Having missed the ticket to Amritapuri by a whisker , the Kanpur-Gwalior site (hosted by Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management-Gwalior , Oct 3-4 , 2009) was our (Chidambaram and Vidhoon were my team-mates) only chance this year . If it weren’t for seniors from MIT we would have slept all the way to Delhi on the Grand Trunk Express . The hospitality shown by the students right from pick up on arrival at the station ( 1:00 A.M !! ) till our departure was gracious . I wished we could emulate their hospitality for our college fests . We were wonder-struck by the campus and facilities provided for the students . A well-maintained lush green campus seemed to sprawl over hundreds of acres .
The inaugural function held on the first day morning included introduction of all 60 teams . One notable incident was the announcer mispronouncing ‘guindy’ and ‘cegit’ (our team-name) . And there was a crazy professor from an IIT who opposed the idea of teams bringing in ’25 sheets of printed material’ (actually allowed by ICPC rules) but allowed the teams to bring in ‘algorithm textbooks’ for the contest – lol 🙂
lawn in the middle of the hostel!
We were accommodated in the hostel rooms. Very spacious rooms with neatly made up beds – 2 such rooms for three of us !! The facilities in their hostels were unbelievable – a huge LCD T.V , badminton courts , T.T boards , a huge lawn in the middle of the hostel & a snooker table!! . ‘Lucky students’ study there . To describe the mess – it would be more appropriate to call it a small restaurant serving delicious food – we loved the food(i promise i’m not being sarcastic).
There was one practice contest – we managed to finish 19th and decided that a finish within top 20 or 25 would be
our target for the finals . Vikram & Santosh anna’s team from MIT topped the rank list .
The student strength in IIIT-M is very less (only courses related to IT are offered) but the students enjoy high-tech infrastructure . We had to take a photocopies of some papers . There was a Xerox shop in their administrative building and we got our photocopies done – no charge at all (what a way to treat other college students!!) .
Chatting in their canteen , we lost track of time and missed the trip to Gwalior Fort!
from left - Vidhoon , Chid and me
Main Contest-Day 2
The contest started with 7 problems to solve in 4.5 hours . Due to poor organization we could not view other teams’ submissions -this would have helped us locate the easy problems. But here we were left to fend for ourselves . A few questions were ambiguous – there was no mention about the size of inputs ! We tried to locate the easy problems but in vain . An hour and forty minutes passed – we had not solved even one problem . Had we traveled 1800 Km for putting up such a dismal show? We were the lone team from ceg – only we could put our college’s name on the scoreboard . With tremendous pressure and frustration building up we decided that a wrong submission was definitely better than not submitting at all . We coded a problem – well aware that for any input ‘n’ value greater than ‘6’ our program would timeout. Only a miracle could get it accepted . And the miracle happened !! We found ourselves in 19th position again . We realized that they had incredibly weak test cases (we later found out that it was deliberate-not mentioning of ‘n’ size was purportedly a twist in the question 😮 ) . The volunteers tied a balloon at a team’s desk for every correct submission – the balloons were fun . In another hour another miracle happened and we made it 2 balloons (once again thanks to mediocre test cases). I immediately opened the scoreboard . “F***” found its way out of my mouth . We were placed 8th with an hour and a half remaining!! In a more relaxed manner we attempted the 3rd question but in the end ran out of time . We had gradually slipped to finish 12th overall 🙂 – not a bad one !! It was one of those rare lucky days when everything goes your way – we made only 2 submissions but both were accepted !! Amidst all this excitement Chid kicked the CPU down to the floor a couple of times making all heads turn toward us 😉 . We had absolutely no idea of what was waiting for us at the valedictory function .
At the valedictory function Disaster struck – the top ten teams were ranked and all teams from 11 to 60 were termed ‘honorable mention’ . The official rank list (even on their website )contained only 10 places – the rest 50 were arranged alphabetically under the category ‘honorable mention’ . ‘enna kodumai Sir ithu ‘- No proof of our finish 😦 .
It was only a month later that we found that the standings put up in Baylor’s site included our 12th position (mentioned as joint 11th – only God knows why?)!!
Standings can be seen here .
Heavy rains and floods across the country had ensured that the climate during our stay was pleasant – always cloudy with drizzling and a bit of sunshine . When it was time to leave we wished we could stay there itself in those cozy rooms eating sumptuous meals prepared in their Mess .
with teams from MIT and NIT-Trichy
Kannan KV 