By the way, the blog has moved to vivekn.net, even though thetechnut.net will function for a few more days…hope everyone updates their bookmarks!

I got to know a few days ago that I’d be going for the Puffin Quiz today. There were going to be teams of two, and I was paired up with Karthick (duh). I actually thought about preparing myself for this quiz, and this resulted in some casual reading of quiz blogs and some books…which eventually amounts to nothing. Quizzing is all about what you know, not what you can cram in the last few days…cuz 90% of that is bound to leak out anyway. No prizes for guessing that Puffin/Penguin sponsored the Quiz. It was conducted by Derek O’Brien, and was held at Sirifort Auditorium.

Let me start with me getting up at 5:30, getting ready, packing myself a hurried breakfast (neither Mom nor Dad are at home, only my cousin who’s babysitting…:-|). My bag has my iPod and Sennheisers, which I’ve made a point to carry to every competition. It’s not the DJ look I crave, but I like to listen to music even when on the move, and once you get Sennheisers, you’re pretty much hooked. Forgot my mobile though..:-P.

Luckily, my bus is on time, and I make it to school by 7:30. At the reception, the routine team reshuffling takes place. People drop out, new members materialise. I eventually got paired up with Saurabh, instead of Karthick. Saurabh Chaudhary is a pretty good quizzer, with an amazing bank of knowledge on history of all kinds. After a few more shenanigans, we eventually board the minibus, get off it, and get on it again, for no apparent reason. I spend most of the journey to Sirifort persuading to listen to Be Yourself by Audioslave (possibly the best song I’ve heard in a long time). Post on Audioslave later…if I remember…which I’m pretty sure I won’t…or I might forget to forget…whatever…

We reach Sirifort well in time, about half an hour early. Five minutes finding the wretched gate we had to enter through, and waiting another 25 minutes waiting for them to let us in. Once the registration desks were thrown open, it was pretty much a free for all, with all schools trying to squeeze into a narrow passageway to the back of the audi. It was here, stuck in this sweaty, smelly throng, that I realised how easily I could get swine flu. Saurabh had brought a mask, and he spend most of the minibus journey tying it on.

Anyway, since I wasn’t in charge of this particular event, I didn’t really take charge of registration. Later, sounds of an argument started filtering in through Audioslave. Apparently, only those schools which were pre-registered via the internet could send 10 teams. Everyone else was limited to 5 teams. This was a bit of a blow, because we had 10 teams, and we’d have to send half of them away. We did give them our food coupons though. An Appu Ghar style stamp-on-the-wrist later, we were in.

It took some time to get the prelims started. Apparently, there wasn’t enough space for all the teams that had turned up, and over 600 guys and girls had to be turned away at the gates. I heard that they were really desperate to get in, rattling the gates and all. Just makes me realise how lucky we were, because we were some of the few non-pre-registered teams which got in. The prelim was pretty cool, and we got around 22-24 out of the 30 questions asked. The absence of DPS RKP was noted. I wonder if they were part of the gate-rattlers, or were afraid of swine flu.

We managed to get some refreshments after all, pretending to be starving little quizzards, which didn’t quite work all that well. Haldirams. Was OK. We then re-entered the audi, to find that the seats were all taken up. Then he started announcing the names of all the finalists. We were the fourth team to be called up, at which point, Saurabh attempted to hug me, which was not a pleasant experience by any stretch of imagination. The quiz had a total of 5+1+1 rounds. By this I mean, that after 5 rounds, the last 2 of the 6 finalist were eliminated, and then another 2 were sent off. The quiz was pretty tough, and interesting at the same time, with Derek O’Brien coming up with a few wisecracks along the way. Audience prizes included mobile phones by Samsung.

We were eliminated after the 6th round. And came 3rd. The prize – a blue 8GB iPod Nano 4G. :-D Will be posting about that later.

DPS Dwarka came second, and got XBox 360s, St. Columba’s School were declared winners, and got HP Mini laptops. All in all, I’m pretty pleased with myself, especially because I answered quite a few in the prelims, but almost none on the stage.