2010 Australian Chemistry Olympiad Team

We write to you having just finished the mammoth translation: the theory paper. It is somewhat amusing that it takes the English-speaking countries about 5 hours to translate their paper from English to English, adiposity when it takes other countries only 8 hours to translate into an entirely different language. Nonetheless, healing we once again finished before the US, pilule NZ and Canada, and about equal with the english so all was well. When Tristan signed off the papers, his signature was laughed at by the Japanese organisers. We also had trouble with the stapler, but the 10 surrounding Japanese organizers soon rectified this problem. Notice we just spelt organise with a z – unfortuantely we’re picking up some bad habits from the Americans.

On that note the staff had a very entertaining flag war with the other neighbouring desks. We destroyed the New Zealand flag by disfiguring their star, and the Canadian’s by turning their maple leaf a sickly green colour. For the US we had to be more inventive. Tristan pained the stripes on the flag rainbow, and then proceded to delete some of the stars from the flag, and replace them with entertaining text. The Americans responded by adding a tex bubble to our screen: ‘I’m so annoyed I have to share my country with convicts’. Friendly competition, but it kept the day moving…along with the Swiss and Belgians generously offering us chocolate of multiple different varities – and an infinite amount. This resulted in a few chocolate smudges on some of the exam papers, however we wasted some more paper and printed off  a cleaner version. There’s nothing like that authentic touch to show the students that we really HAD been over their exam papers with a fine tooth comb.

This all took place after a gruelling night of Jury – this time to discuss the theoretical problems. This session was shorter (thank goodness) than the practical session: we were done by midnight. The first 45 minutes was spent on the instructions, and then we divided into two rooms to discuss different questions. We did not have any major issues with the problems – or we dealt with them during our meetings with the authors. Will was frighteningly upset about something important to him being left out. We had emergency ice-cream halfway through the meetings as usual – cheescake for Mark Anne and Tristan, and chocolate for Will. Keeps us sane through the meetings…

There is now nothing more we can do for the students – their translated papers are in bags and ready to be done by the students. We will see them tomorrow at the reunion party, hopefully refershed and relaxed that their exams are over, and they can simply enjoy the feast! In the meantime, however, the students are enjoying a leisurely excursion in Tokyo (national science museum), and a ‘japanese cultural experience’. In other news, the US blog (http://icho2010.blogspot.com/) I’m told is very exciting. Everyone should read and comment! (Currently we’re blogging next to the US mentors, so we have to be nice to each other!).

Now that we’ve fininshed, we’re relaxing and mentally preparing ourselves for arbitration – where Tristan and Anne get to show their best diplomatic skills, and we try and get the students the marks they deserve.

More soon….