During yesterday's ACM ICPC opening ceremonies, the Ateneo teams entered UP's Bahay Alumni flashing the awesome jackets from Chikka. Many other teams had uniform shirts, some of which had colorful, post-modern designs. The jackets, though, ah, those were attention-grabbing--royal blue, long-sleeved, sponsored, and SPARQCoded, we looked pretty bad-ass.
Dr. Saldana, the contest site director, wanted pictures by the team and by school. He called each team up on stage and asked them to remain onstage until a school's entire contingent was complete. Because we were the largest group, the stage filled slowly, until it was completely awash in royal blue. When it was time to take the school shot, the photographer, who took her job very seriously, was careful to arrange us so that we were tightly clustered and so that all faces were visible. This took a while, and each minute that passed made us stick out more and more.
After the opening ceremonies, it was time to move to Vidal Tan Hall for the practice contest. The organizers had arranged for a fleet of jeeps to take us from Bahay Alumni to Vidal Tan. We weren't told ahead of time that there was transportation available, so we, naturally, had our own caravan of vans and SUVs. As our teams walked down the steps, bypassing the contest-sponsored transportation, one of the boys said, "Siyempre, ang mga Atenista, hindi mag-je-jeep..." Hay, mga elitista. :)
I don't know if I was just being self-conscious, but my sense was there really was something flamboyant about the way we owned our space during this contest. Now if we actually owned the contest, we'd really have something. Three hours to go. In the meantime, don't hate us cause we're beautiful.
