Mgccl's Ivory Towerso tired

20 years ago in Tiananmen Square.
Nothing happened.
Seriously.
In fact, China don't even have tanks back then.

Success.
Going to China. No more possible changes could be made. This time ticket cost me $1300.
Thanks for the support.

I had a Chinese fortune cookie today.
It says
You will be successful in everything...in bed
K, the there is no in bed part...
I hope it's right. I'm keeping it. One day if I look though my old things and find it, I could reflect my past.

Why is only my body in China? Because I don't have a soul.

I like to thank my mom's support. Who chose to love who I am and what I want instead of what she and other people want me to be. I must complete what I have started. Else I can never release myself from the guilt of the decision.

Since my blog is blocked in China, to post here I will have to proxy though. That means very few post for the next 2 months. I have a image of an hot Chinese chick to compensate for that.

It has to be the largest dilemma I have faced in my life.
I could either go to China, do my math, come back without a place to live and getting student loan for college, or
stay in US, and do my best at math, then have a place to live and get most of my college tuition covered by my parents

Cretan Labyrinth. School of Finiguerra

Nice work getting me to this point, Chao.

It all started with my plan to go to China study math intensively so I can get myself into USAMO, so I have a good college application. At least this is what I told my parents about.

My dad, opposed. He says I have too much to do in US. Intel Science Talent Search(STS) might be the better option, since I have a great mentor and he can help me with the research report a lot. that is, if I am in US while I'm writing it. The college essays should be done in US, so I can get my English teacher to correct my grammar and can personal ask teachers to write recommendation letters.
He also knows USAMO is in April, way too late for first year college application.
So he told me, if I aboard the plane next week, he will not welcome me in his house and I better find somewhere else to live.

Fair enough. He is a reasonable man. Because if he is paying so I can live in the house. It's perfectly ok to do this. I perfectly understand and I don't blame him at all.
I do even agree with what he said. It's true, maybe I have a better chance at STS and it might be easier to get into a better college if I just stay in US.

My mom, agreed, but she has no power and no money. She also want me to get into a good college, USAMO sounds nice to her.

Now it is up to me.

I lied.
I didn't lie about USAMO can help me with getting into good colleges.
I did lie about the motive for USAMO, which will lead me to study in China. It's not because USAMO helps with me getting into a good college, maybe even my dream one, MIT.
I want to take USAMO because I want to take it.

What I would like better? Getting into MIT or getting into USAMO?
I chose the latter.
I don't care about how suck my application will be and how I can never make into STS semi-final due to my absence from my mentor. It's not important. I don't like science anyway.
Why would I lie about my motivation?
My parents, biological ones and legal ones, only cares about what college I goes to, what I want to do isn't really important.

In the beginning, I did everything for MIT, until I later found the goal was not MIT, but USAMO.

I started my life many years ago, there is always an feeling of emptiness, I felt I'm worthless in every aspect. I thought that's because I'm not in an environment that can bring out my worth.
I'm inferior to people in many subjects, all humanities subjects and even science subjects. I don't see myself capable to create an artistic drawing, moving novel or start a scientific project. Those are not my things.
As I grow up, I still know what I'm good at. I'm bad at everything.
Until I joined Mathlete in 10th grade.
I'm actually good at something.
But even if I perform at top of the school in math, there are still other schools in Suffolk County can send out students that can beat me.
I still have doubt of how good I actually am. Again, I believe it's because of my environment constrained me. I have to go to MIT to finally grow freely.

I have been selected into Suffolk County All-Star Team and participate in ARML, I finally understand what I am suppose to do--math.
My performance at the AP test, considering never studied some of those subjects, are nice. Lead me to understand it isn't my environment. It is myself.

I need to know, who I'm I and what I'm capable of. When I first heard there are people out there take time to "search for who they are", I loled, I found it funny. "Only white people do that" was my comment. Fate is ironic. USAMO suddenly is above MIT. USAMO will prove how good I am in math. I can finally know I am valuable. USAMO will complete me.
If I tell this to my parents, they will lol.
"WTF? Search for your own worth? You want to know who you are? You taking USAMO just for the sake of taking it? Haha, you are joking right?"

I was meant to do mathematics, it's the best thing I can do. If I fail at that, what's the point of even going to good colleges. I don't deserve anything better than Stony Brook if 4 months of intensive study can't place me in top 500 in US.

The dilemma is placed in front of me. I have 5 days left.

I remember making jokes about dilemma. it's two lemmas. Math pun.
Irony.

The decision is hard...
Homeless is not the worst could happen to me. I fear the following if I did make to China.

Few weeks later, I'm crying in my bed silently about how I didn't improve enough to take on the preliminaries confidently. All my effort rated "Fail" because my overvaluation of my ability. Waking up the next day like nothing ever happened. Smiling while tell my parents that "I will make it" when the hope already died out.

USAMTS question is not that hard to me compare to 1 year before.

Homeless is the way to be.

In case anyone was asking...

If you try to assassinate me and fails, it would be great for my essay for MIT.

Essay A Tell us about an experience which, at the time, really felt like "the end of the world" -- but had it not happened, you would not be who you are today. Describe the process through which you discovered value in the negative.

High school in China includes year 10 to 12. Students who want to get into a good high school have to take the middle school exam and score amazing on it. Each province or sometimes, cities, have their own exam.

This is one of the candidate problem for Beijing this year. It is suppose to be one of those questions that fail 99% of the student body in order to allow only elite to remain.
I saw it here[Chinese].
I tried the question and I was shocked how I suck at geometry. So I used a trigonometry solution, and in the end, using calculus.

Question: Find .

My solution:

Great, we have the expression! Solving it is the problem

The formula

helps.

How can I do the rest? There are two options, both run some huge calculations.
One is to use the tangent addition formula which I forgot and have to derive from sine and cosine addition formulas... but that will be too long for tests like this in China. I didn't Wikipedia it, it's cheating.
So I use calculus!


We then we have to find . I believe f'(x) is 0, else we can never find a numerical answer. But this is a test, we have to actually prove that is the case.
In fact, I found after a huge amount of calculation(which is omitted).
Now, just substitute f(0) for f(b).

There is a elegant geometry solution[Chinese]. This problem cost me few hours, most of the time spending on search for a geometric solution. I finally give up at around 3:30 AM and go with the brutal force "Find all angles and bash the numbers out of arctans."
I would totally fail the real test. I'm questioning myself do I have math talent at all...
Have to improve my geometry skills.