week 15

"hi" - vishnu mangipudi

anyways it's tuesday at noon and we embark on another blog post journey; a long one for sure as there's been around 5 weeks since the last post...

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hi again.. i think i have an extremely small focus span which is really bad :( ive been wanting to do this blog since monday and only now am i getting to it :(((

last time i blogged was i think 9th december which really feels like an entire year ago (haha very funny)

and it's been another gargantuan six weeks so let's do another throwback.. hopefully we'll get to do less of these as i restart posting at a consistent rate...

the last time i posted: i hadn't completed most of my essays yet, and to be honest not much else

BUT you know what quite a few smaller things happened over that time period so let's dive into it maybe?

0 - restaurant status

still lost, waiting to be picked up

1 - college applications

oh yeah 13th december happened and soo i didn't get in (rip) but whatever

surely we can go for graduate school :) trust

otherwise regarding other things i said in the last post: i did decide to apply to harvard and did an interview too, and i'm going to talk about interview things more later but i did realise i approached the stanford one pretty incorrectly tbh

i also am like at least decently happy with most of my essays especially caltech ones--oops fried for mit :(

i spent like actually nontrivially 2 whole weeks on essays :Sob:

i just need my grades to not be caught lacking....

in terms of interview:

during the stanford interview i kind of yapped a lot about racing right and i feel like that kind of overlapped a bit with things i said in my application and essays so that was pretty suboptimal--interviews are supposed to be a chance to give more information about yourself that the limited number of prompts ultimately confines you to. i think yapping about racing is good especially as a pathos method but only after missing parts of each application of mine are covered. and i think i tried to do that with harvard!! like now that i have my entire like group of essays and potential topics (Thanks caltech) i can quickly realise what i had not talked about in each of my applications for each school and hence respond to questions based on those things sooo yeah hopefully my dartmouth and mit ones go well too :)

2 - competitive stem olympiads

ermm i failed to make silver LOL so ig that's it till march then... rip

solved problem 1 in the first 30 min and then my lack of algorithm knowledge trolled me for the remaining 210 minutes and i ended with 500 / 700 points needed to qualify :(

in fact i actually never even figured out the syntax/whatever error was with my 3rd problem solution bc wtf? my logic is right sureeeelyyy (i even passed one of the later test cases,,,)

whatever we move on

we got 25th in physoly after dsqs in division A, and surprisingly we were 1st of all US teams LOL

also bro f=ma signups are so locked out because we keep having people sign up AFTER WE CLOSE THE SIGNUP like what the fuck? i so want to cut them off but i can't because i need to save the club's face but these people are genuinely so annoying like read the rules?................ crying

in terms of chem we've restarted and i took wcc individual round and i kind of locked in ? i hope?? ermmm it was pretty hard the chem parts but i did figure out most of the parts i could do esp the parts about crystal lattices bc it's really just math/logic and i just read that part in atkins againnnn

hopefully i get to slay on cleaving bonds with some doable questions :)) will make sure i study extra hard this week for it !!!

3 - f1

crazy that it's been already more than a month since the season ended and that everyone's with new teams already...

and yes alpine did finish p6 YAY and pierre somehow snatched a top 10 finish in the wdc :D although tbh hulk deserved it too

pierre locked in for p7 bro such a huge W it's genuinely so nice to see him thriving in an environment that's known to be so toxic and unstableee

in terms of alpine ig doohan also was fine ig hahahaha ig he can't do a lot with an old spec but at least he didn't crash haha

in terms of transfer market RIP bottas RIP perez

im really surprised they didn't announce perez after mexico or something but i guess they had to wait till the end shrug

and umm i hope andretti locks in for 2026 and gets one of the people who left this year or something idk lol hopefully perez or bottas maybe... also i don't think zhou will find a seat again so wec might be his best bet tbh since he doesn't have a reserve role yet

hamilton in ferrari colours!!

4 - other motorsports

i don't actually remember that much about other motorsports tbh i think the only notable thing that i have to talk about is formula e?? cause it's winter and there's not a lot of motorsport happening loll

anyways porsche seems to have an obvious pace advantage at the moment at least in qualifying but the nature of formula e racecraft makes it such that they can't just run away like the red bulls (Also the nature of formula e lacking aerodynamics!)

otherwise rowland is just pretty cracked i think and the mclarens are pretty cooked--ig so are the lolas and kiros but yk those are more expected

i think this year again it'll be the porsche drivers and rowland at least at the front, but the jury's still out on whether jaguar has the consistent pace to deliver a title-challenging car hmm

also i didn't know they moved the saudi e-prix venue to jeddah wooo it's kind of sad seeing like 4 extra chicanes in the circuit layout lmaoo.. but like you know they gotta do what they gotta do hahahaha but i'm sure it will be an exciting race (watch their laptimes be slower on the reduced layout than f1 cars lmaoo)

5 - other sports

and yes tottenham's only four wins in the past like what 15 games have been against manchester city, manchester united, liverpool, and southampton. haha. yeah. OH i forgot tamworth but like SKULL

also hmm mbappe revival incoming mayhaps?

i swear if tottenham loses to hoffenheim or even draws :(((((

same regarding leicester tbh

no updates on swimming/running :(

6 - gaming

i think i quit warzone yay

in terms of football manager -

haven't really played the edinburgh city save at all so that's just sitting there still

in terms of dorking -

oh i did realise that when i left off last blog post i actually had only just finished the 28/29 season loll but yeah now we're in like february of 2030 right after the january transfer window.. hmmm

and basically we've just completed a 3-1 win over arsenlin the fa cup after winning 4-2 over newcastle in the third round weee

we get chelsea next i think or norwich depending on the result of the replay but i'd say i strongly back us to go to the final tbh

in terms of the carabao cup we got like a genuinely terrible draw and lost to fulham in the first round lmaoo tbh none of the cup draws have been really good this year so whatever lol

in the league though we've become surprise promotion contenders as i actually locked in on strategy and won most of my games with a suboptimal squad... i rotate them a lot so i think that helps their health and i also use the data hub more which i think really helped inform my strategic decisions + i started to use opposition instructions more so yeahhh having two strategies to switch between is actually kind of goated loll

currently we sit like what 8 points ahead of p2 with like 15 games still to play? i think it'll be shaky but i think we've at least secured a playoffs spot for ourselves :))

also i think loaning players is actually the goated strat for doing well in fm lmaoo like i'm genuinely getting so many goated loan players it's unreal

ermm except for the fact that i have to sometimes lose them bc i've not been playing them in their preferred position LMAOO but yeah largly it's been really really good and i think we can get promoted this season if not win the championship weee

but also i'm not going to touch fm for a while i think because i need to lock in on learning science :(

in terms of international management i qualified for the world cup weee

i didn't actually know that ireland had only qualified for the world cup 4 times prior like damnn

7 - school stuffs / clubs

i need to actually lock in on grades lmaoo i'm pretty cooked for french like genuinely because i have a 60% that will go up to like 86-88% in the homework section which means i need to really lock in on my tests to bring the 84% to at least a 91% or higher so that i give my teacher a reason to round me lmaoo

chem and internship are salvageable i think because for chem i just need a decent lab grade that is not 60% and for internship as long as all of my reported partial hours are signed i can get to a 3.5 i think ??

8 - scibowl

yoo ok so many things happened in the scibowl side since the last post and i'll go through each of them one by one:

smh league cup

nisky

cornfield

texas

ibowl soontm

redmond middle questions?

SMH League Cup:

Alright alrightyy so this ran pretty smoothly as well despite there being a significant lack of mods loll tbh suzuko and connor locked in really hard on helping and im ever so greatful for them <3

i don't actually remember that much but i was genuinely surprised about how few top teams attended and i was actually quite impressed by lynbrook and blair b in particular, interlake too. in the end the results were cool to see and i think everyone got a LOT of good practice. however, the feedback regarding the tournament format wasn't too good... people weren't too happy about the scoring despite the scoring not being that important lmaoo especially when everyone was playing their non-first teams...

Niskayuna Winter Invitational:

rohan is actually unreal man. i'm so glad also that we actually won a final (After two years god forbid!) but i was just pushing my buzzing speed all the way because if i didn't i would've had literally 0 ppg lmaoo. either way i definitely felt more locked in after nisky despite scoring quite poorly every single round loll it genuinely gave me a lot more pressure but also the environment probably made me a better, more relaxed player tbh.

ok ive been mostly saying a lot of empty shit without much data to back it up lmao. maybe i should like post these debriefs right after the tournaments-- oops

Cornfield Cup:

I'm happy that right after buzzing with rohan i could literally beat anyone else on my subjects and we actually beat rohan 94-54 afterwards on the DE2 round that i missed due to bye lol

either way still optimistic about the way the team's developing tbh

also it didn't run that smoothly lol because people didn't actually pull up to read bruh :Sob: soo the "Better Tournament Experience Than Nisky" thing was out of the window but at least we didn't pay !! LOL

Texas:

GG for texas bro playing like >10 rounds in a row is genuinely really tiring i just realized lmaoo oh well i kinda like locked in on a few of the rounds like i kept up at least 20 ppg until i met my eventually cliff near the final lol

first for matches i played with my own team: i actually was pretty locked in (ig because i kinda had to) due to the lack of a bio and ess main oops and i think i got most of the ess and bio that i actually knew lol despite making like a few stupid mistakes due to my inexperience in those subjects. but i think overall my stats were not bad per se but im sure they could use some improvement. however i am happy that in rounds against the good teams i actually clutched up and got a good amount of points. (RAHH CERES) i'm also quite glad that we had reasonable bonus conversion even though we only had 3 people :) and lastly im glad that we had a good, consistent average point total across RR which i think has essentially never happened before LOL so good that we're getting some consistency in.

now for de. oh what a calamity. firstly i stop like scaling in bio and ess oops and resort to getting obz on the astro that i do know-

and then i consistently lock out on one physics question a round because im an idiot and quite washed

soo yeah this culminates in a pretty fried loss against lynbrook where we lead at the half but collapsed completely afterwards, as well as a loss to palo alto that was only close by virtue of forrest's unrelenting and high-risk buzzing. oh well. i dont know how i frauded 24 ppg by picking up points after negs lmaoo

and then came my revival of joining frazer. i got a lot of questions against lynbrook and a few more against palo alto, both two point wins (1899 last season? :thonk:) which were crazy esp bc we were hella down and hella up respectively but it was close in the end. and the i did the super sub thing where i got the first question after i subbed in (it was a great buzz too imo!! particle) so yay but then i locked out with a careless neg after lmao oh well

overall i think i now like barely scale enough to do well in regs de. need more practice still though on the mid-difficulty questions because we're actually so cooked for regionals :Sob: but this was good progress for myself as a player and evidence of team progress with some great bonus calculation collaboration sprinkled in too :))

that's it for my texas rant LMAOO

i need to make a database for all the new packets that have been written in the past two years tbh it's been pretty disorganized on my side regarding who's read what questions...

9 - scioly

well i completely failed at writing any of the dp test LMAO and i'm surprised they only got 7th on that but whatever at this point... rip

in terms of actual raisbeck results i've detailed that on week 14.9 already and we did get optics reinstated to second !! so yay that's one more medal for me tbh

also i realised that tesla didn't send their team 1 and camas probably also sent a mixed team sooooo ykw it is what it is and we capitalized on this chance to prove that we are the best of the rest...

10 - music

hamilton GOAT musical tbh

i love dear theodosia it's so awesomeeee

also room where it happened is really cool

i love dbatc ajsfuqieguqjorifwwe also I LOVE TIS THE DAMN SEASON SO MUCH JAIRSOFIQJRUHGQEUGEQJOEGU TIS THE DAMN SEASON FOR DEPRESSION MUAHAHAHAHAH

also breathe is goated aidjfueigrhfue i love breathe

11 - misc

im so cooked it's almost lunchtime and i STILL haven't finished oops because i left the scibowl section for later bc they're so long to write lmaoo

i also have to send the f=ma list rn hmm

and i will head to lunch now byeeeee

gang it's cooked it's literally thursday afternoon and im about to have my dartmouth interview and im JUST finishing this post :Sob:

tbh hopefully this will be my longest post in a while because i've really been quite locked out regarding posting oops but yeah more frequent interviews should mean shorter posts (proportions question? :eyes:)

bye !!