Let\u2019s see. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Today is a free day!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We went out to eat at Orient Express. There were like, 12 or 13 of us, at least. Uh, let\u2019s try to list them: JW<\/strong>, KS<\/strong>, VH<\/strong>, AGe<\/strong>, EB<\/strong>, EW<\/strong>, AZ<\/strong>, Turtle<\/strong>, EX<\/strong>, CB<\/strong>, and of course, me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That list was made solely based on a selfie from the selfies-for-going-off-campus channel from the MOP discord server, so I’m not sure how accurate it is. <\/p>\n\n\n\n We were kind of, well, chaos embodied. We couldn\u2019t decide what to eat, but that\u2019s pretty typical. Then we decided to do takeout (becAuSe ventilation) and bring all the food to Tepper, so we stole fistfuls of single-use chopsticks in order to share food. We also got a bunch of plates and utensils, and then we began asking if we could take all the fortune cookies. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n\n\n\n The cashier was surprisingly willing to put up with our nonsense. He was like, \u201cYou can take as many fortune cookies as you can hold, but leave the basket, I need the basket to put the cookies in!” He was such a nice guy!<\/p>\n\n\n\n And the owner was quite nice, too. She was like, \u201cI know you\u2019re poor college students, you should try these dishes, they\u2019re cheap and big.\u201d She spoke mostly in Chinese. I think that was partly my fault though because I started speaking in Chinese to her. Anyway, I\u2019m sure mom would appreciate me practicing Chinese 😝. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Anyway, then, we took all our food to Tepper to eat. We finished most of the food, but we were all absolutely stuffed: the portions there are really huge. <\/p>\n\n\n\n After eating, we played a few games of Fish. During one of the breaks between games, while we were shuffling the cards, I wandered around and saw Po<\/strong>‘s kids playing cards with OS<\/strong> (instructor) and JB<\/strong> (MAA coordinator). His kids are VinL<\/strong> and DiaL<\/strong>, 13 and 8 years old, respectively. <\/p>\n\n\n\n JB<\/strong> had to leave just then, so I was recruited to play with them. It was really fun! We played \u201cShuttle,\u201d an interesting game that VinL<\/strong> designed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n VinL<\/strong> really likes the word \u201cinteresting\u201d and \u201chmmmmmmm.\u201d \u201cSus,\u201d too, but to a far lesser extent. DiaL<\/strong>, on the other hand, loves the word \u201chonorable.\u201d She actually only started loving that word when we were playing Shuttle, as she would say, \u201cIt\u2019s my turn! What an honor!\u201d every time it was her turn. It was quite honorable. <3<\/p>\n\n\n\n The way the game works is as follows: there\u2019s a 3×3 grid of cards in the middle. Along each side, each player has three cards, and at each of the four corners, there\u2019s another card. There\u2019s also a \u201cshuttle\u201d card, which is just a card you move from one card to the other as play progresses to track where you are. The three cards each player starts with are initially face down. When they first \u201cuse\u201d that card they flip it over. They can also use a card that\u2019s face up (so essentially, using a card erases the anonymity of the card but not one\u2019s ability to use it).<\/p>\n\n\n\n The shuttle starts at the card at the very center of the grid. Then, whoever starts the game uses one of their cards. By doing so, they must either add or subtract (in mod 13) the number on their card to the card the shuttle is currently on, and move the shuttle to that new number (the new number must be on the 3×3 grid or one of the four corners). So if the shuttle is at a 5 and the player has a Q, the shuttle either moves to 4 or 6. <\/p>\n\n\n\n There are a couple of cards that you want to move the shuttle to. If you move the shuttle to the corner card to your left, you get to take a card from the deck and it\u2019ll count as one \u201cpoint\u201d (the card itself doesn\u2019t matter; you don\u2019t ever use the card and it just lies face down in front of you or in your pocket or wherever. It just serves as a counting mechanism for points). If you move the shuttle to the corner card to your right, you get to steal someone else\u2019s card and it\u2019ll count as one \u201cpoint\u201d (so if someone has a really useful card, you can steal it from them and they won\u2019t be able to use it, though of course, neither will you). (if you move the shuttle to a corner that happens to be adjacent to someone else, it won\u2019t do anything for them because it\u2019s not their turn)<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you move the shuttle to the card in the 3×3 grid directly above one of your cards, you can discard that card and get a new one (face down, so once again anonymous) from the deck. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The game ends when the deck runs out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The point of the game is to get as many points as you can. (lol, pun entirely intended)<\/p>\n\n\n\n After \u201cShuttle,\u201d we played some Set and BS (which DiaL<\/strong> calls \u201cPorcupine\u201d because BS is a bad word. She\u2019s saying \u201cPeanut Butter\u201d now as she watches me write this 😝, which is what you say the move after you lied. She said it again! Time of writing: June 17, 10:04 pm). <\/p>\n\n\n\n The BS game went on a LONG time. VinL<\/strong> and DiaL<\/strong> ended up facing up against one another, getting most of the deck, and repeat. While they were doing that, I started balancing DiaL<\/strong>‘s penguin (which was the size of a normal teddy bear) on my head. RW<\/strong> eventually came over to watch the game with us for a while. I delighted in showing her DiaL<\/strong>‘s penguin, Penguan, which squeaks when one squeezes it correctly. She, too, has a squeaky penguin! We proceeded to wander through the groups of card players and squeak the penguins next to their ears. It was terrific fun. I think people became quite annoyed by us (those who even noticed us, anyway), but it was fun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Set game was also \u2026 interesting. DiaL<\/strong> showed us her version of the game, \u201cMessy Set,\u201d which was essentially throwing the cards on the table topsy-turvy & haphazardly, with no limit on the number of cards on the table. DiaL<\/strong> was the best at the game, then VinL<\/strong>, (then RW<\/strong> when she joined later), then me. As you can tell, the skill level in Set decreases with time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Or, you know, After hanging out at Tepper for a bit longer, Mock IMO Coordination began so I went off to that. While we kids had been hanging out in Tepper, the staff had a staff meeting, during which they decided that we can\u2019t go through the window anymore. \ud83d\ude41<\/p>\n\n\n\n Essentially, we used to just climb through the window to the backyard to go to Po<\/strong>\u2019s story time because Stever doesn\u2019t allow us to open any door beside the front door. However, Po<\/strong> decided that, “no, the window is like a guillotine, you can\u2019t stick your neck through,” so now we have to run around the front and it\u2019s very annoying. <\/p>\n\n\n\n When I got to the MIMO Coordination, it had not started yet. MIMO Coordination is essentially where Po <\/strong>and SR<\/strong> argue for points for the IMO team members from the graders to simulate the conditions of the real IMO for those on the IMO team. This year, RZ<\/strong> decided to coordinate for the returning girls, as well. However, some of the girls had not yet returned to Stever, so they asked me to run off to go fetch them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As such, I spent a while running back and forth across the parking lot between Stever and Tepper in search of the girls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The MIMO Coordination itself was interesting. I think someone or other described it as, like, essentially a spectacle where the Coordinators argue with the graders until the students randomly got good partials. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The whole time RZ<\/strong> was arguing for points for the girls, she was saying such things as \u201cit\u2019s the moral <\/em>way of solving the problem\u201d (her way of saying the students were on the right track) and \u201cthis rubric is horrible\u201d (she complained about the rubric so many times!).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Also, a few of us (DerL<\/strong>, Turtle<\/strong>, one or two others, and I) crouched down under four or five umbrellas to form an umbrella turtle. It was an entirely productive and wonderful use of our time.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n After MIMO was dinner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dinner at Resnik is sometimes a tad sad. Like, the hot buffet isn’t superb. If the fruit had been good then I would be mostly happy, and most of the time, the fruit is<\/em> good. But sometimes, it’s, like, a bit rotten. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After dinner, I went to the YL<\/strong>‘s seminar. It was really chill: essentially, we got a bunch of blankets on the ground and just sprawled out in the backyard (all the seminars and singing troupes and Po<\/strong>‘s storytimes are held in the backyard to prevent COVID-19) as we listened to him. The topic was about min cut max flow, which is essentially where you consider a (weighted) directed graph as a sort of pipe system and figure out how much water can go through it. YL <\/strong>was working on an algorithm for finding the max flow. Old algorithms used to be just looking for paths in the graph, but that was really slow. New algorithms focus on using matrices or something and multiplying them (? I don\u2019t really remember, i\u2019m writing this on June 19, but I understood it during the class!), which have brought the speed to ~O(n1.5<\/sup>). It had since advanced to something like n10\/7<\/sup>, which is really, really ugly.<\/p>\n\n\n\nmaybe im just terrible at the game and looking for excuses<\/s><\/p>\n\n\n\n