Diary Part 3
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Weird Diary-Competition Thingy
Part 3 - Days 9 to 13


8-|:)

Day 9
Monday, 21st July 1997


Today was so exciting!!!!

We woke up, had breakfast, and went to the airport in another secret van. (I can't be bothered talking in detail about this because it's so boring compared to the rest of the day!!!) We saw a few of the other IMO teams there, and we were quite embarrassed, being the only team in uniform (black shoes, grey pants, white shirt, IMO tie and blazer). When we got on the place, Angelo gave us our boarding passes after we'd passed our seats. Of course, we couldn't get to them because everyone was going in the other direction, so we just went to the back of the plane, walked down the back stairs outside, and went back in through the front stairs. It was quite embarrassing.

Dan had told us that at the 1996 IMO closing ceremony, the Argentina IMO representatives had said something like, "We hope to see you in Argentina next year for a great big party!" It was supposed to be the "Happy IMO" (Why else would they have a grinning propellerhatman as their logo?). Well, when we got to Mar del Plata, we realised they weren't joking! There were over fifty people wearing jumpers with propellerhatmen on them there to greet us, and there were propellerhatmen balloons all over the airport! We met our guide, Carolina Carabecho, who would stick with us for the next ten days.

Then we set off to the hotel which had been booked solely for us! I couldn't believe there was an entire hotel just for the IMO. (I later discovered that there were, in fact, two hotels! The other one was for the big fat people like Dr Hunt and Peter Taylor.) We got two rooms - Step, Norman and I in one room, and Dan, Jon and Thomas in the other - and Angelo had to share a room with some other deputy team leaders and Carolina shared a room with other guides. The hotel was so cool! There was an arcade, with a whole lot of games as well as pool, table tennis, air hockey and a really annoying weird thing which kept on playing that stupid tune! I still can't get it out of my head. And I never did work out if it was supposed to be a lion or a dragon or a goat or what. There was also a playroom, which had a whole lot of board games, including, to our delight, Spanish Pictionary! (But we continued to use the English one, all the same.) There was a games room, with more table tennis tables and another air hockey table, which was also a computer room with least fifty computers. There was the big place with lotsa tables, which had a music section with the worst piano in the world, a couple of guitars and other instruments, and also a huge canvas where you could paint anything you wanted. There a puzzle room which apparently just had a huge jigsaw puzzle (as well as a few geeks trying to solve it) but I never found out for myself as Norman forbade me from entering. There was a movie room (even though, as far as I know, there were never any movies), an information room (with a message board for teams to leave notes to others on) and many more rooms of equally cool content! It was sooooooooooooooooo excellent!

We were given free propellerhatmen bags and propellerhatmen jumpers and propellerhatmen nametags. We were also given free stuff from the sponsors of the IMO. And, best of all, we were given MONEY MONEY MONEY!!

We had a yummy lunch, which was a buffet - little did I realise at the time that I'd be eating exactly the same food, lunch and dinner, for the next ten days. But we didn't really mind. Afterwards, we went on a short tour of the city...

The only bad thing I can think of was that the computers had neither Internet or QBASIC, so we couldn't play Nibbles. The reason they didn't provide Internet access was supposedly so that we wouldn't cheat by receiving the IMO problems e-mailed to us from our team leaders, who had spent the last few days selecting the questions. Funnily enough, there was a bus outside with full of telephones. Obviously they didn't think we'd be devious enough to cheat by telephone.

The rest of the day was spent in excited exploration of the hotel. I'm just saying that because I can't remember what we did.

There were two things which were very noticable for the whole time we were there; the first was the constant smell of cigarette smoke in the lobby of the hotel. It was amazing how many people smoked. Quite yucky. And the second thing was the slippery floors - I was in constant fear of falling over every time I ran!

Which is the lie?

After we got on the plane, we got out again through the back doors and then went back in through the front.
An entire hotel was booked just for us!
We got MONEY MONEY MONEY!!
They didn't provide Internet access in case we cheated.



8-|:)

Day 10
Tuesday, 22nd July 1997


The first thing we did today was discover that the breakfasts were just as delicious as the lunches and dinners. Yum! The croissants were so yummy! And the coffee? Mmmmm! But I had to refrain from drinking it, because of an embarrassing medical condition which I discovered I had in Buenos Aires. Apparently coffee causes a strange malfunction in my circulatory system.

After breakfast we went to the library to do another practice exam. It was terrible, I'd seen the third question before and didn't get anywhere with the other two. Extremely discouraging! (Especially how Angelo tried to pretend that my effort could have won me a bronze or silver medal.)

While we were doing the exam, Angelo brought some of our clothes to a laundry which was a huge relief for me because I really didn't want to have to wash my own clothes! We collected our clothes and went back to the hotel, then we went to the city again and finally got Stephen's travellers' cheques back. He could finally pay people back all the money he owed - as I recall, he was over $500 in debt.

In the afternoon, we played the piano and guitar while Angelo marked our tests. As happens at every maths camp, we tried to teach Thomas various piano pieces with not only failure, but negative success. I swear, the Entertainer sounds worse and worse every time he plays it!

Today we got the first issue of the daily official 38th IMO newspaper, called "La hélice" which means, the propeller! This is the front page article:

Welcome!
Since 1991, when the 38 IMO was confirmed to be held in Argentina, we have been waiting for you. Now our long wait ends and a wonderful adventure, the biggest mathematical competition in the world, begins. We hope you feel comfortable during these days and we will work very hard for this. This newspaper tries to be another mean for communicating among us. We invite you all to collaborate with us to make a wonderful experience out of this 38 IMO. Good luck!

On the back of each issue was the IMO song in a different language - see tomorrow's entry for more about this wonderful song!

After dinner, everyone played speed while Norm and I painted a big colourful peace sign in the painting room. It was really terrible actually, but it looked okay if you were standing on the other side of the room, with your eyes half shut. And it looked even better if you shut your eyes completely. After we'd finished (that is, when we couldn't be bothered anymore!) we decided to join in speed. We went to the bathroom to clean the paint off our hands, and when we got back everyone had mysteriously disappeared. [play spooky music here, preferably from the X-Files] Don't be alarmed, it was alright, we found them the next day.

Which is the lie?

Coffee causes a strange malfunction in my circulatory system.
Before Stephen got his travellers cheques cashed, he was over $500 in debt.
Whenever we try to teach Thomas to play the piano, he seems to get worse.
When we got back from washing our hands, everyone had mysteriously disappeared.



8-|:)

Day 11
Wednesday, 23rd July 1997


In the morning was the grand opening ceremony! When we met in the lobby of the hotel, Angelo inspected our shoes and promptly set about cleaning Step's, which caused us all to wonder if he always carried shoe polish around with him. He didn't have time to finish, but once we arrived at the hall where the ceremony would take place, we all took photos of him finishing off the job.

The ceremony itself was quite cool, but it got a bit boring sometimes. Everytime something was said, it had to be translated into six (I think) languages. So obviously the speeches took ages. They began with the Spanish national anthem, which seemed to have about a ten minute introduction, two lines of singing, then a ten minute conclusion. But we didn't mind, because we then got to finally hear the new IMO song which we'd all been dying to hear, ever since we got the lyrics off the internet:

Razonar es Nuestro Estilo

Volaremos por el cielo
rocerreremos caminos
esto no tendrá fronteras
sumando nuestros destinos.

Unidos en un anhelo
venimos de todas partes
a compartir la alegría
de juntar ciencia con arte.

Sumamos, multiplicamos,
y llegamos a un total,
infinito es nuestro sueño
sin medida, de verdad.

Volveremos a encontrarnos
resolviendo los problemas
razonar es nuestro estilo
la amistad nuestro sistema!
Reasoning is Our Style

We will be flying through the sky
and going along every road,
in a limitless word,
where our destinies will all be summed up.

We will be gathered together
by a sole and unique ambition
as we come from everywhere in the world,
to share the joy or combining science with art.

We'll do sums and multiplications,
to be able to reach a totalling result,
on account of our dream which is, indeed,
endless and measureless.

We look forward to meeting again,
solving our problems, of course,
because reasoning is our style,
and friendship our system is!

We all had thought that perhaps it lost something in the translation, but Carolina informed us that it was just as stupid and nonsensical in Spanish. I showed the french version to my french teacher when I got back to school, who started with, "Well, for a start, the title's spelt wrong..." and proceeded to list off numerous errors in the song. And to think that Step and I have to put up with the song next year as well...

Then there was a huge audio-visual presentation about Argentina, which was really cool to begin with then very quickly got boring. The high point of the ceremony was definitely the millions of propellerhatmen balloons falling down at the end, which seemed to especially excite Thomas and Norman.

When we got back, and were changing back from our uniforms, Norman performed a rather amazingly stupid act of stupidity. While taking off his blazer, his hand accidentally slipped into what seemed to be a humungous pocket. He looked at me in amazement, and probed his hand even further into the bottomless chasm, and still the pocket did not end! He went further and further and could not contain his disbelief! And then he realised it wasn't a pocket; it was a sleeve. HAHA!!!

In the afternoon, we did maths maths maths maths maths maths maths maths maths maths maths maths maths maths maths table tennis maths maths maths maths maths maths maths maths maths and more maths. When we'd finally finished doing maths, we did some more maths. It was a fun afternoon, as you can no doubt imagine.

We received the "La hélice 2" and discovered to our horror that there was a section entitled "Australian art"! In it was a message I had left on the message board, saying, "¡Australia welcomes everyone to the great big party!!!" with the o's propellerhatcapped and Norm's trademark nerd drawn underneath. (Not nerd as in maths geek, nerd as in those creatures on the packets of Willy Wonka Nerds.) There was also a picture of the big nerd Norman had drawn in the painting room in pencil, but which somebody else had rudely painted in, making it look absolutely terrible!! And they didn't even include our peace symbol. Grrr! I might eventually get round to scanning the Australian art and putting it up here, but I doubt it. I have a feeling that everyone thought the nerds were cute little kangaroos. Which reminds me of Carolina's horror when I told her I ate kangaroo.

There was also some "Gossip from Argentina": "We announce that ARG3 took a shower yesterday. Congratulations!!! The team leader of Argentina had to buy a pair of shoes for the opening ceremony." As you can tell, these magazines were always full of interesting and important information.

At night, we introduced Pictionary to Carolina - she'd never played the game before but she loved it! I can't remember what the teams were, but I am confident that my team won. Whenever we didn't know what a word meant, we'd look it up in the English-Spanish dictionary to find out the Spanish equivalent, which we'd then look up in the Spanish-English section. Afterwards we psyched ourselves up for the IMO... well... Thomas did, at least - but he did enough psyching up for all of us. We went to sleep reasonably early. Actually, to be more accurate, I'll say comparatively early.

Which is the lie?

Everything said at the opening ceremony was translated into six languages.
Norman thought his blazer sleeve was a humungous pocket.
We did maths the whole afternoon.
We used a Spanish dictionary to look up English words we didn't know in Pictionary.



8-|:)

Day 12
Thursday, 24th July 1997
FIRST IMO DAY!!!

We woke up at 6am for breakfast. Considering that I probably haven't woken up before 7am for five years or so, I was amazed that I didn't doze off during the IMO - especially since I couldn't have coffee! After breakfast, we all crammed useless theorems for a few minutes (except for me, who listened to spanish Sheila Rae songs - thanks Lisa!) then realised it was futile and went down to the music room. Always patriotic, we sung the national anthem (with me on the piano) and other Australia songs. Then, just before we went in, we did an "Aussie aussie aussie!" shout. Everyone was very impressed (especially Carolina).

Well, as for the IMO, I was very happy when I left the room! I'd solved questions 2 and 3, and solved the first part of question 1. Then I spoke to the others, and discovered that Step, Dan and Norman had all solved at least two and a half questions, and Thomas had solved all three! Jon had solved most of questions 1 and 3. None of us could believe how easy the paper was - before the IMO, I'd been praying to get a single question out, and now I was kicking myself for not getting all three. The only thing was, we were now scared that, to compensate, the jury would make the second paper impossibly difficult!

After we had lunch at this weird place, we went to the cinema to watch Men in Black. (This was Angelo's idea of a diversion to keep our minds off the IMO. Actually, it worked!) We were planning to send our postcards afterwards, so I was rushing to write them before the movie! The movie was so cool, but the only problem was (don't laugh, Thomas and Angelo complained of the same problem, though the others laughed at us) there were Spanish subtitles, and I kept on trying to read them. Then, when I bewilderedly realised I couldn't understand them, I found that I'd missed the actual English dialogue! It was so annoying. However, I had pen and paper ready to write down all the Spanish swearwords, which we later used to embarrass Carolina with, asking questions like, "How bad is this one? When would you use it? What's it's equivalent in English? Is it worse than this one? Do you ever say this one? What about this one?" We were extremely persistent.

We went to the post office next. I was still trying to finish writing my postcards! We ended up having to go to another post office (because they'd run out of stamps or something?!) and send them there. We also went to a music shop, where there was this electronic keyboard which lighted up the keys you had to press to play a piece! And even if you played the wrong note, it still sounded the right note! And you could even set it to play if you didn't even touch the keyboard! And Thomas STILL couldn't play!!

After dinner, we had another Pictionary/psyching ourselves up session, and another sort of early sleep.

Which is the lie?

We sang Australian songs before the IMO in the music room.
While watching Men in Black, I kept reading the Spanish subtitles then missing the English dialogue.
The post office had run out of stamps!
Thomas couldn't even play the fully automated keyboard.



8-|:)

Day 13
Friday, 25th July 1997
SECOND IMO DAY!!!

Today, nothing of interest happened in the morning before the IMO, except that we received applause from the other teams when we did our "Aussie aussie aussie!" shout this time. As for the IMO, I solved questions 4 and 5, and got absolutely nowhere in question 6 - everyone else did the same, except for Thomas, who got the right hand inequality in question 6. We were all relieved that it was all over, though. Actually, I don't think we were. We were more nervous then before because we wanted to know our marks!

After lunch, Angelo had to leave for the other hotel (the one where all the big people stayed) so so that he could help Professor Hunt and Hans mark our scripts (ie, our solutions). He almost missed the bus because he took so long packing, but eventually he came down and boarded the bus and left us. It was very sad - melancholy, you might say.

After he left, we played Pictionary with Carolina, then we taught her Bartok! It was so funny, because: a) Carolina had never seen our cards before, because in Argentina they have different playing cards, and b) many of our rules were maths based, which gave her absolutely no chance! She got really scared when we suggested introducing the multiplicative inverses modulo 13 rule...

We all received cassettes with the IMO song on it, which made us all ecstatic! Then we "did nothing for three hours" (well, that's what it says in my notes) and then we apparently "had various feuds with the New Zealand team". These notes I made are really bad. You see, each day, I wrote a few notes on what we did every day so I would remember when we came back, but most days I couldn't be bothered, and now, typing up this diary, I have to try and interpret all of them. And it's not an easy job. But at least I did a better job than Norm, who wrote a few eloquent but meaningless sentences for each of the first few days then gave up. Anyway, I know we had some sort of feud with the New Zealand team. It's a tradition (or so Angelo tells us) to annoy each other as much as possible. Angelo said that when he went to the IMO, he "performed a reflection through the wall between the New Zealand team's rooms" (trust Angelo to say something like that - basically he just swapped everything in the two New Zealand rooms) and also one year, the New Zealand team kidnapped someone from our team! Well this year we didn't go that far but had a lot of fun with stickers and card games and whatnot. Whatnot is such a cool word. You will hear a lot more about these feuds later...

For now, read the stupid article which the New Zealanders submitted to "La Hélice 3".

Kia Ora

We are from the New Zealand team, and we each have at least one serious problem. There's Bradley, who has a tampon up his nose; Lily, who always locks our mascot in her room; Ezra, who is somewhat psychologically unbalanced; Robin, who brushes his teeth with finger and water; Ben, who enjoys playing chicken with Argentinean traffic; and Jackie, who's just too friendly. Then there's David, our deputy leader, who fell off his chair three times in an hour; and Alan our manager, who expects us to go to bed at ten on Friday night. Fortunately, Cristian, our guide seems relatively normal, our rooms are in the third floor.

We stayed up late that night, Norman and I finally going to sleep at 3:30. From that night onwards there was a party every night on the first floor (not that any of us except Carolina went). That night we taught Ezra (a guy from the New Zealand team) how to play Bartok, which really scared him. After we made some really horrendous rules and landed him with about 9852 cards, he ran off crying. We were satisfied.

Which is the lie?

The teams applauded us when we did our "Aussie aussie aussie!" shout.
Angelo's team swapped the entire contents of two NZ rooms.
The NZ team once kidnapped someone from our team.
Ezra ran off crying after playing Bartok with us.



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