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Contest day 1: Non-pizza lunch in pizza boxes
— 6 August 2019
The first competition day was the main event of today, which was particularly exciting, as it marked the first time Ryan, Timmy and Tunan sat an IOI exam. One of the things that sets the IOI apart from other olympiads is the existence of a live scoreboard, which is updated in real-time during the competition…
#practice #snack #koala
— 5 August 2019
Students tested mundane things such as the support for C++ language features and feedback given by the system, to the more practical, such as timing how long it takes to receive a printout, how long it takes to be escorted to / from the bathroom, and evaluating the tastiness of the snacks that can be ordered through the competition system.
Koala-ing ’round
— 4 August 2019
Today marks the official arrivals day for the IOI! Kevin, Donna and I spent a rather eventful morning looking for SIM cards for our phones, while students met and bonded with members of the Croatian team over Uno.
Roaming Baku
— 3 August 2019
Fidan led us through the Baku Metro, and along a tour of Icherisheher (the old city centre), where we went up the 12th century Maiden Tower and saw an excellent view of Baku.
Departure
— 2 August 2019
The wait at the airport saw the team attempting to maximise the volume of water collected from the faulty tap near gate 10. We also enjoyed Kevin’s amazing commentary on touchscreen air hockey played by two toddlers. It was a true shame that I forgot to take a video of that despite being the keeper of the GoPro.
Timmy’s birthday
— 1 August 2019
Today is my last full day with the IOI team, and what a week it has been. Following a five hour exam where I saw my first splash of the elusive CMS green colour (indicating that we had gotten a full score of 100 on a problem), we went to a nice Cuban cafe where we were joined by Ray Li, who came to pass along some words of wisdom regarding how to handle big exams.
Concave corners
— 31 July 2019
Getting subtasks was a focus for the whole team, with the risk of push-ups if we missed points we should have gotten. Fortunately, everyone was able to score a good amount of points on all the problems and we were spared from having to do push-ups.
Black or Cyan?
— 30 July 2019
Tonight’s game was based off of the first question of today’s exam — given a rectangular grid of squares coloured either black or cyan, find an arrangement using the least number of non-overlapping rectangles which covers all cyan squares and doesn’t cover any black squares.