IChO: that's all, folks.
To finish with the IChO ( previous post).
Please take a look at results, problems and solutions here. In short: #1 and #2 - China, #3 and #4 - Russia. China, Russia and Poland won 4 gold medals each, out of 4 people in the team. 31 gold medals total. BTW, international physics olympiad was in Iran, USA attended. :)
One of the benefits of hosting an international chemistry olympiad for a chemistry department is that the new equipment needed for the practical examinations stays on the department. Moscow State has already hosted the 28th olympiad in 1996. Those were hard times, the olympiad helped a lot. They still use some stuff from then in the teaching labs. This time they bought exceptionnaly shitty glassware and equipment, mostly from one company named Labo (Лабо). I they sold the largest batch of goods ever sold to anyone, which brings just one idea: a "contract".
The opening ceremony would meet the international guests, including several ambassadors (I memorized Iran and USA, in the order given, and Cuba), with the big banner "Wellcome". Luckily, someone pointed that out and they sort of cut one "l" away before the ceremony. And so it goes, like in Olympics, the countries bear their flags, enter the area and take their seats. A woman announces the country in Russian and a man dubs in English. Sweet glycol, what a moron it was. He was doing his little job with a horrible accent, pronouncing the names of the countries so incoherently that one couldn't recognize them. But - with a boxing match host intonation. I cannot think of something more stupid than this. Ok, fine, but it hasn't become clear for the organizers that he should not be there and we met him again on the closing ceremony, in the MSU main building, where people had met Gagarin. For some reason, the video poorly represents his imbecile speech, but I assure you that by mere chance he didn't end up under a pile of rotten tomatoes. Not only my opinion. See yourself. Note "and we have a couple of Jose".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6pLgfbcKCs
Click to viewHis name is Gennadiy Hvoryh (Хворых) and I don't give a shit if he's successful showman or a poker federation official or whatever the fuck he is, this event was not for him. In the end he was introduced as "one of our famous MSU alumni", not to much honor to MSU.
First deputy prime minister Dmitry Medvedev appeared on the closingceremony. 2008 presidential elections, eh?
The pompously announced Potanin's (a multibillionaire) fund stipend awarded to Russian team turned out to be 3000 rub/month ($120).
Initially, I intended to work there all the time but I had to leave Moscow for a week, the most intensive week in terms of preparation. I want to address any person who was in charge of the olympiad, if he/she reads this. You've done tremendous job, arranged 250 workplaces, working for 16 hours a day for a week. But I would like to reserve the right to critisize, noone and nothing is ideal. There was a lot of flaws in organization.
I'll end with a picture of a kestrel (пустельга). It got trapped in the upper part of the hood. Not concentraing on how the famous MSU ChemDept oak hoods work (or don't work) - no idea how it made it in there, but by no means from below, only from above. It was very weak, couldn't fly. We were so nice that we carried it to the biology department and left with a guy researching frogs. :)
