The 2008 Australian team is William Jackson, Mingyue (Elaine) Kardashinsky, Yufeng Shi and Daren Tan. They were accompanied by Alex Wong (Head Mentor), Dustin Stuart (Mentor) and Trent Wallis (Scientific Observer).

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 Wallis (Deputy Director), Daren Tan, William Jackson, Mingyue (Elaine) Kardashinsky, Dustin Stuart (Mentor), Alex Wong (Head Mentor).

West Australian article on Daren Tan.

Go team!

After our brief stopover at Singapore, we hopped on another plane to London, to be rewarded with a SECOND SUPPER only 1.5 hours after the last meal (although Yufeng didn’t appear to care)!! Although we failed our goals of flying ‘economy plus’, our flight was most pleasant: we all managed to get between 4 -7.5 hours sleep, leaving us refreshed (although highly in need of shower) when we arrived at Heathrow.

Luckily, we didn’t waste any time waiting for buses at Heathrow. We arrived in Cambridge at approximately 9:00am +1GMT. We were met by tour guide extraordinaire Andrew Goodwin (IChO 1996 Gold medallist and former AChO staff member, now a Research Fellow at Cambridge), who called some taxis and showed us all to our new GIGANTIC COLLEGE ROOMS FROM WHICH WE ARE CURRENTLY WRITING THIS BLOG. The rooms are phenomenal: a huge upgrade from John XXIII at ANU, Canberra.  Spacious, complete with window seats, an ensuite bathroom + 3 wardrobes, and a desk for study, as well as a heating system and multiple lounge chairs. We all settled in very quickly. After a brief tour around Trinity College we went straight to brunch, where Elaine felt the need to order two breakfasts for herself, while everyone else starved on a mere ‘traditional breakfast’ at the Mitre pub.

From here  it was a tour a Cambridge: the steeples, the castles, the crazy tight-wearing theatre hecklers, the continuous offers of a ‘punt down the river Cam’ for rates of 12 pounds per hour per person; the wood panelling, the British accents, the grass that no-one except college fellows can walk on, the bridge which is the only place in England where it is legal to kill someone in a duel. Yes, we’re all totally sold. Sorry folks, we’re not coming back. We even picked up 2009 prospectus guides!

After meeting Anthony Phillips (multiple IChO and IPhO medallist and former AChO staff member, now a PhD student at Cambridge) in mid-Cambridge centre, we decided we’d stay awake by taking a punt up the River Cam. We split into tutors and students, and as students we can officially say that it’s definitely a skill that takes a great deal of getting used to. It took half an hour before we managed to punt in a straight line, and another 50 minutes to figure out how to turn, and then another 2 hours to get to the end of the river, only to find that the tutors had literally been ‘there and back again’. We even passed the Wren library, where the original manuscripts of Isaac Newton, as well as the original illustrated copies of A.A. Milne’s ‘Winnie the Pooh’ are kept. Simply spiffing architecture! We heard the resident punt tour guides telling the boats full of tourists about the merits of Cambridge and Trinity College. One even went so far as to say:

‘Trinity college is the most prestigious and most academically successful college in the university. It has won 31 Nobel Prizes in total.’
*from another boat* ‘It’s 32, not 31!’
‘Oh really? Have you just won one driving that boat?’
SNAP!

After a recreational game of frisbee (led by Mentor Dustan Stuart) in the Fellow’s Gardens, we headed to dinner: Italian by the river. After engulfing pizza and pasta, we headed off to find breakfast for tomorrow, and ice cream for the night!! Speaking of which, we’ve only just finished with the ice cream, and are thinking of heading off to bed very shortly. The academic program starts tomorrow morning.

Cambridge rules.
Team Oz 2008

Brunch

Punting on the Cam

Frisbee!

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 British strawberries and raspberries, peaches and bananas. Then we got stuck straight into some theory work (Inorganic Chemistry), working through some of the preparatory problems and some alternative, similar ones.

Finishing at 1:00pm, we headed into town for some lunch at the ‘Baron of Beef’, a pub specialising in hardcore burgers. This was indeed the place where the epic battle between Alex and his ULTIMATE burger took place: Alex won by a small margin but was demolished by Trent. The rest of us were pansies and ate smaller food items. On the way back, as we were frolicking through the meadows of the fellows garden, throwing the frisbee as we went, Daren aimed it nicely into the moat (more like a bog, with nettle plants all over it) around the college, much to Dustin’s dismay. Quote: ‘I’ll give you a choice Daren. It’s either 20 pounds or a new frisbee. It’s worth its weight in gold.’ Dustin is quite attached to his frisbee.

Then we headed back for a short work session starting off some organic chemistry problems. Mid-afternoon Will and Trent met friends/relatives in town while the others had a date by the river Cam savouring cherries and strawberries. Alex had a date with his pillow to recover from the STING of the battle with the ULTIMATE burger. Dustin however, on the way back, felt he had the strength to rescue the frisbee from the bog, sinking in the mud and trampling over the nettles (we did get it back, though). Upon trying to use the frisbee however, we found our usual lawns occupied so we moved to another area and were kicked off by ‘grass-security’ (you wouldn’t believe how many Porters there are at this place, all in Cambridge ties). Quote: ‘If the fellows catch you playing frisbee here, you’ll be out! [Muahahahaha!]‘

We headed out for some dinner at Teri-Yaki, where Will epic-failed at two-handed chopsticks. Walking back through Trinity College, we noticed lots of pompous old-people in academic dresses/academic gowns milling around in the main quad. Indeed, they were there for the ‘Fellows Midsummer Feast’. We were stopped by security, who seemed to be quite irritated that none of us were in a four-piece suit and bow-tie. We got through, however, and have decided that we shall dress up in academic gowns one day and ask them if they’d like to go punting [with an affected Cambridge accent].

After watching ‘Attack of the Nucelophile’ from Alex’s IChO year, we hammered Organic Chemistry for 2 hours before Yufeng and Dustin fell asleep at the table and we all went to bed. And that’s the end……of that chapter.

Team Oz ‘08.

Dustin rescuing the frisbee

Trinity College

We got back and hammered some Organic problems, finishing off the prep problems and starting on some fun mechanisms that Dustin had prepared for us. We left this session quite tired, and were dismayed that we couldn’t get into the 4.00pm Evensong (Trinity College Choir, broadcast live on the BBC) as we were not seated by 3.45pm. Better luck next time, we’re definitely going to see it! We walked back to do some more problems, but were reinvigorated with the knowledge of the fact that we were to meet the British team that night!

We met the British team in front of St Catherine’s college at around 6.30pm. We went for a nice Indian dinner and we made friends with those who we will be spending the rest of the week doing labs. Very interesting characters! We even met the co-author of one of our favourite textbook: Peter Wothers. We had to be very careful not to name the book by the other author without acknowledging him. The food was great, although all the British team are slightly older than us and were drinking! Then we wandered home and Alex went to bed - we’re currently excited about breakfast in college for the first time tomorrow morning, and then starting our laboratory tasks in the Cambridge labs later on tomorrow!

Yay again,
Team Oz ‘08

Puzzling over Analytical Chemistry problems

Lunch at The Anchor

Our first reacquaintance with practicals and labs happened today: we spent the morning with the Brits at the chem labs, doing titrations with Vitamin C pill ‘powder’ and repeating the ‘unknown’ metal labs from April camp. The Brits were there as well but segregated and doing different tasks, making the lab smell like almond cookies. Kudos to Mykola the British lab technician, who whipped up labs for us in a jiffy and gave our whole team well needed tips on using the analytical balance (extremely accurate weighing machine) and to the mentors who slogged through the problems with us.

All afternoon and night were spent on theory. We knocked off reasonable early at 10 as stamina and enthusiasm was running lethargically low. Weather-wise today alternated every 5 min between cold and windy, extremely extremely heavy bucketing rain and a tad of sunshine. The breaks in the rain brought out a remarkable array of wildlife! The flipside was that there were no bothersome marketers offering to take us out for a punt; the punts on the Cam were like armored roman tortoises, bristling with a layer of umbrella shields.

British accents seem to have infected the team, both in impersonations and in conversation! All students and mentors are looking forward to tomorrow’s field trip to London!!!

Team Oz ‘08.

Elaine hard at work

Daren hard at work

Will hard at work

Yufeng hard at work

Mentor Dustin and Head Mentor Alex hard at work

Squirrel in Trinity College grounds

Geese grazing Trinity College lawns after the rain

Lunch was at ‘Frankie and Benny’s Italian/American Restaurant’ - an intersting change in cuisine! Dustin and Will grabbed some uber-milkshakes, and everyone settled down some pizza or a variety on pizza. There was a heated debate around the pronounciation of the word scone. It involved whether or not the correct pronounciation was ’scOne’ or ’scon’. Dustin, insisting it was scOne decided to ask the waitress to investigate. He asked: ‘what do you call the small cakes that you have here, served with jam and cream that you eat with your fingers?’. He then received the reply: ‘oh, um tiramisu?’ EPIC FAIL!

We checked out the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey, then caught the tube to the Tower of London, where we checked out all manner of blinged-out crowns and swords. The crown jewels were particularly exciting, although we had to sit through videos of the fake crown jewels before we got to the real ones. That is one PHAT diamond! All were impressed with the discrete security. After this we headed to St Paul’s Cathedral for Evensong, a peaceful rest after rushing around all day! It was a rush to get there, mind you: we ended up running from the train station to get to the service in time. We weren’t going to miss ANOTHER Evensong! A little unforunate we picked the day when they were setting up for a concert - but we heard the beautiful sounds of Evensong nonetheless.

The tube was a most exciting experience: so refreshingly fast compared to Sydney trains. Although the voice from the station which continuously belting ‘Mind the Gap!’ (Alex was convinved the voice got higher and higher in pitch to psychologically brain wash the customers) got quite waring, we were all impressed by the speed of the trains and the regularity of the service. We were always on a train within a minute of arriving at the platform.

We then split up for dinner and shows: Elaine and Trent saw Chicago at the Cambridge Theatre, and Will, Daren, Yufeng, Alex and Dustin saw Pygmalion at the Old Vic Theatre. They were both awesome of course, and we felt very cultured keeping the company that we were in. Pygmalion is about self-loving British academic who is convinced he can turn a working class girl into a ‘princess’. Simply spinetinglng! Chicago was a bang - Elaine’s first musical! Both groups were very impressed! We took the last train home, complete with many interesting characters! There was one particular large bloke who kept crushing Elaine when he fell asleep. Trent and the bloke’s mate both tried to wake him, but the mission failed. We practically fell into bed at 2.00am, knowing that we had to get up bright and early at 8.00am for the next set of pracs. I think Alex’s phrase at 2:00am was ‘Ok so 8.00am tomorrow morning. Is that ok with everyone? *death stare*’ And he stayed up writing problems for the next day! Fun fun fun! =)

Team Oz ‘08.

Australian War Memorial, Hyde Park Corner

Riding the Trafalgar Square lions

Houses of Parliament and Big Ben

Westminster Abbey

Tower Bridge

St Paul’s Cathedral

We took our time to saviour the remaining time we had left in Cambridge - we all did some individual tourist shopping. We bough ties, jerseys, hats, notebooks and even a ‘Newton’s cradle’. We kicked ack for a bit of swiss icecream and then returned to college for some fun analytical chemistry. Alex was back - with a vengeance! We looked at some redox chemistry problems, and learnt some shortcuts for calculations. We were all getting a bit tired but Andy G rocked up and we went out for traditional Spanish Tapas! I can’t remember how much food we ordered but it was probably far too much, nevertheless is was great to thank Andrew for all his help for the time we’ve been in Cambridge. We gave him a nice bottle of wine and a thank you from all of us.

But the highlight of the day was yet to come! On the way back from dinner we plucked up the courage to ask his holy fellowship Andy G if he could take us across the lawns of Cambridge (as only Fellows of the college are allowed to walk on the grass!). He immediately said, in a swift British accent: ‘Right, that’s it lets go. We’ll do a fat diagonal across the grass.’ Apparently even when it’s pouring with rain, some Fellows will still walk straight across the grass, because they can! As you can imagine, we felt quite dignified walking across, and honoured to be offered the opportunity.

After a quick bash (at 10.30pm) of one of Dustin’s hardcore formula-crunching problems, we brought the man himself, head mentor Alex Wong, his ceremonial birthday cake. After round two of happy birthday, we ate it with smiles on our faces and returned to our rooms, collapsing into another night’s good sleep.

That’s all for another day!

Team Oz ‘08

Will filtering his product.

Dustin helping Will and Alex helping Daren.

Daren’s carcinogenic dumping ground!

Yufeng and his product.

Elaine being dextrous!

Anthony Phillips joined us halfway through brekky, and conversation with him dragged brekky longer and with it the mock exam. In the end, the exam that was to start at 9 started at 9:50. Seeing as it was a 4 hr exam, it dragged on til 1.50pm… cue mass hunger!

Lunch was with ASI Executive Director Chris Stewart at The Eagle, the pub where Watson and Crick discussed and discovered the structure of DNA.  Alex ordered a Caesar salad for the chicken and was thoroughly disappointed at the large amounts of celery, capsicum and radish that came with it. Everyone else had pretty much ate their plates clean!

A short qualitative Inorganic session was followed by a light dinner and packing for our trip to Budapest tomorrow!

Team Oz ‘08.

Team Oz outside The Eagle