed that there was a way for programming to get me overseas representing Australia. Then I saw an IOI problem. Needless to say, it was quite problematic and I had no way of solving it. I wasn’t sure that I would ever be able to solve it. After that I placed the kids that went to an IOI up on a seemingly unreachable perch.

Last year my maths teacher chanced across me mentioning the maths olympiad, that prompted him to dig up a letter asking the school for entries in the Australian Informatics Olympiad (AIO). At that stage I only knew the programming language python, so it was quite fortunate that 2009 was the first year that python was accepted as a language.

Since it was my first informatics competition I assumed that I would go quite poorly, so I read the results from bottom to top. I quickly realised that I hadn’t gotten a bronze, that got my hopes up for a silver, It then struck me that I hadn’t gotten a silver either. I wasn’t hopeful of getting a gold, and I almost stopped reading halfway through gold. So when I saw that I game second, and by two points no less, to someone that had done extremely well last year, I was overjoyed, this was compounded by being invited to the December informatics camp at the ANU.

The months in the lead up to the camp were spend learning C++ (another programming language) and solving problems on the Australian informatics training website. After many sleepless nights problems started to get progressively easier.

The December camp was amazing, I had never been surrounded by so many people that were shared the same interests! It was amazing and wonderful and incredible and it was over in 10 days. I really only came down from the high the AIO gave me on the plane home.

Everyone from the camp was invited to sit the Australian Invitational Informatics Olympiad and the French Australian Regional Informatics Olympiad. My results from these secured me an invitation to the IOI team selection camp that April. This was another incredible event, since this camp meant I was only one step off an IOI. Quite openly, I didn’t like my chances of making it this year, the words “Quit while I’m ahead” jokingly crossed my lips on more than one occasion.

I slept really well the night before the first selection exam, I mean, I didn’t expect to do that well, so there was no stress. Almost unfortunately, day one went very well, so the pressure was on for the second day. In the second exam I got the first three questions out fairly promptly, but I feared that my solution for the fourth and final question was going to be too slow. It occurred to me that this question may be all that was standing between me and an IOI. So I put my head down and nutted out the solution that was fast enough.

The wait after selection exam two was possibly the most stress I have ever endured, I had gotten out all the questions, but there was a lingering thought that I must have made some small error that would cost me dearly. Tradition dictates that the process for revealing the team is as strenuous as possible, while the team is being decided all the students are locked in a room together. Once the team has been decided the students play cards to choose the order for people to leave the room and find out if they have been selected or not. It didn’t help my mental health in the slightest that I was the third last one out.

Walking up the stairs to where Bernard and Jarrah were I was so nervous that I was shaking, when they offered me a place on the team I continued to shake. It didn’t hit me that I would be going off to Canada in a few months.

Sitting on the plane to Los Angeles It’s kind of dawning on me that I’m on my way to an IOI. The people surrounding me have won 6 IOI medals between them, and I hope to join their ranks soon.

Sitting on this plane to Los Angeles I’m living my impossible dream.