Kurniady's Blog

Introducing Kurniady’s Technical Blog

2009-01-12T13:03:00.000-08:00

Because this blog is geared more into my stories of traveling, competition events, and such, I have decided to create a new blog dedicated for technical articles. The Kurniady's Technical Blog will contain my posts on more technical matters, especially in software development, new technologies, reviews, and such. Feel free to drop by, it'll be nice if you can learn a new thing or two.

-Andrian Kurniady

Day 8 (September 26th) - Returning to Jakarta

2008-12-31T12:00:00.000-08:00

The last day was quite uneventful. I continue packing some of my things and had a lunch before my uncle and auntie drive me to the airport. The check-in process was, however, quite unpleasant. It was an extremely long queue on the Qantas economy class check-in (I guess that's the way Qantas do business, everywhere). We were queuing when a Qantas staff told some of the people to follow her, to the business class check-in counter (obviously to reduce the queue). After the check-in completes, the check-in agent told us to queue on the economy class next time (as he is in a business class check-in counter). Not a big deal but I guess that's kinda rude since it's not our intention to queue there initially (the staff told us to!). Maybe next time I'll try Singapore Airlines instead.

(On the way to the airport)

(The duty free shopping area)

The airport itself was actually under some renovation in some parts. After checking in, I proceed to the security check and immigration. I stop by one of the duty free shop to buy some more chocolates. Not far away is the waiting area and boarding gate, nowhere as big as Singapore's Changi airport. While waiting, I tried a vending machine, which happens to also accept credit cards. I bought a big bottle of lemonade with a Visa card, and brought it into the plane later on. So I guess we're allowed to bring liquids into the aircraft afterall :P . The Singapore Airlines' A380 is also waiting on another gate. Since I don't like Qantas, I suppose I'd try it next time.

(The Singapore Airlines' A380)

(The waiting area is rather dull)

(The Boeing 767 which took me back to Jakarta)

The flight back to Jakarta was quite uneventful. Immigration queue in CGK was quite normal, but it took quite some time for the baggage to come out on the carousel. The one week of journey ends here, but I'll be working in Sydney soon so there will be much more story to come.

-Andrian Kurniady

(All photos are copyrighted, please ask for permission before reproducing)

Day 7 (September 25th) - The Blue Mountains

2008-12-30T23:09:00.000-08:00

The seventh day would be my last effective day in Sydney. As planned, the day was filled with a day tour. The tour guide speaks in Chinese, but it was rather okay since I can understand quite a bit of Chinese. At around 7am, my cousin took me to the place where the tour bus will pick me up, which is just across the street of Paddy's Market. There wasn't many people in the group, so there aren't a lot of waiting around involved in the day's trip. The first place we visited was the Featherdale Wildlife Park, located not far further than the suburb of Parramatta.

(The park entrance)

The park itself is not so big, but it packed quite a complete collection of Australian wildlife. The koalas are located near the entrance, along with some other species that I don't remember. Most of the koalas I saw there were sleeping, uniquely hugging the tree as they do. A quick check on Wikipedia tells me why most of them are sleeping: it's because koalas normally sleep 16 to 18 hours a day due to the slow metabolism rates.

(A koala sleeping on a tree)

(Each koala was given a name and its birth date noted)

Right after the koala area were the kangaroos (or rather, wallabies, because they're small with less than 1 meter in height). Tourists are allowed to feed them with the given food, which makes a good photo opportunity. However, the kangaroos look bored and sleepy, and some looks rather skinny as well. Well, maybe their lifes there are not that happy afterall.

(Me, feeding the kangaroo)

There are several other interesting animals there. One of them are the wombats, which like to live in tunnels in the rocks (and got pockets too!). Although it's not a polar region, penguins are also there.

(The wombat)

(The penguins)

(A beautiful bird, dunno what it is actually)

(A porcupine)

(I think this bird comes from Indonesia, the Peacock)

Done with the wildlife park, our journey continued towards the Blue Mountains. It was a nice highway headed to the mountains, which, unfortunately, have several segments under partial renovation as we passed by. The bus stopped for a while in the Fairmont resort (yes, Sydney got a Fairmont too!), while I took several photos on the way.

(In the highway)

(A peaceful residential area)

Being nearly an hour away from Sydney city, the area was not crowded, with many trees and a peaceful atmosphere. Maybe I would consider living here after retirement, a few decades later :D . Going further uphill, we arrived at the Scenic World, where we will be able to view the famous site, the three sisters.

(Wide view from the gondola)

(The Three Sisters, on the left)

We started there by riding a gondola which takes us through the valley, to the other hill across. The view during the ride was amazing, although not perfect due to the intense midday sunlight. I imagine coming here later in the afternoon would be a better opportunity to take photos.

(A bird, enjoying the scenic view too :P)

A ride downhill on a train follows after that, on what they claim to be the world's steepest railway. Quite true, on the steepest part, the slope is as steep as some 45 to 60 degrees.

(As it gets later in the afternoon, the sky gets better)

(The place was called the Katoomba Coal Mine)

(These signs along the trail explains about several things)

The next part of the scenic tour is not that interesting, as we follow a walk on a trail which seems to be part of a very old mining site. The ride back uphill is on a gondola, which is quite crowded, making it difficult to take photos. I had lunch in there before the journey continues.

(The main entrance to the Scenic World)

The next, and last site to be visited for the day was the Jenolan Caves, which is located quite far away, further into the Blue Mountains area. It's basically a series of caves naturally formed due to water erosion on the limestone mountains. The experience is quite similar to the view inside the Wieliczka saltmine in Warsaw (which is, of course, made of salt crystals instead of limestones). In my opinion, the caves in Wieliczka looks better, as it has been modified with some arts, even have it's own so-called world's largest underground chapel. This is in contrast to the Jenolan caves, in which the condition inside is preserved to be in it's natural shape. Nonetheless, it has a great view inside.

(The ticket office)

(The signs in the caves' entrance)

We went into one of the cave accompanied by a guide provided. He told us that there are actually several caves in the area, and the one we entered is just one of them. In some part of the cave, the formation of stalagmite and stalactite is still ongoing, therefore we are told not to touch anything inside. There was a concrete walking trail built inside the cave to ensure the safety of the visitors. Lighting are also available, but photography inside is still difficult.

(A mild flash is needed to complement the available light)

(Some part have colored lighting)

(Railings keeps the visitors and the cave safe)

Although my Nikkor 50mm f1.8 lens is supposed to help with the dim lighting, it was not useful since the caves have quite limited room such that a wide angle lens is needed. For the whole cave experience, I used the Tokina 12-24mm lens. The wide angle helps in minimizing the camera shake (remember the 1/zoom shutter rule? :P), while packing most of the thing into the frame.

(A tiny stalagmite)

(Without flash, it's rather hard to shoot inside)

(Some of the stones form some interesting shapes)

(This one looks like a dinosaur's head)

(The ceiling, with a lot of stalactite)

(Some of the ceilings are narrow cracks in the rocks)

(There are some tiny caves too)

After around an hour inside, finally the tour ended in another end of the cave. It's nice to finally have some fresh air after a long time inside.

(The entrance area is quite unique too)

(The way out)

The journey back to Sydney is rather long at around 3 hours. On the way I took some more photos of the countryside, some of them turned out to be great.

(A farmhouse, I guess)

(Another quiet view)

The day tour ended as I hop off the bus in Strathfield, where my uncle, auntie, and cousin picked me up. Quite a memorable day of travel, I think.

Continue to Day 8

-Andrian Kurniady

(All photos are copyrighted, please ask for permission before reproducing)

Day 6 (September 24th) - Downtown Sydney

2008-12-10T19:54:00.000-08:00

Out of the scheduled events in relation to the Google Code Jam and the interviews, I'm finally free on my own for the sixth day. The plan for the day was for me to go downtown (my uncle and auntie's house is in Bexley, somewhere near the airport) with my cousin and his wife (who are going to work), and then wander around downtown Sydney for the whole day on my own. Got off the train from the St. James train station in Hyde Park, I started by getting my camera ready. This post will contain a lot of pictures instead of word, so make sure you've got enough bandwidth quota before reading more.

(The Northern part of Hyde Park, where I started)

(The Sydney Tower, visible from almost everywhere)

My plan was to walk from there, going around to visit Mrs. Macquaries' chair, the Royal Botanic Gardens, the Sydney Opera House from up close, and finish somewhere around the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Hopefully I'll also be able to visit the Darling Harbour to see the sunset. At around 9am in the morning, the sky was bright and dramatically cloudy, perfect for great photos.

(The fountain with statues, notice the rainbow)

(It's spring in Sydney)

So, right next to Hyde Park is the St. Mary's Cathedral, which seems like an old European-style building. Since the day was bright, I was able to capture some sort of rainbow projected by the water fountain. It was an ordinary Wednesday in Sydney, and on a non-peak season like these, there were not so many tourists around.

(The St. Mary's Cathedral)

(Lighting is a bit difficult due to the high contrast)

It was actually a bit difficult to shoot a well-exposed photos. I used some sort of bracketing by taking shots for each scene, but it turns out that Capture NX fixed some of the photos significantly with it's unique D-lighting filter. So I think next time I should shoot a bit underexposed to retain the highlights and let Capture NX do it's magic by fixing the shadow areas, which would result in a perfectly exposed image of a high-contrast scene.

(An under-exposed shot turned out to be perfect)

(The St. Mary's Cathedral from the back)

Continuing from there, I walked to the Northeast, through The Domain (connecting to the RBG), while still taking several shots. On the way, I passed through the Art Gallery of New South Wales, while also catching a view of the Woolloomooloo Bay on the East.

(The map of the park)

(The view to the Woolloomooloo district)

(The Art Gallery of New South Wales)

(The skyline, Sydney Tower included)

The clouds clears up as the day gets later, resulting in a very bright sky which makes photography a bit more difficult due to the increased scene contrast. When controlled properly, the lights may allow some great photos. Boosting the saturation may help too.

(The Art Gallery, from another angle)

(Yet another harbor, in the Woolloomooloo bay area)

(At the end of the road is Mrs. Macquaries' point)

(Mrs. Macquaries' chair, made of carved stone)

(The Sydney Opera House and Harbour Bridge)

(Going up close)

It was already around 11am by the time I reached that point, which means I've walked for around two hours. After taking several photos from Mrs. Macquaries' point, I decided to have some rest by sitting on the bench facing North (with beautiful views to the sea).

(The lonely bench)

(Northern part of Sydney)

(Another viewpoint)

(The rocks made a good photo location)

One thing I like about Sydney is that, the place itself is very photogenic, such that you can make beautiful landscape shots from most of the tourist locations without much hassle.

(Yet another perfect landscape shot)

I walked back to the Royal Botanic Gardens after that, and found an array of gardens with several kinds of flowers, mostly were blooming. Since I don't really know the details about the flowers, I'll just present the photos for you. I think in the first photo were tulips, but not sure about the others.

To my surprise, there are also cherry trees, and blooming too. Can't imagine how beautiful the real cherry blossom in Japan would be, should go there and see someday.

Finished with the flowers there, I walked the West, but found the rose garden. Can't help but took some more photos there.

Well, I think that's the last flower in this post :P . I went further North towards the Sydney Opera House and took these photos on the way.

(A castle-like building with the city as the background)

(Another edge of the park, perfect for picnic)

It was around 1pm by the time I arrived near the Opera House, and the sun was even brighter than it was a couple of hours before. Nevertheless, here are the photos of the Opera House, up close.

(The Opera House, again)

(Another angle)

I walked a bit further to Circular Quay, and had my late lunch there. Finally, I tasted the "Fish and Chips" and "Lemon, Lime & Bitters", as suggested by one of my friend who lives in Sydney. The taste was good, so you should try these if you happen to visit Sydney.

(An array of old buildings on the way)

(The Sydney Harbour Bridge, up close)

Due to the limited time on the previous Sunday, I wasn't able to walk too far from Circular Quay. This time around, I have plenty of time so I walked way North until Dawes' Point. From up close, the bridge proves to be quite a unique photo object as well.

(It's a complex metal structure)

Back from Dawes' Point, I catch a train in the Circular Quay station and headed straight to Town Hall station, and walked to Darling Harbour to catch a sunset there. On the way, I passed through the "Chinese Garden of Friendship", which, unfortunately, was already closed.

(The garden's entrance, closed)

(Decorative waterworks, on the way)

In contrast to the night view I had on the earlier days, the Darling Harbour looks quite different under daylight. The buildings, reflecting golden late afternoon sunlight, shows up as pretty reflections on the water as well.

(Reflections)

(More buildings...)

Not long after, the sun sets, shining in darker orange while it does. The skyline to the West were not clear, so I decided to catch the reflected lights instead.

(More buildings, darker...)

On the end of the day, I met up with my cousin again and we headed back to Bexley. The path I took during that day can be seen on the following map (path marked in blue), thanks to Google Maps.

View Larger Map
It was quite exhausting, walking almost the whole day. So I think I'd call it a day and save some energy for the next day's trip to the Blue Mountains.

Continue to Day 7

-Andrian Kurniady

(All photos are copyrighted, please ask for permission before reproducing)

Day 5 (September 23rd) - Google Interviews

2008-11-27T20:43:00.000-08:00

The fifth day in the series is not particularly interesting to be written. The day started with me getting up at around 8am, prepared, and went down to the lobby to have breakfast with Jack (from Australia) and Jonathan (from Malaysia) in a Subway outlet nearby. It was mildly raining at that time, but the weather got better later on. Andoko departed at around 11am, after we checked out of our rooms. I left my luggage with the concierge since I was going to go to my uncle and auntie's house only later in the afternoon after the interviews.

My interviews were scheduled to begin at around noon, started with a lunch in Google's. It was a series of four interviews to finish later in the afternoon, which I can't disclose the details since it's under NDA. Jonathan was having the same interview schedule with me, but with different interviewers. During the lunch (before we started), I also met Ardian KP and Prima, who had already finished theirs and are going to depart from Sydney in the afternoon.

After the interviews, we returned back to the hotel. I waited a while for my cousin to pick me up, and Jonathan was waiting for his airport shuttle to arrive. My cousin (with his wife) took me to dinner (in a Korean/Japanese restaurant) after that, and my uncle picked us up back in the hotel after we finished. I'll be staying in their house for the next three nights while travelling around Sydney.

Continue to Day 6

-Andrian Kurniady

Day 4 (September 22nd) - Google Code Jam Onsite Regionals

2008-11-24T21:22:00.000-08:00

The contestants were expected to meet at the hotel's lobby at around 9am that morning. By the time I got there, a few Googlers are already waiting in the lobby, and other participants came soon after. We then proceed to the Google Sydney office, which is located just a couple of minutes walking to the South. Participants are not allowed to take photos inside the office, so this one below the only photo I had in the building.

(My first and only photo of Google Sydney office)

Nothing much can be told inside though, and without photos it'll be boring to explain it all in details. As scheduled, participants had their breakfast in the cafetaria, completed some documentations (NDA, photo release, reimbursement, etc.), welcomed by the engineering director of Google Sydney, and spent some time downloading and preparing their assigned workstations for the actual competition. The screens were big, internet were fast, just perfect for the competition.

A quick tour around the office (it's a wonderful workplace environment) followed after that (no photos allowed, I guess), and it's now time for lunch. Some participants also tried a game or two on the pool table, until the time for the competition comes.

Since the problemset are publicly available in the Code Jam website, I think it's also allowed for me to post how I did in the competition (you may also want to see the problemset for APAC Regional Onsite to know what I'm talking about below):

I started with problem A, which seems like another ad-hoc problem. After spending nearly an hour, I found that it's quite tricky and I gave it up (thinking to return later if I'm finished with the other problems). A lot of other participants also had not solved this problem, although some did.

I moved to problem D, in which I solved the small input in less than ten minutes. The large input is quite hard, you need some matching-on-a-tree algorithm which I never tried before, while for the small input all you need is the STL next_permutation and some code for checking the validity.

I then moved to problem B, which seems to be solvable (including the large) with simple DFS with some prunning. Coded for a while, and got the small input accepted. By that time, it was only around 20 minutes until the end of the round. I optimized the code a little (added some prunning), and run it on the large input, in which my solution runs quite fast (less than a minute or so). Unfortunately, my large submission was not correct (stupid bugs, I presume), but that doesn't matter actually since it won't advance me to the finals anyway.

I then returned to problem A small. Tried several ways, but never tried the correct one, so out of so many submissions until the end of the round, I never solved it. It would've advanced me to the world finals if I did, and it's rather disappointing to find out later (thanks to Ardian, Prima, and Bramandia) that the solution is quite easy.

In general, I think the problemset was okay. Although I'd prefer not to have that problem A in the set (this is quite subjective, since it's just that I did't get the solution at that time). Wasn't my lucky day though, as I did not perform as well as usual.

The (unofficial) result was announced soon after, by John Dethridge with his admin login. A few hours later, the official result came out and we found out that there are 3 Code Jammers from Sydney onsite who made it to the finals (Triple_M, Ardian KP, and kinaba).

We then returned to the hotel, and said goodbye to some participants who are returning that night, including Irvan Jahja (who would fly to Jakarta via Hong Kong, which would take more than twice the time and money needed compared to flying directly). After resting for a while, we're out for dinner with John Dethridge and some other Googlers in Darling Harbour.

(Having our dinner)

Since we did not take any group picture during the day, I decided to have one after our dinner, here we are.

(The group photo: Code Jammers and Googlers)

After saying goodbye to the other Code Jammers and Googlers, some of us decided to have a walk around Darling Harbour (whose view at night makes perfect postcard photos) and also tried the monorail (which was expensive, and not quite scenic when you take it at night). This time, I brought my tripod with me, and the photos were fantastic.

(The bridge)

(The area was less crowded as it was a weekday)

(Perfect nightshots this time, with a tripod)

On our way back to the hotel, we visited a convenience store just across the street, and took these photos at the front of the hotel as well.

(Another group photo)

(Finally back to Four Points by Sheraton)

Since it's nearly midnight already, I decided to return to the room and have some rest. I'll be having interviews on the next day, so I sort of needed some good rest that night.

Continue to Day 5

-Andrian Kurniady

(All photos are copyrighted, please ask for permission before reproducing)

Day 3 (September 21st) - Wandering Around Sydney

2008-11-15T02:38:00.000-08:00

On the Sunday morning, we had to the Four Points by Sheraton hotel at Darling Harbour, which is about ten minutes of walking away. Before departing, I took some time to take some photos of the Hyde Park and skyline behind it from the windows of our hotel rooms. In that morning, Andoko Chandra (my roommate for the next two nights) sent a message telling that he's already in Sydney, and already checked in to the Four Points.

(The view from our hotel room in Sydney Marriott Hotel)

During our stay at the hotel, Irvan had his laptop plugged in the room's internet cable, but he happened not be able to unplug it as the RJ45 jack was broken. The jack's retainer appears to be broken halfway, such that it prevent the jack from being unplugged from the laptop. To our surprise, Irvan solved the problem with a bread-knife (the kind that you use to put butter on your bread), the hard way: he laboriously cut the UTP cable. Fortunately we didn't got charged for that upon check-out though (so don't tell, okay? :P ).

A bit later in the morning, we checked out from the hotel and walked for around 15 minutes to the Four Points in Darling Harbour. Prima, Ardian, Irvan, and Bramandia queued for a while for check in (Andoko already checked in for our room so I did not have to queue). We went to our rooms, which has the view toward the city. Although this hotel is more expensive than the Marriott, we found that the rooms are significantly smaller in contrast to the "luxurious" Marriott room. However, it was still a nice room with two single beds.

(The road intersection near the Darling Park office towers)

After settling with the rooms, we then proceed for another day of city tour. Irvan decided not to join us and stays at the hotel. For this day, Sophie accompanied us again along with one friend of hers (Rudi). The first place we visited was the Paddy's Market, just ten minutes walking to the South. There we had our lunch and bought a few pieces of souvenirs. As it was Sunday, the area including the nearby Chinatown was quite crowded.

(The Market City building)

Done with the souvenir-shopping, we decided to go to the Bondi Beach, which is located in the East of Sydney downtown. To go there, we had to walk for about ten minutes to the Central train station. On the way, we passed through the entrance of Chinatown.

(The Chinatown's gate)

(This old European-style building is the Central train station)

We took a train to Bondi Junction from there, and continue to the beach by bus. It was around 2pm by the time we arrived at the beach, and the sun was brightly shining through the cloudless sky.

(The beach was quite crowded)

(A lot of birds enjoying the bright day too :P )

It was Spring, and as the weather was starting to get warmer, many people go to the beach that weekend. The sun was quite bright at that time, so taking photos are a bit difficult as well.

(Bramandia, Ardian KP, Prima, Sophie, and Rudi)

(Nice view from the bus stop)

We took several photos and walked around for around one hour, after which we decided to go back the city. The bus stop for buses going back to Bondi Junction is located a bit uphill on the other side of the beach. The bus journey back was significantly longer due to the traffic, and we arrived back to the city at around 5pm.

While we're wandering around, Irvan happens to meet several other Code Jammers who arrived at the hotel. There are some of his IOI friends participating too, obviously. They seem to have a plan to go out for dinner together that night too, so we decided to go with them later on. Until then, we rested for a while in the rooms. I decided to leave my cameras for the night, unfortunately.

By the scheduled time (around 7pm), we went down to the lobby and found many Code Jammers were not there yet. We wait for a while and decided to go to a Chinese restaurant near Paddy's market to have our dinner. The restaurant, although a bit small, serves delicious noodles and other Chinese dishes. We go back to the hotel after that, and had a few rounds of the game "Mafia". If I'm not mistaken, John Dethridge also came later that night to say hello.

I had a problem remembering names, but I think there was a participant from Phillipines, Australia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Singapore, New Zealand, and of course, Indonesia. The contest on the next day would be interesting for sure.

Continue to Day 4

-Andrian Kurniady

(All photos are copyrighted, please ask for permission before reproducing)

Day 2 (September 20th) - Arrival in Sydney

2008-11-10T02:17:00.000-08:00

The flight arrived like about half an hour earlier than the scheduled 6:35am in Sydney, but was followed by quite frustrating queues before the immigration (about 45minutes) followed by another some 45minutes queue for the customs (maybe it's the peak spring travel season?). By the time we got out of the arrival hall, it was nearly 8am already. I was picked up by my uncle and cousin who live in Sydney, while Irvan joined the other Indonesian team arriving from Singapore (Ardian KP, Prima, and Bramandia).

I went to my auntie and uncle's house (which is located near the airport), while the other Indonesian Code Jammers went downtown to check in to the hotel, visited the opera house, and also visited the Taronga zoo.

After staying and having some rest in my auntie and uncle's house for some hours, my uncle drove me downtown to leave my luggage in the Sydney Marriott Hotel (where we're going to stay for a night) and drop me in Circular Quay to join the friends who are on their way back from Taronga zoo.

(My first shot of Sydney)

(Sydney Opera House, the icon of Sydney)

(A closer look)

In the meanwhile, I walked around Circular Quay to take quite many shots. Among the objects are the Opera House, the Harbour Bridge, the harbour itself, and many others.

(A view of the Sydney Harbour)

(Some birds in the park as well)

It was about 5pm at that time, the sun was well down in the West which brings a golden glow on the Opera House. It looks much better during these time of day compared to the later shots taken at mid day.

(Another shot of the Opera House, with a bird in the foreground)

(The Sydney Harbour Bridge)

Finally the others got back to the ferry pier, and we decided to take some more photos together.

(Ardian KP, Irvan Jahja, Me, and Bramandia)

(Irvan Jahja, Bramandia, Ardian KP, and Prima)

Finished with the photos, we returned to the Marriott hotel with a train as the sky turned darker. We got off at the Museum station which is located inside the Hyde Park, just across the hotel.

(A somewhat spooky monument in the middle of Hyde Park)

I claimed by luggage which was left previously with the concierge, and went to the room which I shared with Irvan Jahja. To my surprise, our room in Marriott hotel is quite big. Our twin room have two big beds (1.5 size, I guess), and the bathroom was big as well.

(The hotel room, taken with a ultra wide angle lens)

(The bathroom, quite big isn't it?)

Having some rest for a while (Irvan worked on his laptop), I took some photos out of the hotel window. Unfortunately the window was not so clean so the photos looks a bit weird (and spooky too).

(Nightshot of the Sydney skyline)

At around 8pm, Ardian KP's cousin Sophie and her friends met us at the hotel and took us out for dinner. After some walking, we decided to have it in a Japanese restaurant in which we had to wait for a while for it to have space for the nine persons. I ordered the Kaisen-don (rice topped with raw salmon with mayonaise) which turned out to be great.

(Kaisen-don, the raw-salmon-rice)

(Bramandia, Ardian KP, Prima, Me, Irvan Jahja)

After the dinner, we walked around Darling Harbour for a while, which is quite near the Japanese restaurant in which we had dinner.

(Western side of Darling Harbour)

(Eastern side of Darling Harbour)

(Another view to the South)

Located close to the Darling Harbour on the West side is the Star City, a hotel and casino site, if I'm not mistaken. It has quite a unique entrance architecture so we took another series of photos.

(A unique circular building near Star City)

(The entrance)

(Another group photo)

(A unique decorative water show)

On our way back, we took the path through the bridge which crosses the Darling Harbour for another series of different views.

(An decorated old-fashioned ship)

(The walking paths viewed from higher point)

(Nice view to the NorthEast too)

(The East side, with some parked boats)

It took some ten minutes on foot to return from Darling Harbour to the Marriott hotel. On the way, we visited a convenience store and bought some instant foods and some drinks for the night and day after (our room even has a microwave inside). It was time to rest after that, as it was already midnight when we got back to the hotel.

Continue to Day 3

-Andrian Kurniady

(All photos are copyrighted, please ask for permission before reproducing)

Day 1 (September 19th) - Preparation and Departure

2008-11-08T02:40:00.000-08:00

The preparation for this visit to Sydney was a bit rushed, in my opinion. But fortunately everything was set and ready when the time to depart came. My Australian visa was ready about a week before departure (a business visa), while the tickets was not finalized until two days before departure. I also had my new PDA phone (an HTC Touch Cruise, yay!) purchased just less than a week before departure, so I had not got enough time to fill it up with applications other than some GPS maps and musics. For this visit, I borrow a camera lens from my friend Cindy (a Nikon 18-135mm AFS DX lens) which turned out to be great (except for its clumsy plastic lens mount - which is nowhere as sturdy as the metal mount on all of my other lenses).

On the departure day (Friday the 19th), I still had to attend a class in the JWC campus. I normally don't have classes on Friday, but this one was a reschedule class of the User Interface Engineering which are normally had on Monday (annoying eh?). I left the class early at around 5pm and rushed all the way to the airport after that, to find myself arriving there at around 7pm, just about the right time to check in.

As planned, I met Irvan Jahja, another Indonesian participating in the Google Code Jam onsite regionals, in the airport. To our surprise, the queue for the Qantas flight was awfully long (wasted nearly one hour just queueing, what a service :P ), since the flight had some 300 to 400 passengers and there are only like two or three counters serving the queue for economy class passengers. Never had a queue that long ever, even the queue for mass re-check-in after the Calgary storm was somewhat much more efficient. Thanks but next time I'll choose Singapore Airlines if I had the chance. While queuing, I met a fellow Binusian, Fendy Tjin, who are also travelling in the same flight to Sydney.

After the not-so-pleasant queue, we went out to have some dinner in a fast food restaurant out there (Hoka Hoka Bento). Returning inside to pay for the departure tax (IDR 1 million for each person travelling - only in Indonesia :P ) after that. The queue for immigration, the waiting in the waiting room, and the departure were nothing special. This time, it was a Boeing 767-300 aircraft serving the Qantas QF42 flight to Sydney. If you want to know, this aircraft don't even have a seatback LCD screen in the economy class seats (all SQ and Cathay aircraft I travelled in seems to have it, this Qantas one looks soo 90s). However, the aircraft feels quite powerful when climbing and making turns, compared to bigger aircrafts such as the 777 or 747.

The flight itself was scheduled to take around 5 hours and will arrive at the next morning, so the story will continue to the next post.

Continue to Day 2

-Andrian Kurniady

Sydney and Google Code Jam 2008

2008-11-08T02:12:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since I got back from this trip, but here is the stories about my one week visit to Sydney last September. The last months had been quite busy for me and hence the delay in writing these stories. Processing and uploading the photos took quite a long time as well, mainly due to the quite slow internet connection I had in here. This visit is mainly to attend the Google Code Jam 2008 Onsite Regionals, in which I was assigned to Google Sydney office. An interview with Google Sydney also follows after the competition day, followed by a couple of days travelling around Sydney. Google covered the flight tickets, visa fee, departure tax, and the two nights stay in the Four Points by Sheraton hotel in Darling Harbour.

In a chronological order, the stories will go as follow:

Day 1 (September 19th) - Preparation and Departure

Day 2 (September 20th) - Arrival in Sydney

Day 3 (September 21st) - Wandering Around Sydney

Day 4 (September 22nd) - Google Code Jam Onsite Regionals

Day 5 (September 23rd) - Google Interviews

Day 6 (September 24th) - Downtown Sydney

Day 7 (September 25th) - The Blue Mountains

Day 8 (September 26th) - Returning to Jakarta

I took some 1600 photos in this trip, mostly available in my gallery here. If you wish to use the photos for purposes other than viewing in this blog, feel free to contact me (or leave a comment if you don't know how to contact me).

-Andrian Kurniady

ACM ICPC Indonesia National Contest 2008

2008-07-15T02:55:00.000-07:00

June is the time for the ACM ICPC Indonesia National Contest, just like last year. This year I participated with the 'kurniady' as the team name again (it's becoming a habit :lol: ), with Fiona Liausvia and Purnama, as a Binus International team. There was another team from Binus International as well but sadly they did not make it past preliminary.

For this year, the online preliminary round was held in the 1st day of June. On the day, our team participated from the Binus Syahdan campus, in a lab reserved for INC participants (although it is okay to do it from home too, since it's an online contest). It was a set of 5 problems to be solved in 3 hours. The problems by the order we got it accepted are :

Problem D - Maze Walker (My Solution)

This problem can be solved by doing some "flood fill" to find out the "islands". Every connected island of N nodes will have N * (N-1) / 2 pairs of node in it. Identifying all islands and summing up their number of pairs of nodes gives us the solution to the problem.

Problem E - Lemonade One (My Solution)

At the first glance, this problem looks like a dynamic programming problem. But finding out that we should pick only two out of the five days suggests that a brute-force solution will run fast enough. Picking all possible combination of two days, our solution also bruteforced the number of lemonade sold on the first day, calculate the second day returns, and find the maximum value out of all the combinations.

Problem B - Converting Numbers (My Solution)

This problem is quite tricky. A lot of teams got Wrong Answer a few times before got accepted. The most common mistake was in the number conversion. When all of the numbers are the same, calculating the standard deviation will result in a zero, which may screw up the following calculations. We got a few Wrong Answer before we made it right.

Problem A - Who Got the Medals? (My Solution)

This problem is quite an ad-hoc problem. You can see from the solution that a lot of "if"s is involved, which means a lot of opportunity for error. Following the rules, we made a few mistakes before getting it right.

We almost solved :

Problem C - Panda Land 3: Text Wrapper (My Solution)

This problem is also an ad-hoc problem. Basically it tests your skills on string handling. The idea is quite simple where you tokenize the input into words and then print it out following the page width rules. My solution used a lot of Standard Library features such as string, vector, and such, therefore did not passed due to the time limit. Our solution runs in 8 seconds, which the time limit is only 5 seconds. If just the solution was coded in plain C-string (instead of string), it would've got accepted.

Solving 4 out of 5 problems, we advanced to the onsite finals. There are surprisingly many teams solving 4 problems as well, so I'm a bit concerned about the finals, although the biggest concern was about Timotius Sakti (team TSP).

On the actual finals day, which is on the 15th of June, I arrived in the Syahdan campus at around 8am. By that time, there was so many participants queuing to register, so I decided to wait for a moment while having some chats with Timo and Stephen Kohar, his team member. Most of the conversations were about the Topcoder SRM 405 the night before. In the SRM, I was a room winner in division 1 in a money-match (room winners got awarded with cash), which was my first time ever. I found out only at the morning, as I left the Topcoder competition arena early to be able to get enough rest for the INC finals.

The events are like usual : several opening speeches, a briefing by Mr. Suhendry and Mr. Win Ce, plus a practice session (around one hour) and a lunch (provided). After all that, the real competition began at around 12:45 pm to finish five hours later. The problemset for the final round can be downloaded here : Final Problemset (PDF).

The finals problems by the order we solved them are :

Problem D - Eat or be Eaten (My Solution)

The problem is actually quite straightforward. Our solution sorts the two lists (actually you only need to sort one of them), and then for each member of the first list, find the number of elements in the second list that is less than the first. With STL, this is easily achievable without much effort with sort() and lower_bound() function. Got accepted in the first try.

Problem E - Indomie (My Solution)

This problem can be solved by simple dynamic programming by observing the probabilistic rule. Our solution runs in O(N.S) without recursion or factorial whatsoever. Our first submission was judged Wrong Answer at first, but then rejudged into Accepted a few minutes later.

Problem G - Hotel (My Solution)

This problem is quite an ad-hoc problem. I used STL pair which can be sorted with STL sort() function by default, and just follow the rules stated in the problem statement (admittedly the rules are quite obfuscated :P ). We also got accepted on the first try with this one.

Problem A - Superstitious Skylab Tower (My Solution)

This problem is quite classical. It is quite similar to last year's Panda problem (which was much more complicated, in my opinion) which was solved by only one team (not mine). There was also a couple of problems in Topcoder and Informatics Olympiads (IOI/CEOI/BOI/ *OI which I forgot which) that is quite similar to this one. The solution was to do Dynamic Programming in respect to the digits. Our solution is in O(N 10^2) where N is the number of digits for the precomputation, and O(N) for the query, which is quite efficient. The first couple of tries has some bugs within the code, but matching the result with the bruteforced-by-hand result (up to 200) has let us find the bug quite quickly.

Problem C - Almost Clear (My Solution)

This problem, as like many other computational geometric problems did not attract a lot of interests from the participant, because geometric problems tends to be quite complicated with formulas and prone to many kinds of errors (precission error, division by 0, you name it...). Thanks to our well-prepared team notebook (which was adapted from our ACM World Finals 2008 team notebook), which included a line intersection function, I tried to solve this problem.

The idea was to convert the points in both polygons into angles agains the camera, which are then sorted, to find the angle coverage of both polygons. If the angles of both polygons don't intersect, that means a clear visibility. If the angles did intersect, then we have to find out which polygon is closer to the camera. My first solutions runs in O(NM) where N is the number points in the first polygon and M is the number of points in the second polygon. Given that there are up to 1000 points each and many testcases, plus it needs a lot of floating point operations, the solution got rejected because if exceeded the timelimit.

The final solution for this problem was to convert one of the polygon into one line spanning from the lefternmost point to the rightenmost one (in respect to the camera angle), and intersect that line to all of the lines from the camera to the points in the second polygon. This resulted in the runtime of O(M) which is quite acceptable even with the sorting procedure that makes the overall complexity becomes O(M + N log N + M log N). It was just like 14 minutes before the ending that we got an accepted submission for this problem.

And we almost solved :

Problem F - In Queries (My Solution)

This problem was actually quite simple (it's even easier than problem A or C). Our solution exceeded the time limit due to *again* being overly relied to the Standard Library (STL Set). Coding a tree doesn't solve the problem because it made the precomputation time becomes O(N log N), even though it solved the queries in O(log N). The judge's solution runs in O(N) precomputation and O(10.000) per query, exploiting the limited range of possible numbers. Because the number of queries was low, our solution runs way slower compared to the judge's solution on the contest test data.

For most of the time before the scoreboard was frozen (1 hours before the ending of the round), our team and team TSP were in the top two spots of the scoreboard. After four hours, both of our teams solved 4 problems (we solved D,E,G,A while TSP solved D,E,G,F). During the last hour, we solved another problem, problem C which was the trickiest problem we attempted in the contest, after several submissions.

(Team EMI on the left, team acmon on the right)

(Team pinkpanda)

Before the awards ceremony began, we found out that team TSP did not solve any more problems during the last hour. When announced, the winners are :

The 2nd Runner Up was from Universitas Kristen Satya Wacana - EMI (Erisman Kriswandhani Lim / Michael Ade Soewondo / Indra Suryatama), solving 3 problems.

The 1st Runner Up was from Binus University - acmon (Eko Wibowo, Lie Gunawan, Cun Cun Lim) solving 3 problems.

The 3rd place goes to Binus University - pinkpanda (Winardi Kurniawan, Eko Mirhard, Panji Kharisma), solving 3 problems.

The 2nd place goes to Binus University - TSP (Timotius Sakti, Stephen Kohar, Pascal Gerardus Angriawan), solving 4 problems.

The 1st place goes to Binus University - team kurniady (Andrian Kurniady, Fiona Liausvia, Purnama), solving 5 problems.

(Suhendry Effendy and Team TSP)

(Mr. Fredy and team kurniady)

The final scoreboard can be seen here : Final Scoreboard (PDF)

Some members of the problemsetters and judges, namely Felix Halim and Suhendry Effendy had also posted their stories and solutions to the problemset in their sites :

http://felix-halim.net/story/inc08/index.php

http://www.suhendry.net/blog/?p=96

(All winners)

(The problemsetters and judges with Mr. Fredy)

There were other remarkable achievements as well, including team from Petra Christian University (vista) made it to the top 10, as well as team EMI who are first timers in the INC made it to top 5. Congratulations to the winners, as well as the finalists. Many thanks to Binus University and HIMTI for their commitment in organizing such a wonderful event regularly.

-Andrian Kurniady

Day 10 (April 14th) - Short Visit to Downtown Singapore, Return to Jakarta

2008-07-12T03:44:00.000-07:00

In the last day of the journey, some of us decided to go to downtown Singapore. As Indonesians, we do not need any visa to enter Singapore. Passing through the immigration, we took the MRT right into the city. We visited a couple of malls around Orchard road, unfortunately at 9am Kinokuniya had not yet opened. I decided then to visit the Sim Lim Square to find if there were interesting computer parts being offered (unfortunately nothing was interesting in particular). The short visit ended at around noon when we decided to return to the airport.

We had our lunch in the airport, after which we waited for our last flight to Jakarta. The 10-days long journey was completely over as we boarded the plane and arrived in Jakarta safely.

-Andrian Kurniady

Day 9 (April 13th) - Transit in Seoul, arrival in Singapore

2008-07-12T03:36:00.000-07:00

There was not much to tell about the 9th day. We arrived in Seoul Incheon airport at round 5pm in the afternoon, went through the boring re-boarding process again, and soon take off en route to Singapore. It was around 11pm by the time we arrive in Singapore Changi airport Terminal 2, so we decided to go straight to the airport transit hotel. Since we are two days late arriving there, our free booked rooms were not available anymore. Waited for about an hour before there was vacant rooms (at around 2am), and we tried to sleep for a few hours. The transit hotel is quite a nice place to stay if you have a long transit over Changi airport, as you can rent the room in blocks of six hours (and it's not so expensive anyway).

Continue to Day 10

-Andrian Kurniady

Day 8 (April 12th) - Departure from Vancouver

2008-07-12T03:21:00.000-07:00

The eight day is quite uneventful. The hotel's shuttle's driver was sick so we were sent to the airport with two taxi cabs paid by the hotel. The check in process was normal as well, and since the flight is quite empty, we were allocated one complete row for just the 6 of us. The Singapore Airlines' Boeing 777 has 3+3+3 configuration, so we have three empty seats inbetween, which is nice.

After having lunch in the food court (and spending most of our remaining coins), we proceeded to the security check and directly to the waiting hall. To our surprise, there was no immigration exit control when leaving Canada (not a valid reason to overstay your visas though :P ).

(A garden inside the departure hall)

(Duty free shops)

(A wider view)

After some 5-10 minutes of walking, we are already in front of the boarding gate. The aircraft was already there. After a prolonged journey in Canada, we're finally going home :lol:

(It had been a looooong way :D )

(The departure hall)

(Beautiful clouds in the bright sky over the aircraft)

It was quite an uneventful flight to Seoul. We are mainly flying under the bright sunlight. While trying to sleep, I accidentally saw out of the window and find these beautiful snowy Alaskan mountains down there.

(Handycams won't take perfect photos :lol: )

The eight day ended as we cross the International Date Line, which brought us one day ahead to April the 13th.

Continue to Day 9

-Andrian Kurniady

(All photos are copyrighted, please ask for permission before reproducing)

Day 7 (April 11th) - Tour of Downtown Vancouver

2008-07-12T02:27:00.000-07:00

Being quite exhausted from the previous day, I woke up a bit late at around 8-9am. After having breakfast in the hotel, we went out (except Timotius, who chose to stay in the hotel) and bought the day pass for public transport on the nearby shop (as suggested by Anastasia). After asking the locals, we boarded the bus to downtown Vancouver (it's a kind of electric bus attached to the wire along the road.

We changed to another bus in Chinatown, which takes us directly to the Stanley Park (there's a bus stop inside the park). The park itself is quite big, filled with big trees, and have several beaches around.

(Inside the park)

(In another direction)

(It's still Spring: flowers everywhere)

(More flowers)

Around the park, we encountered several ducks and squirrels. Looks like they live happily in there :P .

(A lonely duck...)

(A squirrel)

(A bridge)

The Vancouver Aquarium is also located inside the park. We did not enter though, since it's not free :P . We had some lunch (I had a Panini) at the food stall in the front of the aquarium. Ms. Henny (and Ms. Yenlina) entered the souvenir shop and bought some items as well.

(Vancouver Aquarium entrance)

(Frogs Forever?)

(The icon of the Vancouver Aquarium)

(This active baby boy says hello to a baby girl :D )

There are several walking pathways inside the park, as well as several landmarks such as a house, some weird-shaped trees, and beaches. From the beaches, we can see the Downtown Vancouver or the Northern Vancouver (looks like an industrial area) depends on the direction.

(A house in the middle of the park)

(The view on the Eastern beach)

The other side of the park have different sets of plants. These trees were not yet reached their Spring time yet, unlike others.

(Leafless trees, waiting for Spring)

(Even the grass have tiny flowers too)

(A lovely setting surrounding a kid's playground)

(The Western shore)

(A cannon near the Northest point of the park)

We had quite a limited time to tour around the park and some of us are quite tired walking as well, so we did not make it to other sites in the park such as the Northest point (I bet the views would be amazing there) as well as the Southern beaches (which supposedly have the real sand, unlikethe ugly beaches in the Northern part).

(A bird on the mermaid statue)

(The Northest point of the park)

(Some blossoming cherry tree on our way back)

(The wideangle lens I brought is really useful when shooting trees from a close distance, something common in a park like this)

At around 3pm, we decided to go back to the bus stop to have a ride to the downtown. With the team going to a shopping mall, I decided to part from the team to meet Anastasia at a skytrain station. We had a short tour walking around the downtown, and she pointed that Vancouver have sooo many Starbucks around. Some of them are even located facing each other just across a street. So Canadians really like coffee that much, eh?

(Starbucks...)

(Another one)

(One more)

(Two of them in one intersection)

It's now around 5pm, and we decided to visit a mall in the suburb of Burnaby as well as having our dinner in a sushi restaurant over there. We said goodbye as we're taking skytrains in the opposite directions from Burnaby. Around an hour later I arrived in the hotel and found out that the others are already back.

Continue to Day 8

-Andrian Kurniady

(All photos are copyrighted, please ask for permission before reproducing)

Day 6 (April 10th) - Snow Storm in Calgary, Lost in Vancouver

2008-07-08T18:34:00.000-07:00

The sixth day of the week was obviously the most unfortunate one. The day started with a long queue for checkout (seems that many teams depart at 6am), after which we boarded the Brewster bus operating for Banff Airporter. At 6am, the weather was quite clear (although cloudy) in Banff, but as we came nearer to Calgary, the snow started.
Soon, it turns into a foggy snow storm and our bus had to slow down and get stuck in the snow a couple of times. The city of Calgary was soon buried by a quite thick layer of snow. At that time, I already guessed that airport won't be able to operate due to the limited visibility.

By the time we arrived in the Airport, we checked-in normally (as the flights has not been canceled yet). It is quite unique process since we check in by entering our data into an automated counter, specifying the number of checked baggage, and grab our boarding pass from the machine. The machine also printed a couple of coupons to be used to check our baggage with the officers (it is actually quite an efficient process, and seems like it's a common practice in North America).

After checking in, we spent some time having breakfast in ~~Tom~~ Tim Hortons (a local burger restaurant chain). I also bought some chocolates in one of the shops. Many of us decided to spend our coins since we won't need much of them anyway in Vancouver (short transit only).

As the boarding time came nearer, we go into the security check. Tips: if you're carrying some liquid, aerosol, or gels within the allowed limit, you'd better put it beforehand into some sort of plastic bag, which will save your time (and other peoples' time) during the security check. It was also a common practice for the security checking to require notebooks to be screened outside the carrying case or bag, so be prepared for that as well.

(The aircraft was there, but the snow keeps falling)

We waited near the boarding gate, and started to get worried because it still snows heavily outside, and seems to get worse as well. The gatekeeper did not inform us about possible flight cancellation, instead pointed that "the plane is already there". I checked the flight departure information and found out that there were no flights departing since 7am in the morning... An inbound flight out there had troubles approaching the gate for disembarkation as well, so at that point we actually should've been worrying...

(Originally we're bound to depart from Gate A14)

(Peoples are still waiting for the flight)

At about 15 to 30 minutes past the scheduled departure time, our Air Canada flight was finally officially canceled. We were told that we had to re-book our flight to a later one with Air Canada reservations, and we had to reclaim our baggage (and check it in again later on). Probably this procedure is to allow peoples to cancel their travel due to the delay (and choose some other way), instead of forcing all of the passengers to wait for the delayed flight (to think of it, it reduces the company's average duration of delays as well, since flights don't get delayed but rather canceled).

(There was another ICPC team waiting also)

Realizing that we are in trouble, Ms. Henny called Singapore Airlines office in Vancouver and was able to get a rescheduled flight back home which is for two days later (departs on Saturday the 12th of April). We also got rebooked to another Air Canada flight which is bound to depart at around 2pm in the same day. The whole rebooking process took some 2 to 3 hours, but finally we are set.

(It was still snowing heavily outside)

The second time around check-in process was quite tiring. There were not a LOT of people queuing (because many of them got their flight canceled previously as well), and the whole process took somewhere between 45 minutes and 1 hour (previously it was only 15 minutes). While queuing, there was a TV station recording its news report about the effect of the heavy snow storm to the aviation operation (seems that it's a rare occasion when snow storm comes in mid-April which is supposedly spring already).

Having no other thing to do until the rescheduled flight departs, we decided to have some lunch in the airport. The snow storm finally ended at around midday, after putting some 30-50cm thick layer of snow on the tarmac. The airport operations had to operate some snowplow machines to clear some part of it before the flights started to depart and arrive again.

(Having some lunch in the airport's food court)

(The weather got better at around noon)

After some security check (again!) and spending some time waiting, we finally departed from Calgary in the clear weather (phew!). Nothing much happened until we got to Vancouver (there's no snow there, although it's not that far away from Calgary).

(Finally, we're in Vancouver)

Our previously-scheduled Singapore Airlines flight had departed by the time we arrived in Vancouver (around 3pm), so we had to find some hotel to stay in. After some rounds of walking around the Vancouver Airport (well, it's not that big actually), we decided to stay in the Quality Inn, a hotel located near to the airport. The hotel provides airport shuttle, so we had no problem getting there. A credit card really comes in handy while traveling far from home, as the platinum MasterCard I had saved some amount of money needed as deposits when checking in to the hotel (we're running low on cash since we're supposed to have left Canada at that time anyway).

It was already 5 to 6pm by the time we got to our rooms (costs around the same amount with hotels in Singapore). We spent some time contacting family members (as well as Binus executives) back in Jakarta (quite troublesome since it's still 3 to 4am in the morning in Jakarta). Thanks to the fast internet connection, it was a lot easier (and less costly) .

(The view of Vancouver's suburb from the hotel room)

We had our dinner in Subway (a fastfood restaurant) located just across the street from the hotel. Spending some time accessing the internet (consulting the next day's plan with Anastasia) I finally called it a day (a long one...).

Continue to Day 7

-Andrian Kurniady

(All photos are copyrighted, please ask for permission before reproducing)

Day 5 (April 9th) - ACM ICPC World Finals, Awards, and Celebration

2008-07-07T03:59:00.000-07:00

The big day started with the usual breakfast, after which we have ourselves ready in the front of the contest hall. Spectators (coaches, RcD, and other guests) are to enter the room and be seated first (at the respective spectator seats). Before entering, as usual the teams are offered some pictures with the trophy (and Mr. Poucher too).

(A picture with the trophy - courtesy of DMT)

Last year we haven't got the chance to take the photo, but this year we had. After the spectators are seated, participanting teams enter the room accompanied with a long applause by the audienc (and some interesting music). Displayed readily on the projector screen is the infamous "Do not touch anything" quote by John Clevenger.

There was 11 problems in the world finals, numbered from A to K. Unfortunately we only solved 3 problems, out of the "supposedly solvable by us" of 5 or 6 problems. The problems can be viewed in the ICPC World Finals site or in the ICPC Live Archive.

Problem K - Steam Roller (AC)

This problem is supposedly a plain Dijkstra (or A*) kind of problem that is to be solved in O(N log N). However, my first try on the Dijkstra did not work (Wrong Answer) and I did not find the mistake. Thus, I decided to recode the problem from scratch into a more Dynamic Programming style (using plain multidimentional array as the memo) and got it right. Probably the mistake of the first one was on the memoization part (checking visited nodes).

The state for the Dijkstra is [Node, Direction, Speed] where there are 4 directions and 2 kind of speed (slow or fast).

Problem F - Glenbow Museum (AC)

After a couple of tries, Timotius and I concluded that the result will be the number of all valid permutations of R and O where there are 4 more Rs than Os and there is no Os adjacent to each other. That can be easily solved by the use of Dynamic Programming (had at least two or three mistakes before I got it correct though :( ).

Problem J - The Sky is the Limit (AC)

There was a similar problem to this one on the Bina Nusantara Programming Contest for College Students (if I'm not mistaken) written by Andoko Chandra. The problem by Andoko Chandra asked for the area of the mountain skyline while this problem asked for the length of the skyline itself. The solution is quite similar, we used the line intersection function from the team notebook and get it right on the first try.

Problem A - Air Conditioning Machinery (WA)

Kenny coded for this problem since the first two hours using some kind of BFS approach. He submitted and got Wrong Answer. At around the fourth hours, we found out that his solution did not forbid the ducts from intersecting with each other. The problem was supposedly solvable by simple DFS (the state is not so many) and simply trying all the possible combinations. Memoization cannot be used (and not needed anyway) since the duct configuration in terms of used cells is quite big and cannot be memoized efficiently.

Problem H - Painter (WA or TLE)

My solution to this problem is to draw the tree of triangles (which triangle is contained within which triangle). But unfortunately it is too slow O(N^2) in the tree generation, and subsequent attempt to optimize it resulted in Wrong Answer. I did remembered about the scanline algorithm (of computer graphics) but haven't got the chance to implement it efficiently.

Problem B - Always an Integer (WA)

The solution I coded was to parse the polynomial into a vector of constants. Supposedly we can check whether the polynomial division always returned an integer by just plain bruteforce for integers up to the degree of the polynom (as pointed out by someone in Topcoder Forums). Our solution on the day was quite similar, but got Wrong Answer. Most likely the mistake is on the parsing process which is quite tricky (I used some kind of finite state automaton to parse it).

(Contest finished with Balloons everywhere)

(A team photo with Mr. C.J. Hwang)

(We solved 3 problems)

By the end of the contest, we only solved 3 problems with several runs pending (all failed later on). After a simple lunch, we decided to go downtown again while waiting for the awards ceremony, to have another chance to buy more souvenirs (and spend the remaining Canadian Dollars). We attempted to visit Bow Falls but the way there was closed (due to the snow, I guess).

(The frozen river)

(A romantic riverside walk)

(Somebody riding a horse passed by)

(Another visit to downtown Banff)

(A nice afternoon sunlight on the river)

(One of my last photos of the exterior of the hotel)

We returned on time for the awards ceremony, during which we don't have much hope to get the top ranks (due to the few number of solved problems - just like last year). I did not take many photos during the awards ceremony and celebration, because I'm handing the videocam to record the whole events. You can see the photos by the Digital Media Team of the ICPC committee in their site. During the ceremony, several speeches were delivered, including by one of the IBM Fellow. A series of service award were given to some excellent coaches who have been coaching their ICPC teams for several years.

This year, they improved the nice scoreboard used since last year's world finals. It basically shows the replayed frozen last hour of the competition (during which the scoreboard was not updated). We can see several teams solved problems and getting lifted upward through the score board. Probably we should create one like this for our ACM ICPC Asian Regional - Jakarta Site contest :D .

This year, the team from St. Petersburg University of IT, Mechanics and Optics took the world champion trophy by solving 8 problems in 1187 minutes.

We solved 3 problems and was ranked 47th along with several other universities. Last year it was 44th out of 88 teams, this year is 47th out of 100 teams, so we only improve by a very insignificant amount :D .

After the awards ceremony, the dinner was served. During the dinner, IBM distributed the book Understanding DB2: Learning Visually with Examples for those who are interested. Mr. Michael Dang from IBM Canada was there to autograph the copies distributed. DB2 is the Relational Database product of IBM, which is said to have a great XML support built into it. DB2 9 Express-C is the free version available for download free of charge.

After the dinner, we are back to the Van Horne Ballroom to attend the celebration. Just like last year, it is an event organized by IBM, presenting several world class artists to provide some entertainment. There was a team of two jugglers who did the interesting stunt by throwing swords back and forth with Mr. John Clevenger in the middle of them (they promised the thrown sword "won't touch anything" :lol: ).

The other show a stage hypnosis show in which a hypnosis expert picks several persons from the audience to be brought on stage and hypnotized into a deep sleep. The expert then "programmed" them to do several funny things such as speaking some alien language and many others.

(Heavy snowfall outside)

As the celebration is over, the whole event is over. There was no more CyberCafe. It snowed heavily that night so I decided to take some last photos in Fairmont Banff Spring Hotel.

Continue to Day 6

-Andrian Kurniady

(All photos are copyrighted, please ask for permission before reproducing)

Day 4 (April 8th) - Opening Ceremony, Practice Session, Gondola Ride, and Downtown Banff

2008-06-29T04:15:00.000-07:00

After the usual breakfast, teams are brought into the actual contest hall (Van Horne ballroom). The contestants are to be seated in their assigned workstations, accompanied by their coaches. Other spectators are to be seated at the back of the ballroom on the staged spectator seats.

(Honored guests are seated in the front)

Just like last year, the contest is to be conducted in a ballroom, with workstations set in order for every teams. The two screens in the front (and one at the back) will display the contest scoreboard, problem statistics, as well as the news (which teams solved which problem) on the actual contest day. This year, we are assigned to workstation number 8, which is located quite near to the front stage.

(A Thinkpad with keyboard and mouse, plus a big LCD screen)

On the table are some documents containing the username and password for login as well as a sheet with the famous "Do not touch anything" quote on it.

The opening ceremony started with a traditional dance (and song) from the Blackfoot tribe which unfortunately wasn't visible to us because it was conducted in front of the spectator seats (thus on the back of the contest area).

(A representative from the Canadian parliament)

(The deputy mayor of Banff)

(The ICPC director, Mr. William Poucher)

A usual, a series of speech followed. There was short speeches from the representatives from ACM, UPE, as well as from IBM as the event sponsor (represented by Doug Heintzman), representatives from the University of Alberta (a video was shown about the University of Alberta).

(Doug Heintzman from the IBM)

(an award was presented to the Digital Media Team of the ICPC)

The pre-recorded speech from the deputy minister of Industry of Canada was presented on the screen as well. The deputy mayor of the town of Banff also delivered an interesting speech (Banff welcomes so many tourists throughout the years, but the ICPC World Finalists are the smartest they have had yet :D ).

(Teams trying out their workstations)

The practice session is divided into two sessions, during which participants can try submitting one solution to a problem they have been assigned to. This is meant to familiarize the teams with the system (although it is quite similar to other ICPC competitions).

(Timo asked for a photograph with the team from Warsaw)

The first practice session is followed by a lunch, after which the question and answer session is conducted to answer questions that were raised during the practice (some are quite funny, actually :P ).

(Finished teams may leave early for their short excursions)

We finished early as we are bound to depart for the Gondola ride. The gondola itself is located just about 15minutes away by bus from the Fairmont hotel.

(The view during the gondola ride uphill)

(Further uphill)

(A lot of snow on the hill top)

(The snowy mountain peaks touches the cloudy sky)

It is the fastest gondola in the world (if I'm not mistaken), and it took only 10 minutes to reach the top of the Sulphur Mountain. The view up there was simply amazing.

(The walking trail, we did not make it to the other peak)

(Some trees covered with snow)

(I guess one day I'll be back here)

From the top, we can see the little town of Banff as well as the beautiful range of Canadian Rockies touching the cloudy sky.

(The snowy peaks far away)

(More trees)

(Perspective... the trees are quite tall)

Unfortunately the time scheduled for being up there is only about 15-30 minutes (which was not enough). Hurrying a little bit, we took a lot of pictures before riding the gondola down and being late for about 15 minutes for the return trip (the bus was still there, looks like many people are being late as well).

(The Bow River)

(Downtown Banff and the highway)

(Another direction, more mountains)

(The Fairmont Banff Spring Hotel)

(Some foggy background)

We arrived back in Fairmont at about 5pm, and since there was still plenty of time to walk downtown, browse some shops, walk back, and still make it to the dinner, we decided to go there.

(A corner of the castle)

(The lobby of Fairmont Banff Spring Hotel)

(An empty street, not in tourist season obviously)

Downtown Banff is about 15minutes walk from the Fairmont hotel. We have to cross the bow river through the bridge before reaching the downtown.

(A bridge crossing the Bow River)

(Its already late afternoon, but still bright)

(The main street of downtown Banff)

(Another photo of me)

The main street have a lot of shops on both sides, so we decided to walk around. Some of us bought some souvenirs. Most of them accepts US Dollars on par with Canadian Dollars, which is nice since exchanging dollars in Canada seems to be costy.

(A church in Banff)

(Stylish buildings housing the range of shops)

(The view of the avenue to the opposite direction)

(Finally back to the hotel)

With some souvenirs in hand, we walk back to the hotel and as planned, still make it to the dinner. Because the next day is the actual competition day and we need to be in our best conditions, we decided to get to sleep early. Nevertheless, we were still able to make another trip the the CyberCafe, including playing some tennis game on a Nitendo Wii with several peoples including Petr Mitrichev (the highest rated Topcoder member to date) :D .

Continue to Day 5

-Andrian Kurniady

(All photos are copyrighted, please ask for permission before reproducing)

Day 3 (April 7th) - IBM TechTrek and Excursion to Columbia Icefields

2008-06-22T01:58:00.000-07:00

The third day begins with a breakfast (provided), which then continues to IBM TechTrek. Just like in last year's world finals, IBM presents their technologies as well as their Extreme Blue internship program. This year, they come up with their Rational Jazz collaboration framework which integrates collaboration tools such as instant messaging and such, into the Eclipse IDE.

The framework basically enables a developer in a project to pick some code and find out who developed the piece of code and even consult with the person right through the integrated instant messaging system. It has definitely went beyond the basic collaboration functions provided by tools such as Subversion (SVN) or CVS.

(Participants waiting for the TechTrek to begin)

Another speaker in the 3-hour-long seminar talks about how college students contributes to IBM research while they do internships, including obtaining patents, implementing new technologies, etc. There was also a presentation about the use of social networking for businesses, i.e. something like Facebook for engineers and developers in companies, etc. It is clear that IBM employs state-of-the-art social technologies such as social networking and blogging internally to enhance their competitive advantage in the industry.

After the series of the talks was over, we are bound to depart for an excursion sponsored by IBM to the Columbia Icefields. There was two options offered, the other one was to Lake Louise but we did not pick that one because we have already went there the day before. The bus departs soon after the end of the TechTrek and the participants are provided with lunch packages to be consumed in the bus to save time.

(Mountains and trees on the side of the highway)

Columbia Icefields is located in the Jasper National Park, a northern neighbor of Banff National Park (where the town of Banff is located). It took around three hours by bus, through the highway to the West from Banff and turning right heading to Jasper.

(A lovely building on the side of the lake)

(Some people traversed the snow field behind the toilets)

(Snow and the trees on the side of the lake)

On the way, the bus made a stop near the frozen Waterfowl Lake (if I'm not mistaken with the name) to accommodate peoples who need to use the toilet. The lake looks flat and shiny covered with snow, which makes me wonder how beautiful it will be when it's not frozen.

(Another view of the frozen lake behind the trees)

(A frozen waterfall)

(Scenery on the sides of the parksway)

(Another frozen lake)

(The world's highest highway, the Icefields Parksway)

After the lake, the bus passed through the park checkpoint as it turn right out of the highway into the parksway heading to Jasper. On the sides of the road was now the beautiful range of Canadian Rockies, nominating the path as one of the most scenic drive in the world.

(It was a bright sunny day with some clouds around)

(Another parts of the Canadian Rockies)

Before continuing up to the Ice Explorer station, we made another stop in the Icefield Station which has a shop, some toilets, as well as a direct view to the Athabasca Glacier from afar.

(The Athabasca Glacier from a far)

(A gift shop in the building)

(The way downhill, we came from this direction)

The Ice Explorer station is located a bit further near the Glacier, and in there we have to board the SnoCoach (special transporter bus for snowy surfaces). It took around 10 to 15minutes from there to reach the heart of Athabasca Glacier, which is the biggest mass of ice and snow outside the polar regions.

(The SnoCoach, operated by Brewster)

(View of the Glacier from the station)

(Going downhill)

(Unique mountains on the sides)

(Almost there)

It was quite windy down there and it was also snowing, making it a bit difficult to take pictures. Wearing some 5 layers of clothing, I can say that it is still quite cool there. I had my first time holding some snow in my hands there as well. Some other people had some fun by throwing the snow balls to each other, while some can't move much due to the chilling temperature.

(Ms. Yenlina comes with another bus)

(The smooth untouched ice further into the glacier)

(I'm here :D )

(The closeup photo of the Athabasca Glacier)

(Some people surely had a lot of fun with the snow)

We are allowed for some 15 to 30minutes in there, after which we have to board the SnoCoach back for the return journey. During the way back, another SnoCoach in front seems to get stuck when going uphill, which adds some 15 minutes to the time. It happens that we are the biggest group of tourist coming there yet, and thus they have to operate all the SnoCoach (normally they don't).

(One of the SnoCoach had to be towed somehow)

(It is too cold up there so there wasn't many trees around)

(The same scenery, on the way back)

The return trip is quite uneventful, other than passing the scenic highway again. This time the sun is angled a bit to the West, thus producing a warmer lighting. Unfortunately I was unable to produce a perfect photo from inside the moving bus on the way back.

(The scenery on the way back)

(The sky is still so bright at 8:30pm)

Back to the hotel, we had our dinner, as well as have another round in the CyberCafe, after which we called it a day.

Continue to Day 4

-Andrian Kurniady

(All photos are copyrighted, please ask for permission before reproducing)

Day 2 (April 6th) - A Visit to Lake Louise and Registration

2008-06-10T22:40:00.000-07:00

Not having enough sleep due to the jetlag yet, we managed to wake up at around 8am in the morning and had some breakfast in the hotel. Since we arrived the day before at night, we haven't actually seen how the hotel look like. It turns out that it, like the photos of it available in the internet, looks like an old castle. Surrounding it is a combination of forest, mountains, and a river.

(The view of Bow River - our room had windows viewing this direction)

We tried asking about how to get to Lake Louise to the hotel reception desk, and was advised to take the ski shuttle to Lake Louise ski area first, the latest of which was to depart at around 10am. While waiting for the bus, I took some pictures of the exterior of the hotel.

(The main building of the hotel, looks just like a castle)

Our bus stops in a couple of places in downtown Banff, which is a lovely little town just across the Bow river from the Fairmont Banff Spring Hotel. Lake Louise is about 30 to 45 minutes drive from the town of Banff, through the highway surrounded by several rivers, lakes, and mountains.

(The highway, which runs from Calgary to the West through Banff and Lake Louise)

(Several rivers and lakes along the way)

(Castle Mountain, which looks just like a castle)

Since there is no direct shuttle to Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise (where the lake is actually located), we have to change bus at the ski area.

(Lake Louise ski area)

Another bus shuttle takes us to Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise, a luxurious hotel that is located next to the Lake Louise, which was still completely frozen at that time.

(Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise)

The lake is still completely frozen in April, and not going to melt until late May. From what I heard, it will look significantly more beautiful when it's not frozen. There was also a skating area just behind the Fairmont hotel, but unfortunately I haven't got the chance to skate at that time.

(A small hut on the side of the frozen lake)

(Lake Louise and Victoria Glacier on the background)

(A small river draining water from Lake Louise and the glacier)

(A horse-drawn carriage passing by)

We decided to have our lunch in the Fairmont before boarding the shuttle back to the ski area to catch the first bus back to Banff, which was about to depart on around 2pm. While waiting for the shuttle in the ski area, I managed to take some more photos.

(The views around the ski area)

Back to the hotel, we decided to go back to the room and have a nap until the registration is ready, since we haven't slept enough the night before due to the late-night arrival and jetlag.

(Kenny, Timo, and me)

By around 5pm, we went down to the registration room. Even though we are not scheduled to register until 8pm, we are allowed to register at that time since at that time the registration desks were not so crowded.

(A cute mascot in the registration room)

(The registration desk, to be visited left-to-right)

We went back to the room to leave the notebooks and other stuffs (T-shirts, certificates, schedules, etc.) before having dinner.

(The whole team in the dining hall)

(An owl exhibited just in the hallway)

After dinner, we decided to visit the Cybercafe, which is located quite far away in another building adjacent to the main building of the hotel. We passed through the registration room once again, and was able to reach the Cybercafe through the passages and a bridge. It took a couple of attempts to get the correct way.

(The registration room, from the above)

The interior was lit by reddish tungsten lights resembling candle lights. White balancing the shot was a bit difficult, but I managed to use a small fill-in flash to desaturate the scene a bit, resulting in a balanced shot below.

(One of many passages on the way to Cybercafe)

The Cybercafe, which is common to all recent world finals, provides numerous computer terminals to be used by the teams and other guests to access the internet. Along with that is a presentation of several recent development of IBM technologies. This time, they also provide a Nitendo Wii connected to an LCD projector where the guests can have some rounds of tennis game with it. Not much else for the second day, I guess.

Continue to Day 3

-Andrian Kurniady

(All photos are copyrighted, please ask for permission before reproducing)

Day 1 (April 5th) - Departure from Jakarta and Transit in Vancouver

2008-06-01T00:36:00.000-07:00

The first day of the journey is a very - very long day, because on our route we fly to the East, which means the day is longer than 24hours (for us who fly) since we passed through the International Date Line which scrolls us back to one day earlier. The whole thing starts in about 4AM, when I arrived at the Soekarno Hatta International Airport of Jakarta (CGK) - the team are all there by the time I arrived. Our first flight was with Singapore Airlines and departs at 6:15AM.

The check-in process was smooth (as we have checked in online and preselected our seats), but there was quite a long queue on the Fiscal Payment counter since there in only one out of four open that early in the morning (which was operated by Bank Central Asia). Went through immigration after that without much hassle, and the boarding started not so long after we arrived in the waiting hall.

Traveling together this time is me (Andrian Kurniady), Kenny Hartono, and Timotius Sakti - the team members for BiNus team in the ACM ICPC World Finals 2008. We are accompanied by Ms. Henny Suryaningsih (coach), Mr. Sablin Yusuf (Regional Contest Director - RcD), and Ms. Yenlina Prasetio (Vice RcD).

The first flight of the day was quite smooth on a nice Boeing 777-300ER, which disembarked at the Terminal 3 of the Changi International Airport of Singapore (SIN). Terminal 3 was about just 3 months old, so it was the first time I've been there and it was amazing. The decorations are quite unique, in contrast to the boring design of many other airports. The Tokina 12-24mm lens I bought few days earlier was very useful, since it enables me to photograph the interior conveniently (it's really wide enough).

(The interiors of Changi Airport Terminal 3)

Our flight to Vancouver was scheduled for departure from Terminal 3 about an hour later, so we did not have much time browsing the shops there. The security check takes a bit longer (because there are so many people - the flight is full), but after that there was some time for taking pictures.

(Queuing for security check)

(Kenny, Timo, me, and Mr. Sablin)

The second segment of the trip was served by Singapore Airlines' Boeing 777-200 aircraft, which was fully loaded by passengers heading to Seoul as well as those going to Vancouver. The departure process takes a significantly longer than usual time, which was due to a runway closure in SIN that caused a quite long queue of aircrafts waiting for take off. Right before we take off, there was around 4-5 aircraft queueing behind us (quite an interesting scene, but unfortunately my camera was stored in the overhead compartment thus I wasn't able to take any photos).

(The Singapore Airlines' Boeing 777-200)

The series of movies available in the KrisWorld InFlight Entertainment (IFE), coupled with a meal and some snacks served makes this 5 hours flight not so boring. There was some significant turbulence upon approaching Incheon International Airport of Korea (ICN), which actually caused the pilot to cancel the first approach and decided to go around. It was the first time I experienced cancelled landing ever, as we though we will land soon but suddenly the engines were re-engaged and the flaps are closed again. The captain then come up with an announcement that basically tells us that everything was ok and the landing was just cancelled due to windshear. The second attempt to land succeeded though (I think it was some crosswind landing, the plane turned a bit left soon after it touched down).

(The departure hall of Incheon's airport)

The transit in Incheon was not so pleasant by the way. It took around half an hour to queue for the transit pass and security check, and basically left us with some fifteen minutes before re-boarding the plane (the same one, actually). I spent the time for taking some more pictures. There was also new passengers travelling from Seoul to Vancouver that join our flight during the transit.

(Me and Timo, waiting for the re-boarding)

This third flight segment of the day was around 11hours long, during which I wasn't able to sleep much. A couple of meals were served (dinner and breakfast), but nothing special happened during the flight. Basically we departed late in the afternoon, have the shortened night up there, and arrived in Vancouver International Airport (YVR) around noon. In the morning, I noticed that there was some ice formed on the wings, but it melted upon descend before landing.

There was a quite long queue before the immigration upon arrival, but the process was quick. Our baggages have to be claimed in Vancouver as we are transferring to another airline (Air Canada) for the last part of the journey, and fortunately all of them arrived in Vancouver safely. We immediately checked in for the Air Canada flight that is to depart around six hours later (thus we have some time to tour around Vancouver).

(International terminal of Vancouver International Airport)

As planned, I met a friend of mine, Anastasia (an old friend from the same highschool, she came to Vancouver last year to continue her studies here). She bought me some fleece socks and a fleece glove ( which are nowhere to be found in Jakarta), lip-balm, as well as exchanged some Canadian coins for me (thanks a lot! :) ) Although we haven't planned for it before, she agrees to take us for a short tour to downtown Vancouver (thanks again! :) ). Mr. Sablin wasn't able to join us as his flight to Calgary departs at around 4pm.

(Mr. Sablin, Timo, Kenny, Ms. Henny, Ms. Yenlina, me)

We bought a booklet one-hour bus pass from the 7-11, which is "conveniently" located at the other end of the airport (the Domestic part - which is about 10-15mins walk away). The bus pass works though, each of us used two 1-hour passes to go downtown and back to the airport, and it is valid for buses and Skytrain ride as well. It took some 45minutes to go downtown from the airport.

(The Vancouver Public Library)

We have about one hour to tour the downtown area, during which we visited the Vancouver Public Library (the unique orange building that looks like the Colloseum - Anastasia seems to go there often for studying) as well as Gastown. We did not plan to have a long transit during the return journey, so we tried to see as much of Vancouver as we can :D . Since it's spring, there was several blossoming cherry tree along the way too.

(Northern part of Downtown Vancouver)

(The sign of Gastown, a gas-emitting clock)

(Cherry blossoms are everywhere in Vancouver)

Returning to the airport takes another 45minutes. We said goodbye to Anastasia (thinking that we won't meet again soon since we did not plan to have a long transit in Vancouver during our way back) and boarded the plane to Calgary after passing through the security check.

(Me and Anastasia)

The last flight of the day was on an Embraer 190 aircraft operated by Air Canada (it is actually a nice jet aircraft that is about the size of Fokker-28, which is smaller than Boeing 737 of any series). The flight was smooth and not many things happened during the flight. The inflight entertainment was great, it has touch screen and a USB slot (probably to plug in your flashdisk or keyboard - did not tried though as I was too tired to do anything). A drink was served (I ordered a cup of Sprite) but not dinner, since it is only a short 45minutes flight.

The international airport in Calgary, Alberta (YYC), although small in size, is actually quite unique. The baggage claim carousel was decorated with some mini carousel arcade on it :D. We arrived there at around 8pm, and our booked Banff Airporter (a bus service to Banff) wasn't scheduled to depart until around 10pm. Timo and Kenny wander around and bought some sandwich for us.

The bus ride to Banff takes around 3 hours (it was all highway, and the road was nearly empty at that time of day). After stopping at a couple of places in Banff (where other passengers disembarked), we finally arrived in the Fairmont Banff Springs hotel (a 5-star hotel, part of the Fairmont chain of hotels) which is the venue of the ACM ICPC World Finals 2008 - at around 1pm. It was freezing outside by the time we arrived, a few degrees below zero I guess (there was snow outside - the first time I saw *real* snow ever). The check-in process took some time (there was another teams arriving with the same bus, including Mr. Shahriar Manzoor, the famous ACM problemsetter).

The story of the day ended as we arrived in our rooms. I had a bit of problem sleeping because of the jetlag (timezone changes), and Kenny tried to connect to the internet (and having problems since his Fairmont President Club membership account hasn't been enabled for internet access).

Continue to Day 2

-Andrian Kurniady

(All photos are copyrighted, please ask for permission before reproducing)

ACM ICPC World Finals 2008 - Banff, Canada

2008-04-19T21:23:00.000-07:00

The 32nd ACM ICPC World Finals was held in April 6 until 9, 2008 in Banff Springs, Alberta, Canada. Top 100 teams out of 6700 teams participating in the regionals were invited to attend the competition, which was held in the Fairmont Banff Springs hotel, located in the town of Banff, which is located in Banff National Park - the biggest national park in Canada located in the state of Alberta. Last year, the event was held in Tokyo, Japan.

This is the fourth time our university (Bina Nusantara University) participated in the ACM ICPC World Finals, and my second (and therefore, last) world finals. This time, our team consist of myself, Timotius Sakti, and Kenny Hartono, along with Ms. Henny Suryaningsih as our coach. We were awarded a wildcard because we got the fourth place in Taipei site. Because in this year BiNus will also organize an ACM ICPC Asian Regional Contest in Jakarta, Mr. Sablin Yusuf and Ms. Yenlina Prasetio also came with us to Banff, to attend the Regional Contest Directors meeting as RCD and vice RCD.

This event for me is a very long and interesting story, since so many things happened along the way and as usual, the World Finals was an amazing event. The stories will be posted in a chronological order :

Day 1 (April 5th) - Departure from Jakarta and Transit in Vancouver

Day 2 (April 6th) - A Visit to Lake Louise and Registration

Day 3 (April 7th) - IBM TechTrek and Excursion to Columbia Icefields

Day 4 (April 8th) - Opening Ceremony, Practice Session, Gondola Ride, and Downtown Banff

Day 5 (April 9th) - ACM ICPC World Finals, Awards, and Celebration

Day 6 (April 10th) - Snow Storm in Calgary, Lost in Vancouver

Day 7 (April 11th) - Tour of Downtown Vancouver

Day 8 (April 12th) - Departure from Vancouver

Day 9 (April 13th) - Transit in Seoul, arrival in Singapore

Day 10 (April 14th) - Short Visit to Downtown Singapore, Return to Jakarta

During the 10 days, I took a few more than 2000 photos and we taped nearly 10 hours (10 miniDVs) of video. Photos attached to the stories are copyrighted and as usual, you may contact me if you need to reproduce (copy) or use it for other purposes.

Enjoy!

-Andrian Kurniady

Christmas Miracle - Wildcard to the World Final

2008-01-27T01:40:00.000-08:00

After the conclusion of the ACM ICPC Asian Regional Contest - Singapore Site, we were quite disappointed with the results (as we did not win in Taipei and did not win in Singapore as well). I started trying to return to normal life again, since there was so many projects to be done (and was not done previously because of the ACM ICPC competitions I had to attend).

However, on December 24th, 2007, a while after returning from the Church (it was Christmas Eve afterall), I got a message on YahooMessenger from Timotius Sakti, that our team was qualified to attend the ACM ICPC World Final in Banff, Canada in April 2008. He got the news from some web pages after a search in Google, which is about the Asian ICPC Teams qualification after the calculation (the regionals have just ended with Amritapuri as the last Asian site in the year). I searched in Google immediately and found this page (in Korean). The content is quoted from Mr. C.J. Hwang's email to Asian regional contest directors (RCDs), and states that the following team qualifies for the world final.

2007-2008 ACM-ICPC Asian Teams to World Final
1. Tsinghua University (TBD) [Himalaya Dragoons or Coldor] - China
2. Peking University (Excalibur) - China
3. Zhongshan University (ZSU_Merak) - China
4. Bangladesh University of Engineering &Technology (BUET Sprinter) - Bangladesh
5. National Institute of Technology Trichy (KILLALL) - India
6. Fudan University (Amethyst) - China
7. Seoul National University (WE ARE BUT MEN, ROCK!) - Korea
8. Shanghai Jiao Tong University (Prime) - China
9. National Taiwan University (TBD) [puyo or Colorful-bee] - Taiwan
10. Sharif University of Technology (M’kay) - Iran
11. Kyoto University (echizen.bat) - Japan
12. The University of Tokyo (Unknown) - Japan
13. Amirkabir University of Technology (Dreamers United) - Iran
14. The Chinese University of Hong Kong (E=) - Honk Kong
15. Zhejiang University (Othello) - China
16. Indian Institute of Technology Madras (XTC++) - India
17. University of Natural Sciences-VNUHCM (HCMUNS-BUGS) - Vietnam
18. National University of Defense Technology (Robust) - China
19. Nanyang Technological University (baX) - Singapore
20. Hong Kong University of Science& Technology (HKUST-2) - Hong Kong
21. Tianjin University (Tju_Wizard) - China
22. Shandong University (SDU_Solipsis) - China
23. Beijing University of Posts &Tele-communications (Fourth) - China
24. BINUS UNIVERSITY (YoiMon) - Indonesia
25. Chennai Mathematical Institute (SilasticArmorfiends ) - India
26. Beijing Jiao Tong University (MagicFlyer) - China
27. Nanjing University of A. A. ( Atom Center) - China
28. Wuhan University (gcc) - China
29. Information & Communications University (Winter Coders) - Korea
30. University of Electronic Science & Technology of China (UESTC_ACMilan) - China
31. University of Tehran, CS Dept (++a) - Iran

So, our team name is in it, and I will go to the world final for the second time in a row. After some more searching, we found out that we actually got qualified from the Taipei Site. The slot for Taipei site this year is 1.98, and that means 5 top teams got qualified from there (we were ranked fourth, so we're included).

That was the best Christmas present I ever had in my life. Thanks God! :)

-Andrian Kurniady

Day 5 (December 16th) - Return to Jakarta

2008-01-27T01:18:00.000-08:00

The fifth day does not have anything special in particular. We had some time to visit a new and huge shopping mall Vivocity which is located in the HarbourFront. Had a lunch in there and returned to the hotel to retrieve our luggages and depart to the Airport by MRT. The other team stays for a little while longer before catching the Valuair flight which depart two hours later than our Lufthansa flight.

The check-in process for Lufthansa with e-tickets was smooth and we soon passed through the immigration. Kenny and Timo arrived later and checked in as well. Inside the airport, we had some time to enjoy the fast free wireless internet connection through Wireless@SG free city-wide wireless network (I registered for an ID before departing to Singapore). To our surprise, the new Singapore Airlines Airbus A380 (biggest commercial airplane to date) was parked and I got some chance to take some pictures of it.

The arrival in Jakarta was smooth as usual, and the journey ended here.

-Andrian Kurniady

(All photos are copyrighted, please ask for permission before reproducing)

Day 4 (December 15th) - Singapore Sightseeing

2008-01-27T01:08:00.000-08:00

In the fourth day, the team who stays in Fort Canning lodge moved to Summer View hotel, while Kenny and Timo moved to Kenny's brother's place. We go around the city, visiting Chinatown and had some lunch over there. Some of us bought some souvenirs there (which was cheap) but none remembered to take any photos there.

At the afternoon, we returned to Summerview hotel to take some rest. I went to Sim Lim Square to purchase the laptop that my friend ordered, the MSI Megabook GX600X. The transaction was smooth and convenient using the Mastercard Platinum credit card I had, and the laptop was great.

On the afternoon, Felix Halim, Ms. Ang Ing Ing, William Anggakusuma and his girlfriend, and Kenny's brother joined us on dinner in the Newton Circus (a hawker centre, but more expensive as it's more targeted to tourists). The dinner itself was once again, excellent.

After the dinner, we made some time to visit Orchard Road, which has been beautifully decorated for Christmas.

Because it is a Saturday night, the road was so crowded and there was some concerts as well.

We also visited the Kinokuniya bookstore, located in the Takashimaya building (a shopping mall).

The journey ended as we returned to the hotel for a rest.

Continue to Day 5

-Andrian Kurniady

(All photos are copyrighted, please ask for permission before reproducing)