Softec 2005 - Day 1
The night at the PTCL lodging was nice. I woke up early, took a bath, did a shave and we were ready to raise hell! The bus was a bit late but we made it to FAST well ahead in time before the contest started. We ate a bunch of Shawarmas before the contest started. We did a photo session with the indians during the lunch session and we made good friends! Gagan, Supreet, Kunal... only to name a few. Usman and I heard drums and guitars near the hall where the initial ceremony took place and went to take a look. FAST had planned an entertainment night planned for the particpants and guests and the guys were preparing for it. They were generous enough to let me in that small place where they were practicing and I sung with him the Lifehouse song Hanging by the Moment. It was so much fun! Now it was time to do some programming!
Today was the warmup round since there were lots of people who did not know how to use PC^2 and had so many questions about the nature of the problems. Finally the contest started, we were team-21 on the warmup day. There were indian teams all around us. I was on the keyboard and Mehroz and Usman were doing the major thinking (lucky me!). We were sitting on a Dell machine with a 17" monitor! We worked hard but ended up in 5th position. We didn't take long to revise VC++ and STL and we were alive and kicking in minutes. Mehroz proved to be an extremely fast learner when he got hang of VC++ in a very short time. By the way, we guys messed up a simple binary search algorithm, can you believe that? Doh!
Well finally that was over, we headed to the entertainment show! The FAST Karachi guys left off with their teacher to explore places in Lahore! They missed the entire contest and they have no idea what they missed! The FAST Lahore people were awesome! They did a drama, they did a bunch of live songs and a guy did amazing magic tricks with the teachers from the Indian delegation. An IIT professor was called upon the stage to sing a song and he sang an old classical indian song for his wife in Bombay. Next, we had a sufi item from a three very special people. They performed for about 50 minutes and they brough the entire crowd into a trance. Bunch of volunteers went to the stage to dance and I joined them. It was so much fun!
We had dinner and were taken to our lodges after that. The first day of contest ends here!
Today was the warmup round since there were lots of people who did not know how to use PC^2 and had so many questions about the nature of the problems. Finally the contest started, we were team-21 on the warmup day. There were indian teams all around us. I was on the keyboard and Mehroz and Usman were doing the major thinking (lucky me!). We were sitting on a Dell machine with a 17" monitor! We worked hard but ended up in 5th position. We didn't take long to revise VC++ and STL and we were alive and kicking in minutes. Mehroz proved to be an extremely fast learner when he got hang of VC++ in a very short time. By the way, we guys messed up a simple binary search algorithm, can you believe that? Doh!
Well finally that was over, we headed to the entertainment show! The FAST Karachi guys left off with their teacher to explore places in Lahore! They missed the entire contest and they have no idea what they missed! The FAST Lahore people were awesome! They did a drama, they did a bunch of live songs and a guy did amazing magic tricks with the teachers from the Indian delegation. An IIT professor was called upon the stage to sing a song and he sang an old classical indian song for his wife in Bombay. Next, we had a sufi item from a three very special people. They performed for about 50 minutes and they brough the entire crowd into a trance. Bunch of volunteers went to the stage to dance and I joined them. It was so much fun!
We had dinner and were taken to our lodges after that. The first day of contest ends here!
posted by Whiz Kid @ 2:48 PM
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