International relations
11.14.06 10:00 PM


By Churchillio
TopCoder Member

Scraping the layer of frost off of the car this morning was not fun, but thoughts of being in California in 12 hours made it a little bit easier to handle. My flight was leaving at 7:00 AM from St. John's, Newfoundland to Toronto, Ontario. I arrived 2 hours early, as I always do, anticipating lineups and long security checks that my home city airport never ever has, so after a brief security check (in which the coins in my pocket didn't even set off the metal detector) I waited for an hour and a half to catch the flight.

It was apparent very quickly that my 'stay up all night and sleep on the plane' plan failed to account for the Fran Drescher-type women sitting behind me, discussing things that didn't seem particularly funny but cackling the entire time. I did manage to get some sleep, however -- I didn't want to be a zombie when I arrive at the TopCoder meet and greet in San Diego.

The Toronto airport, which could literally fit an exponential number of St. John's airports inside it, is always a trick to navigate. My flight consisted of St. John's – Toronto – Denver – San Diego, 13 hours in all. As the flight attendant instructed, I got off the plane in Toronto and 'followed the red white and blue' to Terminal 2, where the border customs awaited. I picked up my bags and headed towards the customs officials. As I have learned in the past, yet never seem to remember at the time, lying to customs is a lot easier in most cases than telling the truth. This guy was definitely waiting for someone to come along with a story as complicated as mine. The conversation went something like this:

Grizzled Customs Guy: Where are you heading to?
Me: San Diego
GCG: What are you going there for?
Me: I'm going to a computer programming competition.
GCG: Who is running the competition?
Me: A company named TopCoder...
GCG: Where are they located?

Now here is where I hesitated, because I honestly didn't know where TopCoder is located [it's Glastonbury, Connecticut]. So I said I didn't know... which always puts a little smile on their face, since they're trying to trap you just in case you are indeed lying. I said "I don't know, probably somewhere near San Diego." I gave him the website to go look it up if he wanted, but he ignored it and went on to the next set of questions.

GCG: So what kind of prize can you win at the competition?
Me: I'm not actually competing, I won an essay competition to go report for the company about the competition itself.
GCG: But you said you were competing.
Me: No I didn't. I said I was going to the competition.
GCG: So do you have a work visa for doing this job?
Me: It's not a paid job, the contest was for an all expenses paid trip to go report on it for free for the company. The experience is the pay I guess.
GCG: Ahhh...

He proceeded to look around, called over another guy, he looked at me, the other guy stamped my paper with the approval of the ever vigilant US Department of Homeland Security and I was off. Half an hour later my flight was boarding and I was on my way to Denver. Next time I'll just say I'm going to see the zoo.

Denver was fairly uneventful, the 3 hour wait went by quickly with some internet access and the first real meal I had all day. This time I was able to get some sleep on the plane to San Diego, where I first met some people from the competition.

In the airport at the arrivals section there was a guy holding up a sign that read "TOPCODER," so I figured this was a logical first step to getting to the hotel. There I met up with antimatter and bjacoke001 who both came in on the same flight. I said hi to antimatter and we got to talking about the competition, TopCoder itself, last years bloggers, and what he would like to see change in this year's blogging. He gave me the rundown on how a lot of stuff worked at the competition, focusing mainly on how the other competitors are able to see the code in real time and how they react to it. This was new to me, nobody had explained that process before and it will be challenging to try and capture that for the reader not able to attend. Moments later our van arrived and we were off to the hotel.