Diary Part 4

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Weird Diary-Competition Thingy Part 4 - Days 14 to 17

Day 14
Saturday, 26th July 1997

For once, we could sleep in! Norman and I took full advantage of this opportunity, although Stephen foolishly woke up for breakfast. I think that in the other room, Thomas, Jon and Dan all slept in. Nice Step brought us breakfast in bed though! Even when we woke up, though, we couldn't bear to get out of bed. So we just lay there and did nothing much. At one point, I asked aloud, "What fun stuff is there to do in bed?" Stephen and Norman laughed at my innocent naïvité.

At about 11, Step, Jon, Thomas and I went downstairs to the games room and all tried to do this puzzle:

8th	secret		page?
(:	Here!		:)
	d:	:b
q:			:p

The aim of the puzzle is to get the big green square to the bottom middle black bit by sliding around the tiles. After more than an hour, Step finally solved it. But he couldn't remember how he did it! The box said (in Spanish), "If you solve this in less than two hours, then it is possible that you are a genius!"

Thomas and I went to look for Norman (or something like that - crappy notes again) and as we passed the scores room, we noticed that the question 1 scores for our team was up!!!! Stephen and Thomas got 7/7, Norman and Jon got 4/7, I got 2/7 and Dan got 0/7. I was really happy because I didn't think I'd get more than 1/7 for it... We ran back to the games room and told the others. And completely forgot about Norman.

Straight after lunch, we ran back to the scores room and checked again, and the question 2 scores were up! For some reason, our team's scores were coming up before any of the other teams'. Everyone got 7/7 except for Jon who got 0/7. :(

In the afternoon we went on an excursion. As we were about to leave the hotel, Jon realised he forgot his name tag and ran back to his room to get it. But he'd forgotten the key, so he had to come back and get it from Dan, then go back up to the room...

Finally on the way, we tried playing many games to ease our boredom on the bus. We tried four player noughts and crosses, I Spy, Countries, Superghost and Sixty Seconds, but we eventually settled (for more than two minutes) on a game Carolina taught us. It's just a simple memory game, where each person in turn has to repeat a long sentence and then add a word to it. After playing for ages, we ended up with: "Once upon three times, Jon said, 'Duh, Justin,' and Justin replied, 'Jon dies in a car which crashed into my shoe which smells like strawberries mixed thoroughly by the cow dung factory workers who wear underwear over their blue heads because they hate wearing akubras publicly while bungee jumping into hell-like fairy floss,' and Jon believed him never again."

We finally arrived at our destination, which happened to be a car museum. I couldn't believe that we had travelled for 75 minutes just to spend 90 minutes at a car museum, then spend another 75 minutes going back. Was this the best they had to offer in Mar del Plata? The only good thing was the food. I had a Submarino, which is a glass of hot milk which you melt a chocolate bar in - it sounds more fun than it really is. (Actually, it doesn't really sound fun at all now. But it did at the time.) I also had these things called Alfajores which is this weird cake thing with this weird sweet stuff (dulce de leche) in it! YUM!!! While we were sitting around bored and flicking pens, a few people who showed promising penflicking talent came up to us, and talked to us about penflicking. 'Twas quite interesting. But it was clear that the Australian team were the masters of penflicking. Except for the Japanese team who we dared not approach.

When we got back to our rooms, we found to our horror that some New Zealand stickers had been slipped under our doors! They proclaimed, "NZ" in big letters next to a New Zealand flag. We later discovered that they had stuck these stickers all over the hotel. Well, we weren't going to put up with such propaganda, so we changed the NZ to OZ and the New Zealand flag to an Australian flag, and then proceeded to stick them up around the hotel in various places, making sure that not a single NZ sticker remained. There was even one in one of the lifts, so we stuck our sticker over theirs, and the lift attendant liked our sticker a lot more! As a warning to the NZ team, we wrote them a backwards letter (we were all amazed at Step's proficiency at writing backwards!) accompanied by one of our stickers.

Angelo came to our hotel to join us for dinner. You could tell he'd missed us. After dinner, Norm, Step, Jon and Dan all had to fix little problems with their solutions to questions 4 or 5. The idea is, if you show that the thing you didn't explain well is really trivial, then the coordinators won't care about it and give you 7/7 anyway.

We played Pictionary briefly, but for some reason the game degraded into talk about pronounciation and penflicking. Carolina was attempting to learn both. Angelo was really annoyed because he could only manage a completely spastic half-flick which looked really terrible, and Carolina could already do all these super duper tricks which even I couldn't do! We slept at around midnight, not having gotten much sleep the previous night.

Which is the lie?

	Step got breakfast in bed for Norman and me.
	Step took an hour to solve the klotski puzzle and couldn't remember how to do it anyway.
	We spent four hours going on an excursion to a boring car museum.
	Angelo got annoyed because Carolina was better at pen tricks than he was.

Day 15
Sunday, 27th July 1997

We all slept in again this morning, except for Thomas and Step who went down for breakfast. They were rude enough not to bring any up for us! Insolence! When we finally got up, we went down to the marks room. Professors Hunt and Taylor were there to meet us with the FINAL SCORES!!

Hi!	Question 1	Question 2	Question 3	Question 4	Question 5	Question 6	Total
Norman	4	7	7	7	7	0	32
Stephen	7	7	5	7	7	2	35
!me!	2	7	7	7	7	0	30
Jon	4	0	4	7	7	1	23
Thomas	7	7	7	7	7	3	38
Dan	0	7	7	7	7	1	29

Our team's scores were the first up, I think. We were all happy with our scores, except maybe Jon who'd just been unlucky on the first day! Obviously Thomas was happy (although, being Thomas, wasn't completely satisfied since he hadn't gotten 42). And he kept on going on about how many marks David and Angelo had scabbed for Norman! Angelo immediately created a huge table of scores, which he spent hours over the next few days obsessively filling out in the marks room. We still couldn't sigh with relief that it was all over; we had to wait for the cutoff scores. Thomas kept on asking Angelo about Norman's chances of winning a gold medal, which went from 50% to 20% to epsilon to epsilon squared. Thomas continued to ask even after the medal cutoff scores had been announced, turning the whole affair into a farcical farce. (The question was still being asked five months later.)

In the afternoon, we went on an excursion to the zoo. Angelo had already been there, while we were doing the IMO, but he decided to come again, saying defensively that he hadn't brought his camera last time, but we all knew the real reason. He would miss us too much if we went without him. The zoo was fun and everyone (except me of course) took too many photos of the animals. Angelo was really excited about some prancing deer or something, and we were all disappointed when we actually saw them.

After the zoo, we went to this place and I'm still not sure what it is. I think it was the home of some famous guy who wrote some famous book. It was so boring, but luckily they had this place where they showed you how to make rope stuff. So we all just stood around making ropy things. Well, it was more interesting than standing around doing nothing. But just barely.

After dinner, we lowered ourselves to the level of the New Zealanders by agreeing to play Mao with them. It is vaguely similar to Bartok except it's continuous (not played in rounds) and when you make up a rule, you don't tell anybody what the rule is! So of course the New Zealanders had prearranged all the rules so they knew all the rules which each other were "making up" while we received millions of penalty cards and never had the chance to make a new rule. The dumbest rule of all was that you weren't allowed to talk! What an antisocial game! Fortunately, due to the general stupidity of all New Zealanders, their rules were very obvious and were easily guessed, and we almost won so many times! I think Angelo did actually win once. Then Bradley (at least I think it was Bradley) made up some stupid rule, and at one point, he just played about 724 cards in a row and then informed us, "Notice I'm not out yet." Then after a minute or so, he announced, "I'm out." What a great rule that must have been.

Then we played Bartok, which, of course, was infinitely more fun. However, we kept on introducing as difficult rules as possible so to scare the Kiwis and eventually the game got stupid with a whole lot of talking rules. We had to speak in iambic pentameter using at least one word beginning with F, with a question/statement toggle rule as well. (But at least we could talk, which is more than I can say about Mao.) We finished around 12, some being quite concerned with getting some sleep because of the more-important-than-the-IMO Westpac Competition. (Although you're not supposed to call it the Westpac anymore, since the stingy Westpac people withdrew their sponsorship.)

Step went to bed then, but I wouldn't let him sleep. At around 1 or 2 I woke him up again and forced him to come with Norman and I to write postcards. Of course we didn't get any writing done, we just played table tennis and then played on the computers. We were excited to discover funny modem noises in the back row, and found out that some people were trying to get the computers Internetised. We slept around 4.

Which is the lie?

	Angelo spent hours obsessively filling out his score sheet.
	The New Zealanders prearranged the Mao rules.
	Bradley made a stupid rule which enabled him to place as many cards as he wanted in one turn.
	By the end of our Bartok game, we had to speak in iambic pentameter using at least one word beginning with F, with a question/statement toggle rule as well.

Day 16
Monday, 28th July 1997

We got up at around 8:30 and I had the delicious breakfast which I had missed sorely yesterday because of naughty Thomas and Step. Before we began the AMC (the ex-Westpac) we went to look at the Mathematical Odyssey which was some weird competition happening that morning which was supposed to be fun. It turned out to be really dumb, which questions like determining what percentage of lollies in a bag where green and whether or not a seventeen digit number was prime. That's sooooooo stupid!

The Westpa - whoops! I mean the AMC went from 9:30 to 10:45. Everyone except me claimed to have completely flunked it, and I didn't believe a word they said. (However, I now know they were speaking the truth, being the only one of the team to have won a medal. [please applaud me again])

Afterwards we went to the music place and played the piano for a while. We were soon taken over by Angelo (yes, he came to visit us again! He really loves us!) who was then taken over by Ezra Ip from the New Zealand team who made us all feel ineptitude with his brilliant playing. He got us all excited by telling us he'd played the Bugs Bunny song (Lizst's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2) then disappointed us by telling us he'd forgotten how to play it. Afterwards we went to the marks room and played that sentence game which we'd called, "Once upon three times..." We came up with: "Once upon a kumquat, there existed a kumquat bug who was afraid that aliens would jump out of the house sitting lopsidedly next to the kumquat and then jocular and amusing lemons spontaneously materialised within nanometres of the earth surprisingly colourlessly without emotion hence Mr Jon says..." and I think we stopped there. I hope Mr Jon wasn't about to say, "Duh, Justin." We also bought propellerhatman beanies! YAYA!

At lunch began a fiasco never to be forgotten. For some reason, Angelo and Carolina were both absent from the table at some point (oooooh ... erotic!) so I impulsively decided to steal Carolina's jumper. Then Dan suggested we should steal Angelo's folder - which, remember, contained the Piece of Paper with all the scores which Angelo had been working on for hours. So I took it and gave it to Norman who passed it to Jon who hid it on his lap under the table. (Just making it clear that, you know, he wasn't sitting on the table or anything, which would have made it pretty pointless to hide it on his lap...) Anyway, as Carolina and Angelo approached the table, I ran off with Carolina's jumper... only later to be called back by Norman who informed me that the grand theft had taken a most devious twist! Not only was Angelo convinced that I had run off with his folder as well as Carolina's jumper, but Step also had misplaced his camera, causing even bigger suspicions to arise! So I returned to the dining hall and returned Carolina's jumper. Angelo and Step returned soon after, having left to search for me and their belongings. They interrogated the lot of us, but got nothing out of us whatsoever. It amused me vastly that Angelo thought we had hidden his stuff in some incredibly secret spot in the hotel when in fact it was a few metres away under the table!

After a while, we began to feel a little sorry for Angelo, whose Piece of Paper was so important to him. We thought maybe we should do something nice for him, like type up his results or something, but the computers didn't have any printers anyway so it would have been kind of futile. So we decided to torture him some more. We took the Piece of Paper out of the folder and then gave the folder to Carolina to return to Angelo, hiding the Piece of Paper under one of the beds in our room. (Where we also discovered that Angelo had taken various cameras and jumpers of ours ransom!) Carolina came back and told us that Angelo was in the score room, where he was starting again! At that point we really felt very sorry for him! It was such a stupid obsession of his! Anyway, Angelo came up to the room where we had a big confrontation. We attempted to lay all the blame on innocent Carolina, who was extremely shocked (but later forgave us). After he got really annoyed, and we could see he wasn't taking it as a joke at all, we gave it back. I never did discover exactly what had happened to Step's camera, but he got it back anyway.

That afternoon's excursion was the aquarium. (Angelo, of course, came along with us.) It wasn't a fishy aquarium as I'd thought, but more a mammally one, with seals and dolphins and penguins and waterskiing humans. There was a really cool 3-D movie in which we all played around with the funny glasses. We kept on bouncing our heads from side to side which I'm sure attracted much attention to the already infamous Australian team.

When we got back, we desperately forced ourselves to write our postcards, and were a little more successful this time. I think we actually wrote something during the session. We met Stefan Hornet from the Romanian team, and we swapped selection exam problems to help our preparation from next year's IMO... For some reason, Norman and Thomas spent a great deal of effort in obtaining these selection questions although they weren't going to the 1998 IMO; whereas Step and I who probably were going couldn't really care less. They also thought it was very important that we make friends who would be going to Taiwan next year, and took me around introducing me to all these people.

We finally got onto the internet, but didn't have time to do anything. In fact, Step, due to a stupid misunderstanding, gave away a Internet-blessed computer which I was dying to use to some other guy, infuriating me somewhat! But we did get on again later that day, where we all caught up on e-mail. (Well, not all of us. Actually I think I was probably the only one.) We visited the Cool Magool homepage, which was extremely funny! The Cool Magools are a society which Dan is lucky to be a part of. I seem to recall reading about them taking over the world some time in the future, but I'm not really sure; I only know that I wanted to join and sent the Head Cool Magool and e-mail saying so. Dan is the Minister of Wawa Pedals and also the Head of the Anti-Poseullan League. (Sorry if all my spelling is wrong!) We eventually got to sleep at 5:30am - we were trying to get used to the jetlag before the actual flight, thinking it was much more sensible than adjusting afterwards.

Which is the lie?

	Everyone except me flunked the Westpa - I mean, the AMC.
	Angelo began a new score sheet after we stole his first one.
	Norman and Thomas introduced me to all these people who would be going to the 1998 IMO.
	I sent an e-mail to the Head of the Cool Magools asking to join.

Day 17
Tuesday, 29th July 1997

Today we slept in properly until noon. (I think I woke up sometime in the morning though, hearing Step answer the door and Dr Hunt talking to him about the cutoff scores and discovering that, yes, Step got a gold medal, yippee, and then going back to sleep.) The cutoff scores were 35 for a gold medal, 25 for a silver and 15 for a bronze. We were all ecstatic that Step just got a gold medal and none of us cared less about Thomas's gold medal. So the Australian team received 2 gold medals, 3 silver and 1 bronze - its best result ever!

In the afternoon, we went to a huge big party thingy at an indoor stadium! It was so exciting! There were clowns and balloons and propellerhatmen everywhere! And there were numerous games to play! Of course, Norman and Jon were only interested in one thing - the soccer game in the center of the stadium. First of all we tried the Tug of War, losing about five times to the Grecian team. Then we played Broom Hockey, and my team lost. I was disappointed because when you won a game, you got edible medals or badges! We then did that race thing where you have four people to a team lined up with their shoes hooked into two long wooden planks and you have to walk in phase with each other... My team lost that as well! Then Step and I did a sack race, losing to Angelo and David (the head of the New Zealand team). Then we played a game where you have to pile up lots of boxes to make a tower, Thomas and I thrashing Angelo and Step whose tower fell over! Haha! Highly amusing! We finally got to play soccer, thrashing the New Zealand team. Then we did an embarassing thing where everyone's blindfolded and each person has a different fruit to find in a big pile of cardboard cutouts on the floor. It was embarrassing because we were talking about how the person who was looking for bananas had a huge advantage, and I was the banana person and I only found two! Or was it only one?!

At 4:30 we all had to stop playing for this mysterious surprise. At first we were all disappointed because it was just stupid clowns mucking around, but then everyone went down into the middle and millions of balloons came down and it was fun fun fun!

After all the excitement, we returned to the hotel. We finally got our postcards written and we went out to send them. Then we launched the great Present Buying Caper. We splat into two groups (why do I giggle like a schoolgirl when I write, "we splat"?) - Carolina, Step, Dan, Norman and I buying Angelo's present, unbeknownst to Angelo, and Angelo, Thomas and Jon buying Carolina's present, unbeknownst to her. For Carolina we got a big soft toy dog, a bottle of wine, and a fountain pen, and for Angelo we got a couple of Tango CD's. Carolina was really concerned about getting the right CD, and ended up taking ages listening to all the CD's! We also bought tins of Alfajores for the two professors and Hans. When we got back, there was a mini-crisis when Angelo somehow found the receipt for his CD's in our room. I had to pretend that they were mine which was a little embarrassing. He asked to have a look at them, and I was forced to refuse, bewildering him!

After dinner, we started packing, and then we hung around in our rooms for ages doing nothing much - reading Hamlet, exchanging phone numbers and addresses, watching TV. We only realised on the last night that it was possible to buy soft drinks from the bar - DUH! Later we went down to the computer room again. We (that is, just me) wrote a few e-mails, then Dan, Norman and I looked at some jokes and laughed our noses off! I can't believe how hard we were laughing, I mean, the jokes couldn't have been that funny. But Norman and I have searched for them and have never since been able to find them. All I know is that my stomach was still hurting from the laughter three days later. We slept at around 4:30am.

Which is the lie?

	Edible medals and badges were given out for winning games.
	We splat (heeheehee!) into two groups, Carolina's group buying Angelo's present and Angelo's group buying Carolina's present.
	Angelo asked me if he could look at the CD's which we had bought for him, and I was forced to refuse.
	My stomach was still hurting from laughing three days after.

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