June 20, 2022: New Camp and RAMP

Breakfast at Stever

Due to it being Juneteenth, the dining hall was closed for breakfast. Because I’ve started sleeping later and later, I’ve stopped showering at night. Instead, I shower in the morning, after I dance (I used to shower in the afternoon, wash my hair every other day, and rinse in the morning after dance; now I simply shower in the morning, washing my hair every other day). This, however, means that I either need to wake earlier or be faster in my morning ablutions. I’ve taken to skipping putting my contacts in and saving that for after showering, when I’m more awake.

Knowing that the dining hall is closed for breakfast, I also took my time a bit more, so that I only went downstairs into the lounge at around 8:30 am.

Once downstairs, I ate some cereal and apples. I also cleaned up the mess near the snack table, as there was cereal scattered all over the ground because teenagers are messy.

Because I usually fill my water bottle with tea in the morning at Resnik (hot water + tea bag), I couldn’t do so today. I have some tea bags because the staff at Resnik gave me some after that time they ran out, but I don’t have any hot water. So I asked JB if there was hot water anywhere. She let me into the kitchen, where I heat some water in the microwave. Besides water, there were also boxes of fruit snacks and cheezits! So I asked if I could have some of the snacks, was given an affirmative, and took some fruit snacks and a bag of cheezits :). Then, JB put the box of fruit snacks out onto the snack table.

Classtime

My first class of the day was number theory, taught by Po. Basically, he went over some of the more basic topics in number theory (Chinese remainder theorem, etc.). He talked about how he always used to consider results in number theory and solving number theory problems as akin to magic: he wasn’t sure how these results came about, simply applied them to the problems in expectation that it would work.

He mentioned one Mathcounts countdown round wherein the question was something that seemed to simply apply Wilson’s Theorem, so they raced for the buzzer and the buzzer race winner hurredly spat the answer out according to that theorem. However, Wison’s Theorem, as one may recall, requires the condition that the number is prime or some such—a condition that was not satisfied. The other contestant was utterly bemused and confused and just spent the rest of the time staring at the problem, until finally they buzzed in…with the same exact wrong answer :P.

The second class was inversion, taught by MH.

I hate geometry.

End of.

New Camp at Resnik

I walked to lunch with some other blue and blackers + Turtle, taking a shortcut they didn’t expect me to know. They were complaining about why the Red and Green MOPpers know the “secret” path to lunch through the path through the glass bridge. Apparently, blue and blackers made a deal not to show anyone else so that they would have an advantage over Red and Green in getting to Lunch.

I’ve actually been along that path so many times, though? Like, I think Po brought us along there at one point and JW also showed me it once? Anyway. Yeah. It’s not a well-kept secret.

Anyway, once we came out of the path, we saw RW and EW and the group up front so we ran ran ran to catch up and then they started run run running and then it was very tiring.

Once we got there I tried looking for hand sanitizer. None of the three dispensers I tried actually contained anything, so eventually, I went to the bathroom to just wash my hands. The bathroom is downstairs and it’s kind of creepy.

And most importantly, there was another camp there. I think Turtle or someone was wondering who they were, so I went over and asked someone random. Apparently, it’s a camp called Id Tech that sort of had, like, subcamps? I guess? Like there were a lot of different little subsets focused on different subjects (AI, prob animation or smth, etc.) and different age ranges, so there were tiny little middle schoolers (maybe even elementary schoolers) alongside people the same age as us.

That camp got there before we did, so we had to wait an eternity for them to finish getting their food. Then, once we got to the front, I think the plates ran out. By the time we finally got our food, we realized that—horror of horrors!—the other camp had taken our garage!

Instead, most of the MOPpers who already got their food were in the lobby between Resnik and the garage. The TJ kids were in the Egg Shoppe.

I went into the garage to talk to them because I was rather curious and the boy I talked to while waiting in line for food was very much not actually helpful in telling me what was going on. I somehow ended up talking to a long-haired dude who was something of a camp counselor/leader/adult something. After introducing myself as a MOPper, I made some joke about duking it out, gladiator style, perhaps with Po as our champion fighting against some champion of theirs in order to gain control of the Garage.

Except I think he sort of took me seriously because he was like, “No! Let’s not fight over this,” and then he asked me if I could bring an adult.

I think they thought I was some sort of MOP representative :P.

Anyway, so then I went to go tell Po that the Id Tech people wanted to talk to him. He was still in line, getting food, so I went back to my seat and sat down to eat (I was sitting with the TJ kids inside the Egg Shoppe). It wasn’t very effective eating, though, as every few minutes I would pop my head out to see if Po had finished getting his food, yet.

Eventually, he had, so DX and I trailed after Po like little ducklings as he went to go talk to the other people. It was so great! He finished negotiating in, like, 5 minutes top!

Essentially, he spoke to the long-haired guy, who then introduced him to a lady who was in some sort of administrative role. Po sort of briefly explained what MOP is: a boarding summer camp for math where every other day, students take a 4.5 hour test. When the lady heard about the “4.5 hour test,” her eyes kind of went wide and she went, “Oh wow!” Soon after that, Po also mentioned that he asked the staff to open this garage specifically for MOPpers and that we’re really worried about ventilation and COVID safety. The combination of her surprise at the length of the test and the understanding that this garage was meant for MOPpers only resulted in her agreeing that Id Tech would not use the Garage. They even agreed to come fifteen minutes earlier so our two camps’ lunch times wouldn’t even really overlap!

And then after that, he basically just small-talked with the lady, though it was more just him asking questions of her and her talking a lot.

SO. COOL.

After that, DX and I returned to our seats in the Egg Shoppe. At the table next to ours (our table was, like, three or four little tables pushed together), I saw a guy I first saw on June 16, when I was waiting in the food area for the staff to find tea. He wanted to get more helpings, but they wouldn’t allow him to have multiple helpings at the same time before finishing the previous helping. However, I think he had to catch a class, or something, so he couldn’t actually sit at Resnik and eat. I feel like, considering that, it’s not the greatest system they’ve got going.

Food at Resnik during noon was a brunch today due to Resnik closing for breakfast. When I say “brunch,” though, I just mean “breakfast that happens to be during lunchtime.” So, scrambled eggs, bacon, tater tots, and sausages.

Assembly

After lunch, we had an assembly. We found this form in the assembly room! The QR code sends you to an online form. It seemed totally serious, which makes it so hilarious. And the fact that someone actually took some of the strips from the bottom…

During the assembly, we talked about how the TSTST will be administered, talent show sign-ups, room checks (which, btw, I don’t think ever actually happened? Or if it did, we weren’t informed when. Like, they mentioned “we’ll room check everyone soon” and then…nothing?), and the schedule for the rest of the week (a “7-day forecast,” but it wasn’t much of a forecast as it didn’t even predict the rain that evening :P). I already signed up for the talent show with my 罗敷行 solo dance. We’re going to Kennywood, a local amusement park, on Sunday, and I also already signed up for that. It’ll be so exciting!

While this was all going on, Turtle also sent out a form to the people in singing troupe to vote on what songs we’ll be singing at the talent show. Singing Troupe these past few days has mainly consisted of singing songs that people brought up as options for singing at the talent show, so now we’re voting on it. The songs we ended up deciding on were:

• Another Day of Sun
• A Million Dreams 
• Music of Night 
• Defying Gravity 
• Let it go
• Into the Unknown

I sat next to Turtle because Turtle is a great guy and he’s rather funny to talk to.

RAMP Talk

Then, we had the RAMP talk! This time, there was a RAMP person in-person talking to us and one on the zoom screen. The one on Zoom was named Calvin, while the one in-person was named Camden Ko. It was such a great talk!

Most of the slides consisted of meme photos. One of the slides was the question: Pick two out of the following. They will defend you and the rest will kill you.

• 50 eagles
• 10 crocodiles
• 3 bears
• 7 ox
• 1 sniper
• 15 wolves
• 10,000 rats
• 5 gorillas
• 4 lions

There were some excellent responses. (“Hey hey hey! This is a very important question,  no talking!” – Camden Ko)

• Eagles + rats (CH) bc the rats are kind of a given just quantity-wise, and if the eagles aren’t on your side, they can get past all the rats, so you need the eagles on your side.
• Gorilla + rats (AA): he can easily outrun the ox and bears, the gorillas can take care of the lions, the rats can take care of the wolves, and … something about the sniper?
• Choose the Eagles to ride them and choose the sniper so he doesn’t snipe the eagles down (DX)
• Sniper + rats (JC): bc when you wait for the animals to get to you, you’re going to be bored so you need another person to play poker with. And the rats, well, the rats can be the chips, because there’s 10,000 of them. So with rats and the human, yeah, you’re not going to be bored. 
• Only choose the sniper and convince all the other animals that they’re supposed to kill the sniper (Turtle)

That slide was sort of meant to explain that you have to make compromises and stuff as a software engineer.

RAMP itself is a company that sort of makes credit cards for businesses? A lot of past olympiaders (computer and math and even physics) work there.

I talked a bit with both Calvin and Camden. It was very interesting.

That was such a good talk! I feel like the talks have just been getting better as camp goes on, and I was honestly a bit worried about the next one. After all, knowing me, I would hype it up in my mind as even better than this one, yet I didn’t think that was really all that possible. Thus, I was afraid that I would be sorely disappointed. Then, I realized this was the last talk. Oh, okay. Good?

Then we did a COVID test.

Wandering

After the RAMP talk, Turtle and I walked out. We decided to be “adventurous” and “explore,” so rather than taking the tried and true path out of Doherty, we started going up and down the stairs and wandering all over the building. Eventually, we managed to find our way out of Doherty, except once we were out, we were sort of unsure where to go. We set out in some random direction, wandered past some glass buildings that Turtle told me used to hold the blue and black classes (apparently, this is the first time that he knows of that the red, green, blue, and black classes have all been in the same building! I’m so glad about this because, during breaks between the first and second classes, I always like to wander to the other classrooms (particularly blue and black), and that would be sort of impossible if they weren’t all in the same building.), until eventually, we realized we were going in the wrong direction.

So we turned around and started walking in the opposite direction. Somehow, we found Wean Hall, except we managed to drop a few altitude gates and ended up at the bottom of it.

By this, I mean that Wean Hall is sort of partly on a cliff. We usually get into Wean Hall on the fifth floor and go down to the fourth floor for classes, yet somehow, this time, we managed to be on the same level as the first floor. ?

Around the same time, I also saw some sort of hot air balloon?

We continued wandering until we reached a green area, with trees and bushes and grass. I hadn’t even realized that such a nice place existed on the CMU campus, which probably tells me I should explore the actual campus more 😛

Badminton

Somehow, as we were wandering through this green area, we found EW, EB, and RW playing badminton on a tennis court!

This was utterly hilarious because we stumbled upon them while we were lost, while they set out purposefully looking for this tennis court and still took forever to find it!

Anyway, at this point, I sat down on a lounge chair and started working on my journal (I was still on June 14 and wrote a good chunk) while Turtle, EB, RW, and EW played badminton.

Then, it started raining.

Somehow, those four continued playing badminton through the rain. I was too lazy to get up and move the lounge chair to the left (and also I’d gotten into a good rhythm with my writing), where it would be protected from the rain by a bridge of some sort above, so instead, I just grabbed someone’s umbrella, turned into a hunchback ball, and typed under that umbrella’s protection.

I’m honestly a bit surprised I didn’t catch a cold 😛

RW kept complaining that Turtle was cheating, while Turtle kept insisting that RW just didn’t want to accept her loss. Eventually, they stopped playing badminton while EB and EW just started bouncing the shuttlecock on their racket. I finished a few more sentences in my journal and got up to play badminton.

I’m kind of terrible, so I teamed up with Turtle to play against RW.

RW absolutely trounced us. Turtle kept insisting, “That’s not out of bounds :(((” when our hits were clearly out of bounds (or vice versa). It was very funny.

Writing Panel

Then I looked at my watch and realized that I was going to be late for the writing panel (which was at 5 pm)! I signed up to talk about writing, yet now I was going to be late 🙁

So I tore out of there and ran back to Stever, as the writing panel would take place in the piano room.

It was a lot of fun!

The panel was with the TJ gang. Specifically (according to DX‘s blog), it was DX, EX, LZ, VT, VinL, DiaL, and later MK.

We basically just spent the time chatting, though half the time the topic wasn’t about writing 😛

It was very fun. The TJ Gang is quite nice.

Somehow, LZ and I started talking about taking selfies with everyone at MOP, since AZ and JC were doing phone numbers and addresses. JC and AZ were sitting nearby playing Catan, so I took a chaos selfie :P.

LZ and I also talked about doing a vlog and being very excited about the idea!

Also, during the writing panel, Turtle went into the kitchen because I think I might’ve mentioned there were a bunch of snacks inside. So then when he went in, I suspected that he was going to steal some of the snacks, so I followed (it was totally altruistic: I clearly didn’t want to steal anything at all.). And then he thought I was trying to steal food, so he took the whole box of cheezits and started running, and then I ran after him, and we just ran around and around and around.

Eventually, we did settle down, though it takes a while. As for the box of fruit snacks that JB brought out in the morning? Why, it was completely gone by the time I got back for the writing panel! 

Fruit snacks are rather popular and delicious, so each person took a couple rather than just one. And then JC came along, saw this box of fruit snacks, and took the entire box! There were still about twenty, apparently, but it’s all in his room now :(.

Lu Lu’s Noodles

Then, a huge crowd of us went to get dinner at Lu Lu’s Noodles. LZ recorded a vlog as we walked! (According to those in the vlog and also photos in the selfies channel) I think the people who went to Lu Lu’s Noodles were RQ, EX, DD, Me, LZ, MK, VT, DX, LR, ESh, CH, AZ, and JC. Part of the way to Lu Lu’s Noodles, AZ decided to give JC a piggyback ride.

As we were walking to Lu Lu’s Noodles, I saw (through the glass) Turtle, EB, RW, and EW walking inside Tepper. They apparently just finished eating at some other asian food place already (I feel so betrayed they didn’t tell me they were going :(( ). I tried to find an entry into Tepper near where they were so I could actually talk to them rather than just wave eagerly, but it was futile: I ran around and couldn’t find any entrance, and then had to run to catch up to the rest of the Lu Lu crowd.

When we were at Lulu’s Noodles, I ordered zha jiang mian (炸酱面). When they were serving the food, they brought me some sort of dried noodle concoction. I was so confused, like, I was all, “Is this mine?”

They were like, “Yes,” so I shrugged my shoulders and figured maybe they just didn’t know what 炸酱面 was supposed to look like?

So I started eating.

And then AZ gets some zha jiang mian and he’s like, “Wait, did I order this?” And we ended up realizing, wait, I got his thing and he got mine! And it was terrible because I swear, the noodles that he ordered were still raw or something, they were all crispy and dry!

So then AZ came over and tried some of what he ordered, decided it was disgusting, and ate my 炸酱面 instead. Like! Like!!!!!!!! I actually feel cheated here 🙁 (my complaints)

JC, meanwhile, got a dish with a lemon slice on the side to be squeezed into the dish. He decided to eat the lemon slice after squeezing the lemon juice. To be fair, lemons are also citruses.

Later, as we were leaving, AZ decided to help eat leftovers 😛

Singing Before Troupe

On our way back, I saw RW, EW, and EB sitting at a table near Tepper.

I went over to join them. RW was attempting to get EW to sing Chinese songs because she complains that EW‘s Chinese is too bad (she likes to go around asking people showing people two pages in a notebook and asking them which side has better handwriting. One side is RW‘s, which is neat print, and the other side is EW‘s, which is cursive. On EW‘s side, RW wrote (in Chinese) her disapproval of EW‘s handwriting. I claimed that RW‘s side was better because it has no Chinese, which is good because understanding Chinese requires too much auxiliary brainpower).

Once I joined her, she asked me what Chinese song I would like to sing.

I decided to sing 童话. She pulled up the lyrics, and EW and I started singing along.

Less than thirty seconds in, she stops the music and is like, “Stop stop stop!” Apparently, EW‘s Chinese is too bad to understand the lyrics and I’m too off-tune to sing it well. 🙁

So she started having us practice.

And then somehow, we found out that apparently, I sing better when I’m not accompanied by music when compared to when I am accompanied by music?

Then, we had to run back to Stever because we were going to be late to singing troupe :P.

Singing At Troupe

We needed sort of leaders for singing troupe who would sing loudly and everyone else would follow them. LR was a leader (he’s very enthusiastic about singing troupe and sings quite loudly: He once said, “Some of you should sing louder: This is singing troupe, not singing LR!”), but we also needed a leader for high notes. VT was picked for that.

I stood next to VT for a while, but my singing was sort of throwing him off because I was so off-tune. I felt sort of worse than useless, so I went to stand next to Turtle and turn pages for him (Something I did before, as well, but I initially thought I probably shouldn’t as we’re actually practicing for the talent show, now. Then I decided, who cares, I’ll just flip his pages during the talent show, as well.).

After singing troupe, we did Po’s story time. The topic was “How to apply for college (and really for anything),” held in Tepper. We talked a bit about the usefulness of connections, the concept of volunteer hours, and then we mentioned how important it is to be close to your counselor.

When we got back to Stever, DiaL told me about how she’s learning Braille! She showed me some notebook papers that she poked holes into, and it’s so so so so cool!!!!!

JC and I discovered that we can sneak onto the fifth floor by taking the side stairs, and as no one ever goes up there, it’s a wonderful place to duck curfew at! We also talked about colleges and TSTSTs.

Eventually, I went up to bed in low spirits, rolling it all through my mind.