http://www.trentwallis.com/icho40 40th International Chemistry Olympiad, Budapest, Hungary Sun, 10 Aug 2008 14:03:15 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en This blog chronicles the journey of the 2008 Australian Chemistry Olympiad team. We trained in Cambridge for a week then competed at the 40th International Chemistry Olympiad in Budapest, Hungary. Posts are now arranged in chronological order. The 2008 Australian team is William Jackson, Mingyue (Elaine) Kardashinsky, Yufeng Shi and Daren Tan. They ... http://www.trentwallis.com/icho40/?p=5 Livenews video report on the Team Announcement ceremony. Some photos of the team from the Team Announcement ceremony held at Parliament House. 2008 Australian Chemistry Olympiad team: (from left) Daren Tan, Yufeng Shi, Mingyue (Elaine) Kardashinsky, William Jackson. 2008 Australian Chemistry Olympiad group: (from left) Dr Mark Ellison (Program Director), Yufeng Shi, Trent ... http://www.trentwallis.com/icho40/?p=6 Sydney Morning Herald article on Olympians. West Australian article on Daren Tan. Go team! http://www.trentwallis.com/icho40/?p=8 Arrived at Sydney Airport at 1300 hours and said some goodbyes to our families. We were delayed getting through customs: left at around 1600 hours. We aimed to stay up all the way through the flight to Singapore and then sleep from the Singapore/London leg - and we succeeded. It ... http://www.trentwallis.com/icho40/?p=9 Apologies for the late post, we were all a bit too tired last night to write it! We got up refreshed from a non-jet-lag-induced sleep: bright and early at 7:30am (except for Daren who had to be harassed), then headed down for some do-it-yourself breakfast. Courtesy of Trent, Alex and Dustin we had a smorgasbord of porridge, chips, chocolate biscuits, cereals, beautiful ... http://www.trentwallis.com/icho40/?p=10 After a lengthy breakfast we started the day with some Analytical Chemistry. Alex made us re-do one of the harder prep problems with slightly different data -a very laborious task, but useful for practice. We met up with ex-Olympian Anthony Phillips again for lunch, at the Anchor pub on the ... http://www.trentwallis.com/icho40/?p=11 Today we ate our first brekky at Trinity College, in a grand hall with 4 long tables (a little Harry Potter-like) and surrounded by portraits of famous ex-collegians. Having a hot brekky was a pleasant change from the ad hoc past 2 brekkies! Our first reacquaintance with practicals and labs happened ... http://www.trentwallis.com/icho40/?p=13 We took the train down to London, alighting at Kings Cross station. We had a brief walk around St Pancras International before catching the tube to Hyde Park Corner where we visited the Australian War memorial and Wellington Arch. From there it was a short stroll to Buckingham Palace for ... http://www.trentwallis.com/icho40/?p=14 Today we started with the usual routine - breakfast at Trinity and then the short trek to the lab. Organic pracs today! The first one involved the synthesis of a conjugated chemical and the second involved the complexing/precipitation and then analysis of amino acids (found in proteins). While we were ... http://www.trentwallis.com/icho40/?p=15 Waking up after a decent night's sleep, we were all psyched up for the mock IChO theory paper. At Trinity college breakfast the serving staff seamed a bit out of it, as were Dusty and Trent despite a small sleep in... Anthony Phillips joined us halfway through brekky, and conversation with him ... http://www.trentwallis.com/icho40/?p=16