Writing stuff has always been enjoyable. Unfortunately, it has been relegated to the bottom of my to-do list ever since I started my undergrad here (with the exception of Summer 2017 period when I had more free time). This is the only thing I could do to rectify this situation: the update before school starts.
- I’m back from a month-long summer break in Malaysia! Thanks to my co-op program at Waterloo, summer break really isn’t a thing for me as all school breaks are at most 2 weeks in length. Getting home is therefore rendered impractical considering the time and money spent on the flight. This time, though, I had a month off this time (thanks to my employer for the flexibility in adjusting my work term length!), so I seized the opportunity to go home. Being able to spend time with my family, catch up with some old friends, and relish in the local food made every second spent in my city worthwhile, and this one month would be one of the most memorable moments in my undergrad life.
- Summer in Toronto had been amazing, replete with activities and entertainment ranging from watching the live Raptor’s show in the bar and watching the victory parade, to cycling around the Toronto island or simply jogging around the town. My summer internship had been an enriching one — now I have a better sense of how working at a trading firm would look like.
- Hobbies — I lost the penchant to do a complete writeup on the process of me solving the IMO (simply because I had retired from the participation in this contest for a good 5 years), but I do have my solutions uploaded here (first time having 6 problems solved, though problems 3 and 6 are probably considered out-of-contest-time solutions and I only got problem 3 after reading some comments on AoPS). Solutions to other contests are also in the same repo, just to showcase my love for math Olympiad 😉 .
Codeforces — this is the only competitive programming that I’m actively doing till now. Until last August, I had been steadily marching from cyan / blue to purple rating (except a downfall), surpassing the purple bar with an astonishing 35th place on a Division 2 contest. The journey to the next rating band (orange) steepened significantly after that, however (despite it’s being only < 150 points away) with me hovering between 1953 to 2014 rating points consistently for the next 10 contest, only to breakthrough with a lucky #75 later on before crawling slowly to scrap by the orange bar. Regardless of how long I can maintain this, I am happy to unlock this achievement, at least for once.
- How about school? “Oh no I haven’t gone to school for 8 months!” While this is not the correct way to convey this fact, but it’s true. I will be starting my Fall study term in two days (after 7 months of internship + 1 month of vacation), so stay tuned!
That’s all, for now. 🙂
anzoteh96 