Personal Reflections – Page 117

Life’s too busy right now. Too much work at hand, especially for Code Wars 2007 – soBIG.F. Bani ma’am played the trump card of seeking the school principal’s approval for Code Wars right around his birthday (he agreed…yaya!); but that also meant me, Arjun, Abhimanyu, Feroze and some other CW members who turned up to have round the clock tapping away at keyboards to get the invite ready. I guess her plan is to get the invites out much before the event, so that IN CASE he changes his mind he’ll HAVE TO go ahead with the event to save his school’s face. Basically, that means Code Wars is happening this year, no last minute nods to look forward to. 🙂

We’ve been sending out the SAME invites for Code Wars for the past three years – with the SAME schedule and SAME description of events. I wanted a fresh look this time, so with loads of shouts of ‘OOo sucks!’ being chanted around me, we cooked up a new one using OpenOffice. The invite for Code Wars itself if very fun this time, for that in itself will test the teams’ logic and how up-to-date they’re with current tech news. Seriously though, I don’t think too many teams will get our clues.

For all those people eagerly waiting for the ‘Best Computer Symposium of the Year’, keep checking your mailboxes…for the invites to Code Wars 2007, to be held on 16-17th November, will be dispatched on Monday.

PS – I’d missed out on the Code Wars 2006 Programming paper during the last update cycle. That is now available for download on the Code Warriors website.

The DPS Mathura Road Talent Fiesta 2007 was held on 11-12th October 2007. I know it’s a week old news, but pardon me folks, because I’m a bit busy these days.

Anyway, there was no general quiz this year (as far as I know), where John Woo directed Mission: Impossible I like last year :p. There WAS an environment quiz though, for which they decided to send us without even asking me. Ah, sigh, the trappings of success.

So we reached there, and there was no place for us to sit in the room allotted for the quiz people. We went to some other room, where Rach went crazy.

[yahoo 4501897]

A video of Rach and Varun fooling around…

The prelims started soon, and we qualified, that’s all I feel like saying. Not because it was bad, we did real well, but it was a bit boring. They kept on making the rules for the competition along the way, sometimes changing this to that – in all, a total mess. The teams qualifying were announced, but we were made to wait for hours on end for the final round, with nothing else to do but admire these on the pillars (each and every one of them – I wonder who put them up)…

…and Rach showing off his locks of hair…

…and Ankit finding the playground area a nice photo op, for some crazy reason…

The quiz finals DID start (finally!); with Rach leaving because he had to go back home in time. Competitors, uhm, there was Springdales with those guys who beat us by a slim margin in last year’s Talent Fiesta general quiz. This time though we lead the quiz all the way through. Contrary to what people may believe, the Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything DOES come handy at times…

Quizmaster: What is the average lifespan of a hippopotamus?
Me: Er…42 years?

The answer to that was 45 years, but come on, lifespans aren’t exactly measured out exactly like petrol mileages. After all, those dumb hippos don’t get registered at birth-death registrars, do they. So we DID get the points for that. 😀

In the final (rapid fire) round, DPS Mathura Road’s own team answered all questions, and edged past us. From what I’ve heard, it was a rigged quiz as they knew the answers. Didn’t even gracefully decline their position so that we could come first. To top it off, I had given up my group discussion first position at Code Wars 2006 for the quizmaster Dheer Bhatnagar from DPS MR, but the moron didn’t have the decency to do that for us. :p

In the overall even again, we were tied with DPS MR, but they awarded the trophy to themselves. Next time guys, keep it intra-school, will you?

PS – Our school bus didn’t come to pick us up until 3pm that day, during which a bird missed shitting on Ankit Sarkar the second time and hit ME instead, right on the eye. I guess I can claim truthfully that I got a bird’s eye view of the shitty state DPS MR’s Talent Fiesta was this year. Advice to Talent Fiesta guys – Learn something about organization from the folks at WarP.