ICPC @ Amritapuri
A (not so) great end to our acm contests – The 32nd ACM ICPC at Amrita Institute, Amritapuri, Kerala, 2007.
Since we dint have the foresight to book tickets in advance during this sabarimala season, we had to go to Trichy, and from there to Ernakulam and (again) from there to Kayankulam by bus. But then the scenic campus and the (very) friendly volunteers more than made up for it. I could write a whole page on how well they did their job, how helpful they were and so on.
Coming to the contests, we did well in the first practise contest (as always) and sort of ok with second one. But the main contest was a tragedy – a tragic end to our stint with icpc. After 2 probs in the first half hour we were second place behind xtc++. But then , even after another 4.5hrs, when the contest ended, we had only 2 probs to our credit and ended up in 16th place – our worst in icpc. We felt the problem set was biased toward geometry. Tien-Ren-Chen and his ‘Colorful Bee’ of NTU came in first with CMI in second place.
My junior Vijay from MIT has blogged about his experiences here.
Some highlights -
Accomodation was not good. We had to walk a loong way to the ladies hostel which was with Amma’s Ashram, across the othe side of a backwater. And our room was on fifth floor in a building without lifts. And mineral water in bottles for boys? No such luck here, we had to walk down 2 floors to fillup our own bottles.
The food wasnt that good and the quantity was also not enough. And after five flights of stairs, I was hungry all the time.
The boatwater ride saw us being (literally) ragged by a third year boy from Erode – Jeeva. “Oru tamil paatu padungalaen.. fourth years a? Neenga podatha aatama.. “. Oora vittu ooru vanthu..
Volunteers were just great. They did everything with such enthusiasm, much better than last year’s event.
We wanted to come in the top five very badly. We did manage to come, but stayed there for only a few hours.. 
P.S. Mit Vijay was loitering around (among other superb costumes) in his TCCC 07 T shirt. I havent got it yet .. x(
Filed under: general/musings | 8 Comments
No extra curricular activities mentioned in ur post :p .
ok, here goes : (away from the main page)
Photos were taken – with not one or two but three cameras – photos that should not or could not be taken with flash, without the knowledge of the ‘captured’ person(s)!!
)
The result – we have quite a collection of photos that are in various hues of black, that only we can claim to be of some importance!!
Some of the names are mentioned in my blog and
some in mit vijay’s blog!!
Did they have their usual dose of `brainwashing’ before any event?
Not quite.. We only had a meditation & yoga class and a student talk besides the contest ..
i am an icpc volunteer at amritapuri….i just wanted u to know that we were only 35 ppl for 174 guests..it was those same faces u were seeing everywhere(well,thats a compliment for us..)..so pls correct this :” But then there were as many (perhaps more) volunteers as contestants.”..
@ Sabari : I’m sorry, i shouldn’t have said that. But you people did a great job, thanks for everything!
“A girl who codes… Awesome!! :p”