Last weekend I went to Nuremberg in Germany to represent KTH in a collegiate programming competition. Our team (me, Ulf and Chen) ended up on the third place out of 64 teams and we advanced to the World Finals in China! The event will take place in Harbin from 1st to 6th February and we will also see Harbin International Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival.
Some people considered us to be favorites and at least I am not happy with our performance. All 3 of us had a bad day. The start was fine, but after that we had 3 bad hours. Luckily, we managed to submit 3 correct solutions in the last 40 minutes, which moved us from the 12th place to the 3rd. As usual, I had most of my good ideas on the toilet. In the end I went there quite often. And we also managed to stay calm and focus in the end. 30 minutes before the end I had the courage to delete 30 lines of code and rewrite them from the beginning. It worked!
The organizers really surprised me. We got a prize (2 bottles of red wine) for printing a lot. During the contest the competitors are allowed print their code and some related stuff. We had lots of bugs and our strategy is to debug on paper. I think we printed at least 50 pages and at most 2 at a time. Thanks to us, the people responsible for printing were not bored. On the other hand, printing a lot is considered as bad behavior. I guess we printed the maximum amount which is not yet considered as bad.
After the contest we flew to Stockholm via Amsterdam. Unfortunately, because of fog in Amsterdam, we got stuck at the airport. Hotels were full and our flight was early in the morning, so we decided to stay at the airport. We played dice and then I decided to sleep while others continued playing all night. I woke up when something hit me. It turned out to be a piece of ice. I thought it was Ulf or Fredrik who threw it at me. But few hours later somebody told me that the waitresses at the Starbucks Coffee were throwing ice at people who were sleeping there. Few people suggested that this could also be a sign of attraction, so I guess I will return there in a few weeks and ask them "What did you mean by throwing ice at me?".