two homeless men spotted eating lunch
Somehow Ross manages to convince Columbia, Portugal and the Netherlands to send their respective IMO teams to train in New Zealand right before the IMO. Because he has managed to do this, the six members of the New Zealand team get to board at St Cuthbert’s College for a second time this year, a privilege that reminds me just how lucky I am that I don’t live in a boarding house.
In the next few days a series of particularly peculiar phenomena present themselves.
Sun, 6 Jul 2025: Chris Pan shows up uninvited, it seems he has forgotten he is no longer on the IMO team, he’s not even a lecturer or anything.
Mon, 7 Jul 2025: Nico Mikinley shows up followed by Tony Wang and Dawn Chen later that day.
Tony, Dawn and Chris even manage to sneak their way onto a ferry to Devonport, following an excursion they weren’t invited to.
two homeless men spotted eating lunch
It seems that almost the entirety of the 2024 NZ IMO team has developed dementia and still believe they are on the IMO team even after graduating. I remind myself to keep my mind sharp even after the IMO is over so that I do not succumb to the same fate. The only person yet to make an appearance from the 2024 NZ IMO team is Boning Dai, or so I thought?
Ethan presenting his solution for Problem 1 on Mock 3
On the first day everyone is gathered in the common rooms, we’re playing games, we’re socializing, we’re meeting the other teams. I don’t even know what happened but after that day I didn’t see a single member of any other team in the common rooms again. Our leading theory is that we made such a poor first impression that the other teams were now scared of us and desperately avoiding us. I think this is quite strange as I would consider New Zealand to be one of the most normal teams at the IMO, I’ll recount some things to demonstrate to you how normal we are.
Haotian spotted taking desert
After making fun of the recommended youtube videos on the St Cuth’s TV’s we decide to watch I'm Obsessed with My Ex to figure out what the hype is about. The video is a banger. We were heartbroken when Ryan betrayed Ella by cheating on her with Harpy, sorry I meant Harper and we were captivated by the chemistry between Ella and the fatherless french pickpocket Gabrielle who’s dad actually turned out to be a part of the Mafia. Because this video was so amazing, we would start watching TV every night. We watched My Story Animated, Dhar Mann and Tomorrow’s Tweakings.
Haotian develops a weird habit, he says something negative that he does, and then he acts as if I’m the one who does it. During our Geometry lecturer he tells the people sitting with us that I was going to complex bash the problems and I am then scolded by the Colombians. He also begins accusing me of taking extra desserts during dinner.
During lunch, dinner or any free time we have we pull out our phones and start playing “2 Player Games”
Ethan, Ray and Haotian playing a cheap ripoff of the game Crash-It.
Mon, 7 Jul 2025: we take a train to the ferry and on the ferry we play the game Pop-It, which is actually a game of six heap misère nim, Ethan declares himself to be a “Nimber Theorist” he loses.
Wed, 9 Jul 2025: we play the game Mancala, Ethan and Ray become infatuated with Gyat theory and they keep saying embarrassing things like: “Oh you wanna trade this level 1 gyatt for his level 10 gyatt”.
Oh yeah in case you didn’t know Ethan Ng is our Deputy leader…
I had 2024 ISL G3 and 2024 ISL G4 as problem 2’s on two separate IMO mocks that I sat before sitting the actual IMO.
In both instances I tried the second problem first, solved it and then solved problem 1 very quickly afterwards.
I was pretty excited when I opened up my exam paper and saw that problem 2 was a geometry problem. So I tried the second problem first, and uhhhhh… um well… I couldn’t solve it on my first try. I pivot to problem 1, “there is no way I’m dropping 0” I think to myself and I was right! I solve problem 1 and I return to problem 2. Amazingly after taking a small break I return to the problem with newfound insight, BOOM parallelagram, BOOM parallelogram, BOOM parallel, BOOM done. I solved the problem.
When I come back I don’t try problem 3 very seriously, I make sure my problem 1 and 2 solutions are nice and rigorous and I wait until the time ticks down to 0.
I solved problem 4 very quickly, then I solved problem 5 very quickly. The cutoffs will be high this year, but I’m pretty sure I’ll get a silver medal so I don’t stress it too much.
There were a lot of fun things to do at IMO 2025. We played Mario Kart. Went to Australia Zoo. Played Volleyball, went Kayaking, Sailing and “Danced”. But of course like any other IMO the best part was hanging out with friends and meeting new people from around the world.
Haotian becoming a furry.
Even though I will never compete at the IMO again I’ll probably still keep doing olympiad maths, it’s just so fun. I guess now I have the freedom to try a problem for as long as I want because it doesn’t matter if I’m training suboptimally.
The only reason I put this section in is because I caught Haotian playing Fate Grand Order and his excuse after I started making fun of him for it was that he was trying to find something to play now that he’s retired from maths.