"Oh look, ice cream!" (Math Adventures—Part II)

I left off yesterday at the part where we were all on the bus, doing whatever suited ourselves. In my row's case, I was highlighting US packets while staring out the window, Micro was playing with some fancy gadget, and Argon was trying to sleep. After what seemed like an eternity (since reading article after article about Indian gaming isn't the most fun thing I've ever done in my life), the bus pulled into a plaza.

"Are we here?" Someone from another school asked.

Argon opened his eyes, and, after scanning his surroundings, said, "Oh, yeah, we're going to be taking the test here, at—"

"GameStop," I said. "I wouldn't mind taking it in GameStop. Wait. Is that—ice cream!"

However, it appeared that we were not meant to stay, for the bus then turned around and drove away. We were where we were supposed to be, though, for after five minutes we pulled up into the high school that was the site of our match.

Everyone shuffled off the bus, and, in utter confusion, started walking towards some unknown destination. We found some entrance inside, and shuffled down the hall, then out the door into some place that looked like a courtyard. There were several stone tables and chairs in the courtyard, and Tybalt suggested that we all sit down, so we found an empty table and sat.

"We're getting 162 today," Dino said as soon as we all sat down (except for Irving and Mario, who were talking to Mr. Booth). "162."

There were eight of us, and at 18 points (for a perfect score) each, plus a team round of 18 points, we could get a total of 162 points (theoretically).

"Okay," Tybalt said, pulling out his formula sheets. "I just have to remember these. Hey, Bryant, what's tan of π/8?"

"Square root of two minus one."

I stared at him. "Why would you need to know that?"

"The area formula for a regular polygon. You have to divide π by the number of sides. And that answer's not right," Bryant said, referring to Dino, who was working on a round four question.

"What?"

"The answer on the packet, it's wrong. I tried it and it doesn't work."

"Oh," Dino said. He then proceeded to check his answers using synthetic division. Micro, who was sitting next to him, spotted Dino's work and asked what it was.

"Synthetic division. You don't know synthetic division?"

"Nope."

"And you're doing algebra? You need to know synthetic division!"

"That's the disadvantage of skipping algebra two," Argon said.

"Okay," Dino said. "I'll teach you. It's easy. It's similar to long division. You know long division, right?"

"Well—uh—maybe—no."

By this time, Irving and Mario had already migrated to our table as well. Mario was talking about something math-related when someone from another school several meters away from us started playing the guitar.

"He's horrible at it," Dino said, his mission of teaching Micro synthetic division abandoned.

"Why don't we have someone at our school like that?" Mario asked. "There's always that one guy, you know, who carries a guitar all day long. We should have someone at our school like that."

The group of people around the guitar-playing guy suddenly started singing. We stared at them for a while, then Mario turned around and saw several people throwing a football around.

"They're so bad at throwing."

"They're math nerds," Bryant said. "What do you expect?"

"Hey, Irving," Mario said. "You better polish up your frisbee skills. That's all they do in college."

The conversation subsided into math afterwards ("Quick, Irving, what's secant theta?" "Huh? What do you mean, what's secant theta?" "One over cosine theta."). We stayed outside under the nice weather for a while longer, and I took out a strange bag of candy.

"So, I have weird food today," I said, "since I figured I probably shouldn't cook. Anyone want some?"

Dino stared at me and echoed, "Weird food?"

Argon poked a piece of candy and said, "What is this?"

"I don't know." I opened the bag and took a piece out. "It's not in any language I know."

The packaging was in Japanese, although the character on the piece I had taken resembled the Chinese word for "tea." I told Argon so, and he took a piece as well.

"It tastes like a blend of marshmallows and gelatin," he said after taking a bite. "I don't really like the tea flavor though."

"Me neither," I said. I've never really liked tea-flavored things. Why Micro took this as a cue to take one for himself, I'll never know.

And that's it for today, folks. We'll see you next time!


(A.k.a.: Yeah, I should really be doing work right now, so I'll continue for next time. The entire retelling process may take a very, very, very long time, if this keeps up.)