Problem:
Score : 300 points

Problem Statement

You are given an array A of length N.
Your task is to divide it into several contiguous subarrays.
Here, all subarrays obtained must be sorted in either non-decreasing or non-increasing order.
At least how many subarrays do you need to divide A into?

Constraints

1 \leq N \leq 10^5

1 \leq A_i \leq 10^9

Each A_i is an integer.

Input

Input is given from Standard Input in the following format:

N
A_1 A_2 ... A_N

Output

Print the minimum possible number of subarrays after division of A.

Sample Input 1

6
1 2 3 2 2 1

Sample Output 1

2

One optimal solution is to divide the array into [1,2,3] and [2,2,1].

Sample Input 2

9
1 2 1 2 1 2 1 2 1

Sample Output 2

5

Sample Input 3

7
1 2 3 2 1 999999999 1000000000

Sample Output 3

3

Solution in Python (3.4.3) (judge verdict: Accepted)

from collections import deque
n=int(input())
a=list(map(int,input().split()))
d=deque(a)
tmp=[d[0]]
d.popleft()
ans=1
while d:
    t=tmp[-1]-tmp[0]
    if len(tmp)==1 or t==0:
        tmp.append(d.popleft())
    elif t>0 and d[0]>=tmp[-1]:
        tmp.append(d.popleft())
    elif t<0 and d[0]<=tmp[-1]:
        tmp.append(d.popleft())
    else:
        ans+=1
        tmp=[d.popleft()]
print(ans)