ICPC NAC 2024

 Hello from Orlando, Florida!


I am currently lying in my bed at the end of day 2 and I'm not going to lie I don't really feel like writing a super thorough blog post, because there's just way too much that happened. And it's gonna make me anxious to write down everything and make sure I don't miss something. I'll just write some very broad stuff. There is so much to talk about, so much to write about though. 

Day 1


 - Woke up at like 3:30 AM (got 2 hours of sleep cuz i went to bed at 12 AM and couldn't even fall asleep)
 - Daniel, one of my teammates, picked Hazel and I to go to the airport, SJC. 
 - Got our boarding passes went thru security and went on first flight to Dallas
 - 1 hr layover that went to Orlando.
 - After tons of traveling we made it, and we uber'd. That uber ride was really crazy, cuz its like a 20 minute uber to the hotel and I got to see a lot of Florida. Just wow, those forests of like tropical eucalyptis trees, and jsut the general feel is just so much different. It's super hot, humid, and marshy. There's those poplar trees, palm trees everywhere with spanish moss everywhere, this landscape is so drastically different from the rest of America. Also, all those Florida license plates and all the cars don't have front plates, which is super noticeable as I lived in cali all my life. And the speed limit is a different font.
 - Checked in and did a ton of stuff, at this point it was like 6 pm or something, we went to our hotel, then got dinner which was so good omg, and then we did team checkin where we got a ton of free stuff and certificates from the sponsors and the tshirts and paperwork to make sure our names and everything was correct and then our team photo
 - After that we just went back to the hotel room and Daniel went to go on a run, that guy runs a ton, he runs like ultramarathons (50+ miles) he just casually runs when hes bored ig lmao
 - SO yea I'm in a hotel room with Daniel and this hotel is just so nice. Like that dinner at the hotel was so good, you'll see it in the photo album, there was steak, chicken, and caeser salad, and just straight up everything was top notch. And the dessert was so good omg they had the coconut bowl thing but the chocolate lava cake was so good man wow we skipped lunch because of all the traveling so having that meal was so nice
 - So anyway I spent the rest of my night walking by myself in Orlando and I kinda forgot that we were like 20 minutes away from the city lmao so I was just walking down these long streets. This outskirt of Orlando is definitely not fitting for walking because everything is just so sparse, it was nice to walk alongside a literal like swamp jungle tho, like literally on one side of me was cars then the other side was a swamp with crazy plants and birds and stuff. There could've legit been an alligator in there, that's where they vibe. Along the walk there were lizards literally everywhere, like literally every 10 seconds you'll see one just start tweaking out in front of you. Maybe they're not used to someone walking on the sidewalk because everyone in this area drives. But like if you bike here I feel like you'll legit kill some lizards cuz there are so many of them.

Day 2

 - So much happened again, but I woke up at like 8:15 (skipped breakfast which was 7-8) cuz i rly needed the sleep ig and i missed my alarm
 - took bus to UCF student union at the center of campus, its rly cool its like a shopping mall. UCF campus is really nice, its just so hot everywhere outside
 - Then we had a talk from jane street, then a guy from GaTech went over slides on contest strategy which was surprisingly funny, then a guy from MIT went over math and counting and game theory topics which was actually super motivating cuz i feel like i could really really use some targeted practice in these areas, and the problems he presented were rly thought provoking, he just went over them way too fast for me to understand the solution, will def be going back to that slide deck. Anyway then someone from UAlberta went over past contest observations and what it takes to advance to world finals which was kinda unnecessary but good info ig. Then jane street had another talk i think i dont remember there were so many presentations but whatever happened and then it was 11;15 AM and we got lunch downstaris in the building where it was like dominos pizza in a box, youll see in the photo album
 - After lunch we did like a 2 hour practice contest or it may have been 90 minutes we solve 2 problems and placed in like 30th place which is kinda what we expected but if we just solved one more problem which was do-able, we woudlve been like top 18 which is enough to make world finals. So basically we have a nonzero chance of making world finals, we just rly gotta try our best. Making world finals would be insane bruh theres seriously so many sweaty ppl, like MIT litearlly AK'd the problem set with like 20 minutes to spare bruh they were literally communicating to each other in CHINESE they were near us bruh just too much sweat going on. They have 2 LGMs on their team.
 - Then we had like another jane street talk about like jittering in the network or something and how VMs are like inconsistent or something I dont even remember, but then we went downstairs to an opening ceremony where they were literally just self sucking up to each other it was insane. They were just handing out "outstanding partner" award or something and they just gave an award to all of their sponsors it was the most like artificial thing lmao none of us signed up to watch this guy hand out these random awards to all the sponsors. It wasn't even an opening ceremony they were legit just handing out these random awards to companies. And then NSA gave a talk about some random stuff and then we dipped out and walked back to the hotel
 - Then I chilled in the room while Daniel went on a run lmao, I got some work done and stuff, then we went to dinner at 6:30 hosted by jane street where the food was just straight up incredible man. It was too much to hawndle I wanted to eat everything bruh they had like tacos with florida wagyu beef like wtf and then rly good nachos and then the pasta was SOOO good. It was also game night so there were games everywhere on the table, and jane street had a desk in the middle where they were handing out free hats and decks of cards. I periodically took 3 through the sitting which is a big success. Free hats and the hats are nice too, the jane street logo is pretty cool
 - And then yea we played poker which was so fun I didn't think I would be playing poker out here in Orlando but here we are, it was so fun, a lot of them played a lot too, like literally everyone knew the ruels and the terms very well and like the way they were dealing showed they played a lot which was funny. Good times. That was honestly the best part of this trip so far man, playing poker and then drinking the drinks that they made, it was like some custom like strawberry sprite, blueberry sprite, or cherry sprite, they also had like cherry coke. Jane street went all out with this food, the dessert was so good too, they had lime graham cracker pie things dude I was so full like it was crazy. I wanted to get a second one but dude I was so full from eating all that dinner. Like there were like strawberries and like dried bread and like fruits and stuff and like literally everything was so good. The strawberries were just casually super good like I just couldn't catch a break man I was so full holy cow dude and then the dessert comes out with cheesecakes and the lime pie thing and I'm just like MAAAAANNNN
 - So that's how day 2 went, I met a ton of ppl while playing poker from UCSD, Wisconsin-Madison, and University of Maryland. I also forgot to mention that Galen Collin was playing with us. I literally watched him like junior year, he https://www.youtube.com/@colingalen just casually has 200k+ subscribers and i gotta see him in person. Another guy I saw in person was ecnerwala, this guy is like top 10 competitive programmer in the world. Like top 5, maybe even like top 3 during his peak or something, but this guy is insane. And I got to meet him in person it's just crazy how casual it is cuz like you see all this stuff online for like 3 years and suddenly its all real. It's kinda like geoguessr when you travel and see all this geoguessr stuff in person and realize that it's all real.

Man I yapped for so much and I still feel like I'm missing some details, but either way its 12:30 AM and i gotta wake up at 7:30 cuz i dont wanna miss breakfast. I'll catch up later. 
upd: i am in shayan's vlog at the 34 minute mark, timestamped: https://youtu.be/W03UHdTtiWw?t=2036

OK BIG UPDATE IT IS 5/31 LIKE 3 DAYS AFTER NAC ENDED I WAS SO BUSY I DIDNT WRITE ANYTHING ELSE AFTER THAT

Days 3-5


 - day 3 was citadel, day 4 was NSA in the morning and then dress rehearsal, and then day 5 was the contest. Met a lot of people, played cards with UWashington on the last day, just had a really good time meeting people really, met so many ppl and so many coaches. Everyone here is so smart. 
 - Final reflections: yea everyone here is so smart its crazy, pretty much everyones like a master on codeforces. We were also treated so well, all these quantum firms like jane street and citadel and NSA mustve given so much money because just everything was awesome. Just all those details with like the contest arena, the dinners, the hotels, the free stuff, and literally everything was branded. The balloons had the logos, the badges, the lanyards, like everything was just so professional. It was crazy, what a busy event, so much happened. I straight up just can't go over everything because it's too much to wrap my head around. 
 - The contest itself was kinda bad, we solved 5 problems, and we should've solved 6 cuz I spent 2 hours developing a solution for problem F, it was literally a Rubik's cube, solving this: https://www.khanacademy.org/computer-programming/ballgame-nac/6221239198334976, it was super implementation heavy, theres many approaches, but it was literally so solvable for me. I was so close to solving it, it just took so long to implement, it took an hour for me and I ran out of time, I spent like 20 min debugging, if I had another like 20 min I swear I wouldve solved it man I rly think I wouldve solved it, I had it so locked in in my head, I THOUGHT OF IT FOR 2 HOURS I CAME UP WITH SO MANY TEST CASES. It hurts, it really does hurt, knowing that i should've solved that one
 - there's so much to go over man so much stuff happened i could legit be writing for like hours but like theres the shorts on icpc north america: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/84Zfi-4Kpg0, and icpc live stream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itcf9Nzuwfc and stuff.


That's really it, it feels so wrong to just leave this blog post off like this but I seriously dont have it in me to write about everything I just dont feel like it lmao,  what an event. Really inspired me to get my grind on, I really want to be back here, but it's so hard because I'm in like arguably the toughest region. Only 5 schools make it and we already hvae Stanford, Berkeley, UWash, and UBC. So it's just UCSC, UCD, USF, De Anza all fighting for that fifth spot.

And I won't have too much time in the summer, but man I am so motivated to get to CM on codeforces, its gonna be so hard but I need it. I really wanna be back here, i probably wont ever make world finals in my life unless some like IGM comes to UCSC for whatever reason, I just really want to be in NAC. Man dude I would do so much to make world finals thats so crazy its so prestigious and like its such a global event it reminds me of the world cup on that scale like seriously its so worldwide


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