39th International Chemistry Olympiad (IChO) Part 2

16 July 2007
Can you imagine sleeping very late and waking up extreme early? Why? Because the sun sets at around 12 am and rise soon before you could even have enough sleep. Anyway, today is our first day in IChO and we are doing what people always do on the first day, the opening ceremony. Before departing to MSU, we had our breakfast. Western breakfast which includes bread, jam, cheese and sausages. We travelled on escorted bus to the MSU. Yup, we were escorted by a police car and the bus travel in a straight line, literally. Well, we will get this VIP treatment until the end of our 10 days stay here. At the opening ceremony, each contingent have to march in with their flag. Then, we were entertained by a group of traditional dancers which will continue following us wherever we need entertainment. Well, we passed breads around to be eaten after dipping into salt. According to the Russian, salt means sky and bread means earth. The combinations symbolise that Russia welcomes all of us. The official 39th IChO flag was hoisted by the 4 participants from Russia and 4 others from Korea, last year's host country of IChO. We took oath promising that upon joining the Chemistry Brotherhood, we have to use Chemistry for and only for mankind. As usual, we have to endure long speeches. Later after that, we had our welcome reception. First time ever, I had full western lunch. It was quite delicious despite being completely different from any lunch in Malaysia. We then bid farewell to our mentors as we will not meet them for the next few days. The activity next is bus tour around Moscow. I can conclude that Moscow is a city full of monuments from the bus tour as there are a lot of parks in Moscow and each park has at least one monument. After a whole afternoon of bus tour, we went back to Olimpiets to have dinner and then disco. Dinner was a surprise. We have this food called Russian grain. It is the Russians' form of rice. To me, it is not really nice as it is quite harsh and tasteless. Soon, when night falls, it is disco time. However, it has no disco effect i.e. very bright until 11 pm. I only join them for disco when it gets dark as that is when it feels like a disco. After that, it was bedtime.