Memory Lane – Bucharest, Romania (1999)

The photo was taken in 1999. I was in Bucharest, Romania, for the International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO). It was my first IMO, my first trip abroad that was not with family members, and my second ever trip abroad (I went to Umrah in 1994 with my grandparents and my sister Nurul).

There were 6 students on the Malaysian team, all high schoolers. I was in Form 5 at MRSM Jasin. The team was led by Prof. Abu Osman Md Tap (UKM) and Assoc. Prof. Dr. Mat Rofa Ismail (UPM), both representing the national mathematics association. The 6 of us were selected due to our stellar (cheh… konon) performance in the national mathematical olympiad and in the subsequent training camps.

Three of the team members were repeats; they went to IMO 1998 so they had some experience. It was my first ever IMO, so I learned a lot from my team members and the coaches. All my math knowledge pre-IMO could be filled inside an SPM textbook, so I had a LOT to learn to prepare for the IMO.

Competition-wise, the team did not do very well. Our olympiad training back then was rudimentary since we did not have the materials and expertise (and there was not much material on the dial-up internet, believe it or not. Not like today when you can learn practically anything online). But the trip itself is memorable. None of us won an award at the IMO. I could not even solve a single problem, although I managed to get 5 points (out of 7) for the first problem, a slot traditionally reserved for the easiest problem in the paper. The first medal for Malaysia in IMO would come at IMO 2000, a year later.

At the time, the Romanian people were still recovering from the Nicolae Ceaușescu years. Even though Ceaușescu was toppled from power 10 years before (in a violent uprising – there is film footage of the execution of Ceaușescu and his wife), the damage he did to the Romanian economy was so extensive that the country was still reeling in poverty. The country was in transition from hardline communism to a market economy, but people were poor, and material things were hard to come by. Crime was high: I got robbed in broad daylight while walking on the street of Bucharest. Our team guide Nicoleta – a very smart student who later went on to get PhD in statistics from Zurich – was visibly upset and embarrassed about the incident, but I told her that at least I was not physically injured and the robbers did not take my passport (they took my camera and money). Not a big deal.

We stayed at the Politehnica University of Bucharest and wrote the IMO contest papers in the lecture halls and classrooms there. Although our accommodation was spartan, the academic side of the competition is of very high quality, reflecting the long tradition of academic competitions/olympiads in Romania. In fact, Romania was the founder of the whole global math olympiad movement when they organized the first IMO back in 1959 when it was joined only by Eastern Bloc countries. IMO 1999 was the 40th IMO so it was apt to have the IMO back in the land of its origin.

(If you do the math carefully, then IMO 1999 should be the 41st instead of the 40th, but I think they skipped one year of IMO in the early 1980s, perhaps due to some Cold War shenanigans).

Places we went to:

1. Romanian Parliament – at the time it was one of the largest buildings in the world by floor area (second after the Pentagon). It was a stark reminder of the excesses during the Ceausescu years. An impressive building, with high ceilings, marble statues, ornate trimmings, the whole shebang. We went there for the closing ceremony.
2. Bran Castle – famous for being the residence of Count Dracula in fiction. Despite popular belief, it has nothing to do with Vlad the Impaler, the real-life inspiration for the Dracula character. Dr. Mat Rofa injured his leg at the castle, and he talked about the incident in a ceramah on the history of Vlad the Impaler and the Ottoman Empire – you can look it up on Youtube.
3. Sinaia – honestly I don’t remember anything about the place except the name. Perhaps we visited a castle there, or was it a museum? I only remember one thing: during lunchtime, the Malaysian team had an outdoor picnic in a garden. Some of us were dismayed that the packed lunch provided by the organizers contained food that we could not eat. So we had the idea of exchanging our lunchboxes with a bunch of gypsies who happened to be traveling on a caravan nearby. The gypsies accepted our food happily and they gave us a bag of berries in exchange.

(I know gypsy is considered a racial slur, and I am supposed to call them Romani or Zigan or something. But nobody who reads this will be offended, so gypsy stays. One of my favorite 70s songs is “Gypsys, Tramps & Thieves” by Cher.)

I have not been to Romania since then, but I am pretty sure A LOT has changed. Hope to go there again one day.