I spent this weekend at Porto to compete in ICPC Europe Championship competition. To be honest, I hadn’t trained much. We had performed so bad at ICPC Northwestern Regional contest that I thought we are not going to do anything special at this contest. So, I had spent very few time to practice. My ambitions were limited to not ending up between the worst 10 teams. But unbelievably, we managed to become the 6th team in the general ranking and the 2nd team between the teams that were not already qualified from the regional contests for the World Finals. Therefore, again unbelievably, we managed to get into World Finals.
It’s really exciting! During all of my Bachelor’s studies, I tried to get into world finals, but each time failed for a reason. Now that I don’t have any passion for it and even don’t try so hard for it, it happens to me. Such a funny universe. :))
The competition was also a little different from our trainings. In the trainings, I was the person who solved the hard problems. Here, we solved 7 problems, and only one of them was completely solved by me. That one was not even one of the hard problems. Other than that, I was just trying to distribute the facts and the problems between my teammates. It felt like a new role!
It was not all about the contest. I also liked the city of Porto. For the first time, I saw the ocean! Also, it’s the first city I’ve been to that is a popular destination among the tourists. The fact that you see a lot of people whenever you go outside really amazes me. Also, the native people are pretty fluent in English. I never had a problem communicating in English. Now, I can see what the people actually meant when they were comparing Saarbrücken to big cities.
Moving on from the city, I also had some problems with socialization, just as always before. I had an absolute failure at Delft. I really didn’t want to replicate that experience here. So, after the first day, I arrived at hotel and seriously thought where I could do better. Then, it got much better in the next days. I can’t say it went perfect, but still it was good enough to feel the progress and not feel completely depressed and disappointed after the event. (What happened to me after NWERC) I still have to work on it, but hooray anyway. 😀
And that was all for tonight!