Softec 2005 - Day 0

March 11, 2005

Day 0, 7:30pm: Six of us (3 from NED, 3 from FAST) united at the airport to fly down to Lahore. We took the most economical ticket of Shaheen airlines (the plane was delayed by 30 minutes!). FASTians received Rs. 4000 per person for expenses in Lahore and we had only submitted the application which had not been approved then. The journey was smooth and calm! There were two kids sitting on the seat behind ours so we had a lot of fun with them. Mehroz was enjoying the scenic beauty from the window; Usman was reading his Cormen book; Emad, Farhan and myself listening to music (I was reading DaVinci Code too!); Munir was getting bored because he didn't have anything to read or listen to. It was a petty two hours flight. We arrived at the Lahore airport! Though I've been there before but having seen the airports at the US... this time it was quite different! The airport is pretty well-built. Lahore tey akhir Lahore hai!

Day 0, 10:15p - continued: Since we were 6 people with lots of luggage, calling a friend for a ride was not a good idea so we decided to go on our own. We thought of taking a cab but we'd have to take two cabs and each was costing Rs. 400 so we decided that we need a more economical solution. The idea of putting Emad in the bunker came into my mind but then I remembered that humans ought to be treated equal (I did you a favour Emad! heh!). We took a bus to Aara Bazar, we missed the our destination and had to come back in another bus. It was past 11:00p and we were not going to get any bus for Faisal Town. We took two rickshaws and headed straight to FAST Lahore! It wasn't a very cosy solution but we saved money!

Day 0, 12:00am: Enter fast Lahore, loaded with people everywhere! They collected our luggages, gave us dinner and then we got a ride to our hostel, for the night stay. While sitting and waiting for our carrier to the hostel, we learnt that C# was not allowed in the Dynamic Programming Competition. We were all set to work out the problems in C# so it was a blow in the head for us! We decided that Visual C++ is the next best option! Since I was the official coder of my team, my childhood knowledge of STL came really handy! Usman was well-versed in STL as well! On the other hand, Mehroz had no idea of VC++ whatsoever.