IMO Selection School, April 1997

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1997 IMO Selection School Sunday, 30th March to Wednesday, 9th April Shore School, Sydney

Intermediates	Seniors
Prasad Ganesan Justin Koonin Adam Solomon	Damian Bramanis Andrew Cheeseman Norman Do Stephen Farrar Justin Ghan Martin Jenkins Jonathan Kusilek Thomas Lam Daniel Mathews Hiroshi Miyazaki David Varodayan James Yun
This list is very incomplete and possibly quite wrong. Please send in additions and corrections!

An undercurrent of tension as we competed for a place in the IMO team - for the first time, the mathematics of the mathscamp actually mattered. But we still managed to have as much fun as always!

Memories

In a stroke of brilliance, I finally solved the fiendish B-session question which had been eluding the whole night! It was such a cool proof, and we decided to trick Angelo into thinking that we couldn't work it out, let him show us his horribly complicated solution, and then surprise him by all writing out my delightfully simple solution. It didn't work very well because Angelo's solution turned out to be pretty easy as well. D'oh! We also thought it would be amusing to replace the four variables, x₁, x₂, x₃, x₄, by the letters of our name! We all agreed to do it, but only Step and I carried it out. Where's the commitment?!
The showers didn't have curtains! So to give ourselves some privacy, we had to fashion our own curtains from brooms and blankets. We hung the blankets in our room to dry, but one day Dr Hunt came into our lecture telling us the matron had found the blankets and thought we were using them as hammocks!
One day in the shower, I heard the bathroom door open and someone enter the toilet adjacent to the shower I was in. I casually wondered who it could be, but I did not have to wonder for long, for the occupant soon began to make much noise - not splashing noises or gassy noises, but vocal noises! I quickly recognised the voice of Martin Jenkins, who seemed to expending a considerably amount of effort on his defecation, judging from the racket he made! He grunted and panted loudly, leaving me quite embarrassed and sympathetic next door...
On an absolutely freezing day, Andrew Cheeseman intelligently decided to go swimming in the nearby pool. We all shuddered at the sight of him diving into the icy cold water.
On one of the afternoons off (my first ever afternoon off!), we went into the city, as always. I had only just been introduced to bouncing and salt, pepper, sugar; as a result, I was alternately intrigued and fakely uninterested (what I'm trying to say is, I pretended I couldn't care less how to do them!). We were sitting in a nice cafe/restaurant in the Queen Victoria Building - I think it's called Mancini's - and I was sitting at a table moving around the salt shaker saying "This is three... but THIS is four!!" and being really confused, while everyone else (mostly David) laughed in uproarious amusement. !justin! was having SOS's at that time, and I think one of those happened too. - Prasad
We were all given team names at the relay and were told to invent slogans for ourselves. David, Damian and I were the Seniors of the Blue Tooheys team, and I had the great idea of inventing a palindromic slogan, which Norm promptly stole, coining "Derogative Evita, go red!" Ours was much longer and nonsensical and therefore better: "Tooheys, ey? Hah! Martyr rose blue, eu'l be sorry, tram! Hah! Yes, ye hoot!"
At the relay, I got quite into the whole running and energetic franticity of the event. I was on the intermediate half of !justin!, David and Damian's team, with Adam Solomon the annoying guy. Every time we got an answer, Adam would yell out "Hey! I'm so good! If they had an IMO for relays, I would be on the team!" Then David and !justin! and Damian got stuck on one problem, which they answered at least 15 times, without getting right. It was very amusing. Also kind of amusing in retrospect, though painful at the time... but I have to tell the story in the right order. Being very frantic, I was running to the markers' room; Dr Hunt was standing outside in imperial observer style; as I ran in the door, Norm was running out the door; as we collided with a sickening thump, Dr Hunt was heard casually to say "Boom". - Prasad
We went to the coo' spot after the relay. It was a completely different experience... the mystery of the walk, the crispness of the night air, the shimmering of the stars and the lights of the city on the water, the stringy grass round my neck from Thomas trying to strangle me... it was such a pity that for me the whole thing was ruined by someone looking up at the sky and saying "I can see Menelaus' Theorem". I am very proud to say I still don't know what Menelaus' Theorem says. - Prasad
How do you pronounce "sequoia"?!?!?! - Prasad. (Yeah, and where on earth is Mozambique? - facetious !justin!)

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