While the IOI team is busy during the week of the IOI, this series of blogs is being written by team leader, Joshua Lau. This is the final blog in the IOI 2019 series.
With equal doses of sadness, celebration, and homesickness, we have said our farewells to our friends from abroad, and are now on our long journey home.
At the airport, we said our goodbyes to our team guide Fidan, who has been very helpful and kind to us over the past week (pictures below!), despite at times battling illness. Thank you!
The team also took some final photos, before bidding farewell to a friend from team Croatia, and to our Australian Yoda and IC Member Ben Burton, and boarding a rather empty flight to Doha – our final journey together as the Australian IOI team of 2019.
During the 5-hour long layover in Doha, Kevin made many of our past AIIO sets public (meaning you can now give them a go on our training site!), and the team quickly [Ed. completely voluntarily] pulled out their trusty laptops, and began racing each other to solve these problems as quickly as possible. Friendly sledging and trash-talking ensued, as I provided some colour commentary; about an hour in the students struggled to concentrate and everyone was in raptures of laughter!
Following dinner, where an overzealous food court vendor basically tried to sneakily sell every item he had to Kevin and I, the team bid each other farewell, as we split into two groups, with Donna accompanying Angus, Ryan, and Tunan home via Adelaide (where Ryan and Tunan kept racing, see below!), and Timmy flying with Kevin and I home to Sydney.
It’s time to bring this final blog post to a close. This has been an incredibly exhilarating and successful IOI, for the organisers and Australian team alike, and after such a fun and exciting time, I expect most of us will take some time to adjust back to a normal routine!
Thank you for supporting the team by following along this blog – I trust that you have enjoyed it! We would like to thank the Australian Government, and Optiver, who both support the Informatics and Mathematical Olympiad programs in Australia. Their support enables us to select and train our teams, and the best and brightest young computer scientists and mathematicians of today, and of tomorrow.
The Olympiad programs are funded through the Australian Government’s National Innovation and Science Agenda. The Olympiad programs are also supported by the Trust’s National Sponsor of the Australian Informatics and Mathematical Olympiads, Optiver.
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