Hallelujah. Oh joy, the domain hasn’t expired. The blog still works.

Anyway, I just realised that I haven’t been posting about symposiums at all this year. Which is all wrong. Apparently, people tell me that I wrote some of the longest posts on events in Delhi. Well, thaggyaverymuch everyone, so I’ll write one on Exun as well.

Firstly, I should tell you that this is the event I look forward to the most. Yes, we’ve won it for the past 3 years. Yes, it’s one of the biggest symposiums in Delhi. But above all, I go there for DOMINOS’S (will explain later) . Yes, there is not shame in admitting the fact that Exun has the best effing refreshments of any event anywhere in Delhi. When I got news that Domino’s was going to be there, my ears pricked up like a dog’s. A face split into a big manic grin, and my fellow Code Warriors edged away…

Anyway, I worked hard for this event. I truly did. As some of you may/may not know, my PC is dead for the time being. A replacement may arrive as soon as next week, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed. I was simply preparing for the quiz from my printed archives and any other morsels of info I could find. Also, any and every free period was devoted to spending time in the iLab, trying to get the stupid net to work, and trawling the net for archives and news. In the bus, at 5 in the morning. I was quite literally working my ass of for this one. Karthick obviously despised me for missing the PE periods, but my target was set, and I’d go to any lengths to achieve it.

As some of you may know, there are several irritating tasks that pop-up in the run up to an event. Deciding teams, getting names, addresses and phone numbers for the participants, listing them down, getting the list signed by the Vice Principal, photocopying the list a kazillion times and handing them out like flyers to teachers in the farthest corners of the school. Frankly, it’s a pain in the behind. So I’ve organised stuff by maintaining a database of all the Code Warriors, so at least one step is relatively pain free. Once the transport et al is arranged, focus can return to the event in question.

Exun. 8 events. Senior Quiz, Junior Quiz, Crossword, Programming, Swat-the-bug, Creative Event, Gaming and Group Discussion. I was originally slated to appear for SQ and Crossword. But we were having trouble in the Creative Event. The Code Warriors are in dire need of web designers. I could only serve as a substitute, but not really a very good one.

On the day before Exun, I was tense. But a very different kind of tense. A relaxed tense. I somehow felt confident for the first time in my life before a quiz. I guess this was because I spent quite a lot of time in the past few weeks preparing for this particular quiz. Anyway, I put in some more hours before going to sleep.

Day 1

I woke up early, around 5:30. And got to work. My Dad had come to Delhi, so I could use his laptop. My Dad insisted on dropping me at DPS RKP. I, prefer public transport, buses to be more precise. It costs very little, and is kinder to the environment. I also realised that I had no school pants. Not a big deal, because people often come to Exun in casuals. So a pair of cargo pants would be a suitable substitute.

The problem I’ve always faced as vice-president, is making sure that everyone reaches the venue on time. Luckily this time, this was not the case. Everyone was ready. We had a bit of trouble at registration, because our second team for Junior Quiz was still iffy. As a result, we were a bit late to get into the AVH, which consequently meant that we had no space to sit. Still, the video was awesome. Kudos to whoever made it.

Now, there’s a tradition that Karthick and I uphold. Before a quiz, down a lot of water, and don’t go to the loo. The explanation for this seemingly absurd series of actions is that the right amount of pressure stimulate the mind to work. The downside being that too much of pressure proves to be a distraction. The SQ prelim was not overly tough, though I missed a couple of sitters. What’s worse is that I missed the sole H2G2 question. It was about Disaster Area. I could give the entire bio for the band, but I forgot the effing name! I was so depressed after that, I didn’t want to have my pizza. That was of course, before the aroma hit me. By this time, the pressure was mounting. Big time. I was doing impromptu jigs everywhere I went to defend by dignity, and keep my pants dry.

I was slightly disappointed by the pizza. It wasn’t baked in front of us unlike the previous instances of Domino’s catering. On the plus side, each of us got a small bottle of Minute Maid Pulpy Orange, which I did not down for obvious reasons. SQ results came out after lunch. Me, Karthick and Anirudh had qualified for the final. But the other team, of Pulkit, Vishal and Abhishek didn’t. Then came a long and agonising wait for the crossword prelim. In the meantime, we went to watch the group discussion. Topics were relevant, but I was too distracted to care. Romil, our GD dude, didn’t make it.

Other results also started trickling in…our programmers bombed out of Swat the Bug, and our gamers didn’t make it. The gaming result was intriguing. The event was organised as a knockout. But our team was against DPS RKP, and we lost. This is kinda unfair, as DPS RKP doesn’t usually claim prizes. If there are 2 RKP teams among the 6 finalists in a quiz, 2 more finalists are added. But since this was not possible in a knockout, our team didn’t make it. All attempts to reason were shouted down.

Back in the AVH, it was getting unbearable. I was in the left aisles, walking, jumping and doing anything else in my power to control myself. It was fruitless. I eventually ran off to the restrooms.

This was a big mistake.

Plus, Karthick and I had a big problem. We had a VMC class that very same day at 3:30, and the crossword was slated to start at 2:30. We needed to reach Punjabi Bagh in time, because the people at VM were unwilling to reschedule our class. So we pleaded with Mukesh sir, their HoD, to prepone the event by at least 15-20 minutes, so that we could leave early. He agreed, but in reality, nothing ever happened. The Exun president got hold of us, seated us in the classrooms early, but the paper never came. Eventually, we got it with everyone else. It was a crossword that you could truly enjoy. I have to give more credit to Karthick, because he was simply brilliant. As was the case in the crossword at Exun 2007.

Eventually, we left halfway through, ran to Sangam, got an auto (were ripped off of Rs. 100), but eventually got there 15 minutes before the teacher got there.

Fastforward 3 hours. I’m in the bus going home, I’ve got about 10 bucks left on my mobile, but I still log onto exunclan.com, to see the result. Was a bit crestfallen. We didn’t get through in the crossword. It was kinda expected, because we didn’t really do that well in the prelim. At this point, a certain level of despondency also crept in. A cumulative analysis of the results of the day showed a pretty sorry state of affairs for the Code Warrirors. We had no points as of day 1. Just qualification for 2 events. The overall seemed a distant dream now…

Went home and prepared a bit more.

Day 2

The start to the day wasn’t too good. Woke up late. This time I decided to catch a bus. Also, I had to ensure that Siddharth got to RKP. He couldn’t make it on the first day, but he said he would be there on the second day. Unfortunately, he called up when I was in the bus and told me that he was unwell…puked twice in the morning. Obviously, I couldn’t pressurise the poor guy. So I guess Karthick would have to assist me, Nitin and Vaibhav on our impossible quest i.e. Creative Event. 30 minutes later, and Rs. 15 lighter, I arrived at DPS RKP. Again, the team was ready. We had an uphill task today. We literally had to win everything to even have a hope of winning the overall.

First up, me, Karthick, Nitin and Vaibhav had to go for the Creative Event. We were supposed to create a poster and a website for a quad-band rock concert, dubbed Distortion by Vaibhav. Nitin and Vaibhav, our DI afficionados, had already made a superb poster. The onus of making a website to match the quality of the poster fell squarely on me and Karthick, because Nitin and Vaibhav knew sh** about web designing. Vaibhav knew a bit of Flash, but there wasn’t enough time to use his expertise. I obviously can’t explain the entire design, but it was a fixed-width, two-column (uniform width) layout, in red and black. We spent a lot of time in the subterranean labs. In the meantime, JQ final results trickled in, telling us of a Dwarka whitewash (God bless Sopandev). On the brighter side, Shashank and Vishal totally owned the opposition in programming and got the first prize.

I did something, which is quite dumb. I skipped lunch i.e. I skipped Domino’s i.e. I broke the unwritten laws of Exun. However, after watching the volunteers munching on their lunch, we convinced them to at least let us keep the lunches with us near the PCs, if not eat them in the lab. They agreed. Nevertheless, I gave my pizza off to Tanay, a guy from Exun, who was really hungry. Not the Minute Maid, because I’d need it to build up some pressure.

We finished the website in the nick of time. Embedding the final flash slideshow on the homepage just seconds before they started hollering. On the whole, it had a few rough edges, but it was decent and presentable, and not offending either WebD or metal fan mentalities. Nitin obviously helped with the headers and rollover buttons, so on the whole, it was a great team effort.

Then was the SQ. I got to the AVH just as the crossword was getting over. I rued the fact that I wasn’t there on stage. Plus, I didn’t even get to watch it! I always found the crossword at Exun extremely entertaining. But I believe the star attraction of Exun are the quizmasters, to be more precise, Gursartaj Singh. Not only does he make amazingly balanced quizzes, but the quiz is always fun. UPDATE: He is the most ‘ossum’ quizmaster on the face of this earth that ever was, is and will be (taking into consideration temporal relastics).

Anyway, the SQ soon got underway, and almost the entire CW team was in the audience, cuz this was pretty much the last event. It could have been a high-scoring quiz, if anybody bothered to prepare for the thing. I prepared a bit, so I was able to answer some questions. After some initial nail-biting, we were in the lead, and maintained it. The finalists were DPS RKP (Aditya, Tanay and Vaibhav), DPS Dwarka, 2 New Era Public School teams (one with Prateek, Rohit and someone else, and the other was the junior team). Surprisingly, the Junior team was the one which was giving us a tough time. There was also a DPS Mathura Road team (with Karmanya) and I think a DPS, Rohini team. But what was a pleasant surprise was the buzzer round, which was also an A/V round. We got 2 questions right in that, most importantly, the last question. I always like to finish with a relish. But it was not all pleasant, because Prateek buzzed an answer for Puru Pratap Singh’s Google Doodle, but couldn’t satisfactorily explain the answer, so he got a -5. This really didn’t help them much they were on 0 before that. So, in a fit of blinding anger, he sorta buzzed again on the next question, and when queried about the answer, just said ‘I don’t know’. Naturally, this angered Gursurtaj, and he had every right to be angry. The next question was the Windows 98 Welcome music, which I buzzed and got right. We finished with a pretty good lead.

As usual, we got the quiz bags. The quiz bag is a simple, yet effect concept at Exun. The questions are printed up, the individual questions snipped out and put in a large brown envelope and jumbled up. Again, thanks to Gursartaj for being a sport…

After the initial euphoria of winning the SQ, we realised that we were within grasping distance of the overall. Two first positions had brought our tally upto a respectable 60. The fact that DPS Dwarka only got a 3rd position and the fact that DPS Mathura Road didn’t get any points in the SQ also helped, as they were our main competitors apart from New Era Public School. It all came down to the Creative Event. After the SQ, I was in a hurry to relieve myself of some pressure, so, while running to the restrooms, I bumped into the judge for the event, and I asked him if we got a position. He just gave me a funny smile, and told me to go down to the RegDesk and check. I ran, almost bursting and found no results for the Creative Event. Cursing, I ran up to the loo and found Anirudh in there. And he told me the happiest news ever. We had won the Creative Event. So I spent 5 minutes in the loo screaming and celebrating, at the same time feeling very, very relieved.

It was the happiest piss of my life.

When we got back to the AVH, people were whispering. It was a close one, as usual. Between the four contenders. But then, some simple math later, it was clear. DPS Vasant Kunj had done it again. For the fourth year running, we were overall champs. My teammates will vouch for me – I was dumbstruck. Out of nowhere, we had got 3 first positions and were 2 point in the lead. Confirmation arrived soon after – Bani ma’am called, told me that Mukesh sir had just congratulated her. It was just what I wanted to hear. Obviously, I didn’t tell them. Didn’t want to ruin the suspense. But still, we were still yelling like hell when our names were announced. And we did not forget the customary KEVIN when we were going off stage. A certain amount of confusion regarding Karthick’s certificate ensued, because his name was added only in the morning.

Called up Ankur on ISD as soon as possible. He did his usual happy little jig. I knew he wanted to hear this. An auto ride with Agrim later, I was at home. I had told my Mom that we had won nothing. So imagine her surprise, when I walked in with 3 trophies, including the overall.

Tags: Symposiums

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. 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.

Tags: Symposiums

I woke up, pretty satisfied with myself. I’d qualified for all three events that I’d taken part in (keeping aside the Surprise Event). But, senior quiz, junior quiz and crossword were the main events I had planned on winning.

Things were going as planned, so far. I had come back at around 4:30 to 5 PM on Day 1, after sharing an auto with Agrim of Amity Saket. The funny thing is that we’d been living in the same colony (OK…different blocks), had been meeting each other at competitions and had no clue whatsoever that we were a stone’s throw from each other’s houses.

Actually you’d need someone like Abhimanyu to throw the stone.

So, in the morning, I prepped a bit more, played a bit of NFS:U2 to calm my nerves (Mum was asleep, obviously) and then got ready to go (kinda late). I had got Agrim’s number last day, so I called him up, to find that he was even more late than I was. So, I set out to find his house. He’d told me C-241, but for some strange reason, I automatically assumed it was C-421, till I remembered.

Agrim was pretty pally with the auto drivers nearby, mainly because of the number of times he’d have to catch one, when he missed his bus, as he tells me. A bit of haggling later, we were all set to go. He later told me that the father of a girl in his class worked for AirTel, and they’d got an 8 MBPS unlimited connection, which, frankly, is quite shocking. And all she used it for, was checking her mail and also Facebook.

After reaching there, found that Karthick beat me to it, again, and we checked the registrations, and then went to the AVH to wait for the events to start. Abhishek and Deepit were already there, as were Ponnappa, Aditya and Anirudh. Anyway, the problem was that Feroze and Abhimanyu weren’t…and they were to go for gaming. Feroze was on the way, but there wasn’t any way to contact Manyu. We had got to know by then that the games were Fifa 2009 and Crysis Warhead. Since their gaming event was being sponsored by Extreme Gaming, which in turn was sponsored by EA Games, they had got some pretty tricked out PCs to run these games. And you would need tricked out PCs, because Crysis Warhead isn’t a game for all PCs.

Anyway, Feroze soon turned up, and he handled the rest, about getting Manyu some extra time. By this time, I had to go for the Junior Quiz, which for some reason, they had decided to start off early. Unheard of! So, my commentary for gaming ends there.

Now, this was the last time I would be giving the Junior Quiz. The Junior category ends at 10th. So, I wanted to end this phase with a bang. Actually, I’d been in the Junior category for about 4-5 years now, so, it was a momentous occasion.

Anyway, before the JQ, I followed by rule of full bladder gives best results. I made sure, in the morning, before leaving, that I had downed 2 glasses of water, which had worked their way around my body and were now ready to leave.

The Junior Quiz was pretty good. Hardly any acronyms…and if any were asked, there was an accompanying question, so I was pretty happy about that, after what happened last year. The quiz was conducted by Gursartaj Singh and Akshay Aggarwal. By the way, just as we got on stage, Ankur walked in. He had gotten up, early in the morning just to come to Exun and watch. Gursartaj did tell him to keep his mouth shut, but later gave him the job of acting as the usual Exun camera during the buzzer round, which we failed at horribly, as usual. The worst thing was that it was a visual round and buzzer round combined, which meant that it was double jeopardy for us. On the whole, pretty good quality stuff. First was RK Puram, but since they were non-competitive, they couldn’t get the position, which was passed on to us.

The best way to sign off JQ.

Actually, exiting the Junior category also helps me in a way. This means that at all future events, I won’t need to choose between different events, or at least the choice would be narrowed down, to an extent.

I was now in a bit of a fix. I had the crossword, which was after lunch, and a full bladder. Should I wait, and have an uncomfortable lunch or go ahead and attend to the call of nature. When I learnt that Ankur was ordering pizzas for us all, I decided on the latter. We ordered 3 double cheese family sizes. Not a problem since Abhimanyu was soon free to join us. He’d come first in the gaming finals for Crysis. We were getting ready to watch him chase the pizzaman, like last Roboknights, where the pizzaman went to the wrong gate.

Watching Abhimanyu run is a rare phenomenon, and if anyone gets it on camera, please contact me immediately.

Ankur has a big problem with spice, so that’s why he ordered the double cheese plain pizza. Also, it would be lighter on his pocket. He simply wasn’t letting anyone else pay, even a bit. Really nice of him, but still, he had to shell out a lot. I guess that’s his way of contributing to the win! Downed a couple of glasses of water to fill myself up for the crossword.

Anyway, the crossword was next. Me and Arjun were up for that one. The crossword was also really great, with me having a few moments of sudden enlightenment, which are so common in crosswords. “Airy little French island” was Corsair, and “Samsung’s wine” was Bordeaux. We won that one too, after RKP Team 1 graciously handed down the 1st position. My bladder was full after the crossword, but decided to preserve for SQ.

Two wins in the bag. One more to go.

The SQ was altogether quite different, compared to the JQ and Crossword. To be perfectly honest, there were one too many long winding answers, where one team gave a part of the answer, another team contested that, and then the quizmaster came back to the first team, and gave them 42% points for that answer or something like that. A quiz should be a fast-paced thriller, where you just keep looking at the scoreboard or something. I actually ended up yawning on stage quite a few times, unintentionally! But, it wasn’t all like that. There were quite a few good ones. Again, we shared first prize with RK Puram.

By now, we were pretty much set up for the overall…which…frankly was a bit of a disappointment. I like a nail-biting finish, where we’re supposed to be neck and neck with another school, but eventually pull through by a point or something. Anyway, that was not to happen.

Next came the prize distribution. The individual trophies they gave are pretty good, especially since I’ve got 3…:-P…but I can’t say the same about the overall. The top’s gold, then silver in the middle and then gold at the bottom. Makes it seem as if they ran out of money halfway through making the trophy.

One thing that pepped me up was a couple of CDs lying on a table during prize distribution. EA had indirectly sponsored the event, and I was expecting some good stuff. Unfortunately, that was not to be. All we got were Command and Conquer (Tiberiun Sun or something, and Red Alert 2). Thing is, I’m not that great a fan of Real Time Strategy games, and as these games were simply gothic (16MB visual memory…now where am I going to get that!), I haven’t even tried them yet, nor do I think I will in the coming future.

On the whole, a pretty good event. I look forward to coming again for Exun 2009, and please…god PLEASE get Dominoe’s back!

Tags: Symposiums

Won junior quiz, senior quiz and crossword. Won as in semi-emphatic first position. Some events RKP was higher, but didn’t accept the prize. (d’uh) Also won overall. Got a Chem practical file to complete. No time for full length post. Later…

Tags: Symposiums

By the way, this post if from my Mum’s laptop, because my PC has taken leave of its senses again. By the time the display starts working, the hard drive unit on the motherboard stops. Anyway, to more important stuff…

To be brutally honest, my performance has been severely substandard in the past few events, and I reallyhad to intentions of repeating the same at Exun, partly because it’s really important for the defending champions to win again, and partly because I was sick and tired of getting to lift just the overall trophy. (I assume the rest of the Code Warriors excel at what they do…a not entirely incorrect assumption)

So, to make sure I performed well, I spent a good part of the previous week preparing…as you might have picked up from my previous posts. This is actually quite rare, because, generally, prep doesn’t begin till a day or two before an event. But, a little deviation from the plans every now and then isn’t all that bad an idea. In fact, today, I even got up at 5:30 in the morning, just to do some last minute prep. I find getting up early in the morning so much easier than staying up late at night…

Anyway, by around 8:15, I was showered, dressed and fed, and all set to go. Actually, I was so engrossed in prepping for the quiz that, yesterday, I totally forgot to put out the laundry I’d washed, which meant that I didn’t have a set of washed pants for Day 1. A pair of similar coloured cargoes substituted quite easily. In fact, no one actually noticed till I explicitly pointed them out, and even then, some tubelights failed to get it.

Since Dad was away, and Mum can’t drive, I had to take an auto. Thing is…it was a crisp, cold morning, and I forgot to take along a cap/muffler of any sorts. Feeling smug after haggling over the fare, I set down to a freezing 10 minute ride to DPS, RK Puram. After 5 minutes, I actually began pondering if I’d have to defrost my ears or something.

Reached there to find Karthick waiting. I was too preoccupied with my frozen ears to bother responding to his long-distance overly cheerful wave. We had to wait around for some time for the others to arrive, because we’d arrived pretty early. First came Ponnappa and Aditya, followed by Ravi and Abhishek, and last but not least, the Lord (I mean Arjun).

In fact, as we saw him approaching, with some amount of apprehension, the rest of us formed a line in the driveway, and as he came up, started giving him the usual salute. Don’t I love doing that, I could almost feel the heat from his face in the cold morning.

After we’d registered, we tramped off to the AVH, and settled down. There was the usual lighting of the lamp ceremony, shown over CCTV from the lounge, and after the chief guest had settled down, was shown the viddeo. I regret not having had the chance to make one for Code Wars, since it was just a one day event, and there just wasn’t enough time. Anyway, their video had the one odd reference to 42 that Arjun and I spotted.

After this, there was the speech by Kartikeya and a girl, whose name I don’t remember/know at all. In my humblest of opinions, Kartikeya made a complete fool of himself. I have not the slightest idea as to who wrote his speech (most likely he, himself) but he tried to make it informal, constantly interrupting the other speaker, and the worst part was that, he wasn’t even natural. I would have forgiven everything if he’d managed to be natural! The best part was when he tried to interrupt her the first time by saying something like Wowowo, but just sounded like a terrier with an attitude problem…:-P…there was also a mention of H2G2 in the speech. 

An interesting speech by the chief guest, making us speculate about whether we would end up with pencils and bags with IP addresses in the future. I must also make note of the sponsors, Mangalayam University. I think that Exun was so annoyed of the fun that was made of Pavna, that they decided to use Mangalayam University as a front, which is also, coincidentially or not, funded by Pavna Industries. Sheesh…

Then, there was the senior quiz. The first team consisted of Arjun, Karthick and me, and the second team was Feroze, Ponnappa and Anirudh. Seeing our competition, or lack of which, we were thinking of shuffling the teams so that both the teams had a chance to qualify for the final, but we decided against it because we decided one totally solid team, capable of getting a first, was better than two substandard ones, which might not get podium finishes.

At this crucial juncture, I would like to point out one thing about RKP classrooms. Apparently, on Saturdays, they’re cleaned. Cleaned so throroughly that they end up smelling of Phenoyl and God knows what else. Also, I badly needed to go to the loo. And I didn’t go. Because as a rule, whenever I’ve had an exceptionally full bladder before an event, it usually goes well. Anyway, the prelim seemed quite easy, compared to what I was expecting. We answered nearly all of the 20-25 questions, and were confident of about 12-14. Since there was a lot of time left, we spent the rest of the time laughing our heads off at nothing in particular.

Standard CW protocol.

Eventually when the answers were announced, we found that we had only got 8 right, which was a cause for worry. Then, we went to the AVH, and watched the GD for some time. I was there to witness Saurabh’s round. To be honest, he was being too dominating and a bit too shouty as well. That probably went against him, because not only was he a Code Warrior, he was also one who wasn’t too good at what he did. Not a good combo. In the prelim, thet topic was whether long-distance education was better than classes for real. During the GD, the SQ papers were being checked, and Karthick noticed that a lot of people had got 8 marks apparently. But when they were writing down the names of the people who had qualified, Karthick noticed our names there, and all was well.

Shortly after this, Karthick and I had to go for the junior quiz. Ponnappa, Anirudh and Aditya were team 2. This quiz was also pretty easy, but we missed out on a couple of sitters. I messed up which year the PC was named Man of the Year in Time magazine. It was 1982, and I thought it was 1986. Overall, we got around 16 right. We were a bit scared when Sopan from DPS Dwarka said that they’d got around 20 right, but a revised score was the same as ours.

After that, we went back to the AVH, where the final round of the GD was about to take place. In the the final round, they were debating on whether Indian IT workers were simply cyber coolies or the brains behind the whole industry, Again, he was shouty, and before the event began, one of the judges took him aside, and must’ve warned him to control himself, or risk losing.

Before we went out for lunch, we found a guy coming up the stairs with the JQ results, and found that we’d qualified there as well. We, as in both teams. This was remarkable because team 2 was pretty new to quizzing. Also, our crack programmers came back from Swat the Bug and informed us that they’d gopt second position. Then there was lunch…sigh…Dominoe’s seems like a memory from the distant past. It was hostel food again. Rice, chowmein, manchurian and ice-cream, which for some reason was served along with the plate. If this was summertime, it would’ve melted and we’d all be drinking it, instead of using our spoons. Nevertheless, it was passable, but the manchurian could’ve been better. Aditya and Saurabh, for some reason, decided to act pretyt juvenile, started chasing each other all around the place, spilling water over each other and basically acting like a couple of overgrown babies.

After this was the crossword and surprise event. This was a bit of a problem for me and Arjun, because we were participating in both! Eventually we decided that we’d both go for the crossword, and Arjun would leave after about 10-15 minutes. The crossword was really easy, with simple clues like ‘ballistic camera maker’ and other easy stuff. When Arjun left, we had 7 unsolved, which I reduced to 3 or 4 by the time th papers were collected. No time to check the answers, and I headed off for the labs for the surprise event.

It turns out that we had a lab to ourselves! They were one PC short in the other lab. This was both good and bad. Good because we would have no distractions and bad because we wouldn’t be able to see what the others were up to. We were supposed to design a tattoo. Appparently, Exun guys didn’t notice the fact that the exact same event was there at Warp 2008. They should’ve changed that, to be honest.

I was the lead designer, coming up with the designs, and Arjun simply put them in Photoshop. Simple really. There were 2 main designs we had. One being a silly one based on the skull and crossbones sign you see on elecrical boxes, and another tribal one,  which looked much better. Anyway, we didn’t win that event. Am looking forward to Day 2.

Tags: Symposiums