IYPT 2013 Trip Summary
I thought writing a few (photo-accompanied) words1 about my experiences on this year’s IYPT could be a good idea, so here it is.
This year’s IYPT (and my last IYPT as a participant) took place in Taipei, Taiwan. This meant (among other things) a lot of flying (yay!): we started at the Vienna airport, from where we got to Schiphol, Amsterdam (the green part of which I totally loved). The flight from Amsterdam to Taipei took rather long and it was quite enjoyable (we didn’t really see the Himalayas, but I loved the view regardless, plus it was my first time in a Boeing 747).
Upon arriving at the Taipei (actually Taoyuan) airport, meeting our wonderful guides, taking a group picture and getting out of the building we were greeted by the lovely couple of humidity and heat, which would accompany us for the rest of the week. We then got to the university campus, had dinner and made ourselves at home at the university dormitory2. What followed in the next days were the opening ceremony and physics fights.3
The official program for Sunday afternoon was the Shihsanhang Museum of Archaeology, but we decided to split from the group and instead see the almost-tallest building in the world: Taipei 101 (among other things). I loved the view (Taipei at night looks fantastic), the scale in itself and, of course, the lovely 660-ton wind damper which was proudly displayed in the center of the structure.
Next came the final physics fight with Singapore, Korea and Switzerland. By the way, the results for all physics fights can be seen at results.iypt.org/IYPT2013/. After the fight and an exclusive lunch we enjoyed the closing ceremony, which was quite spectacular — the organizers really tried to make it grandiose, and (somewhat unexpectedly) they succeeded (photos here). Also, we got funny bamboo plates with the (by the way lovely) IYPT 2013 logo instead of medals.
Next day we went to the Yehliu Geopark in the morning, which was quite good despite the heat. Then we had an exclusive lunch at some exclusive hotel at the beach, which of course led to eating the exclusive lunch very fast and then running for the sea. Unfortunately the beach looked bad because of the typhoon that had brought quite non-negligible amount of debris (and I presume this is one of the reasons why not many people joined us, the other being the poor hotel employees who didn’t really want us to go swim in there), but the swimming was great anyway. We saw crabs and a tiny flying fish. I love the sea!
In the afternoon we visited a part of the Yangmingshan National Park, which was basically a post-volcanic area with a few hot steam vents and a magnificent sulfuric smell. It looked interesting, but I had expected to be allowed to spend a bit more time there after all the trouble of getting there. But at least there were dragonflies.
On the last evening we had a farewell party, where the various teams gave cultural performances. Since my idea including but not limited to a fujara was not accepted, we were not planning to do anything, but the singing of the Russians was met with Martin’s “We can do better!” and subsequently our improvised singing of a certain Slovak folk song. After the party some people (actually quite a few people) decided to have a beer near the EC and IOC members’ hotel, which I unexpectedly decided to join (only without the beer). As I learned after a while, we were apparently invited to dinner by a few random local people, which turned out to be a rather interesting experience well worth the ‘last night’ occasion.
The day of departure was marked by my frantic search for a few things, including the Longshan Temple (which was a sight well worth the long, long walk, despite the LEDs incorporated in the “traditional” architecture), Chinese incense sticks, a lot of postcards, stamps and a post office (in the end partially solved by a nice Information center officer at the airport).
I would say that the flight back was nice, but that’s not adequate. The flight back (specifically the takeoff at night) was breathtaking. I was amazed back in 2011 when I saw the night Tehran with the lights all the way to the horizon and the mountains beyond, but this was even more impressive – as we were rising up, the lights lining the shore of the island against the blackness of the ocean wonderfully summed up the impression I had gotten of Taiwan: that of rapid advancement in technology and industry, but also of beautiful nature, friendly people, and wonder.
To conclude my presentationpost, this year’s IYPT was great – I met some wonderful people4, saw some very cool things, learned quite a bit and generally enjoyed it very much. Thanks to all the responsible!
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To be honest, the original motivation was to publish a few words-accompanied photos. ↩
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of which I am not providing a photo because for me making myself at home implies significantly increasing entropy in the room and therefore rendering it unsuitable for documenting ↩
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I feel obliged to mention my joy at the fact that a certain juror who remembers me from previous IYPT came to the conclusion that now (unlike when I was beginning) I am good at physics too, not just English, which I consider to be quite a compliment :-D ↩
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I also feel obliged to mention my friend Tim, who I have managed to stalk throughout the whole week without him getting annoyed :D To be a bit more serious: it was really good that such a great person was around, he made this IYPT even better. ↩