Personal Reflections – Page 168

Matrix-Ecomm 2006

The 7th Annual Brother Aloysius Matrix-Ecomm 2006 was held at Mount St. Mary’s School today. Actually, it was the first day of the event, it concludes tomorrow. I’m going to speak about what I went for, and my impression of the event.

Organised by my pal and former GQB member, Abhishek Nandakumar (who is the Matrix President), the event had the usual stuff you’d find at any comp fest. My first visit to the school, and it was nice. Infrastructure seemed good, from what we saw, but maybe we went to the better sections. One thing I always wonder about is why missionary schools anywhere have the best toilets; ours is pale in comparison.

The Code Warriors of DPS Vasant Kunj will participate in every event. I went for the quiz prelims today. For those who want to leave now, we came 5th in an event in which top 4 qualified.

Long story. The prelims started pretty late. And when we got it, it was nothing like a ‘computer and economics’ quiz that it had been reported to be. 30 questions to be done in 20 minutes. Our team consisted of me, Prannoy Sablok and Divyanshu Sethi. Divyanshu, the eco guy on team, was too stunned by my answer to contribute much himself. Me and Prannoy got cracking on the paper. It was more of trivia actually, something I’m good at, but seriously didn’t expect to encounter here. I think we were pretty loud while discussing, because it turned out that quite a few not-so-good teams around us ended up writing the same answers.

The 4 qualifying teams were DPS RKP (do they breed like rabbits or do they eat superfood; where on earth do these people get so many students for any competition?), DPS Noida, New Era Public School (an upcoming force in quizzing, I see), and Convent of Jesus & Mary (What!!! How did THEY quailfy!?!). We came in after them I suppose.

Honestly, we goofed up bits. We wrote correct answers, and then changed them to wrong ones. Or messed up ones that we actually knew. Made silly mistakes. WE COULD HAVE QUALIFIED TODAY.

I’m getting really sick of this burnout phenomenon with me these days. Is it some problem with me (I answered many questions today…)? Or is it that I’m not finding proper backup support. It’s at times like these I wish I was in DPS RKP. The quest for the elusive member continues. Actually, point is, DPS RKP has many students, among whom many are crazy about quizzing. Their admin doesn’t care about their acads, because they’ve other people to handle it. With DPS VK, they want us to do well in both, which is a tad difficult, to put it mildly. I want someone crazy about quizzing here…

Next up – MINET 2006 on 1st and 2nd September 2006. Stay tuned for more.

DPSVK Quiz Club Online Intra 2006 – Results

I closed off the DPSVK Quiz Club Online Intra 2006 from further entries today, since I think it’s about time we got MOVING on the actual thing, and to get members prepared for upcoming quiz contests. I’d have liked to do this earlier, not bang in the middle of the quizzing season (when many of them are already over), but well, I was given my post late.

The response was er, I’m embarrassed to call 60 entries ‘overwhelming’ (as a quiz-crazy chap anything short of 3000 is not ‘overwhelming’), but yes, it was encouraging. There were more entries too, but some hadn’t given their names, or had submitted blank forms. One of the top-scorers submitted the paper under the name ‘fkfhksdhf’ or something of that sort. But yes, I was happy to see the number of entries pouring in. Mostly from class 11, since I am in constant touch with these guys.

I knew from Day 1 of opening the quiz that there would be lots of cheating going on, in the sense that they’d be looking it up from Google Search (or, maybe my choice, Yahoo! Search), but the point of the exercise was to identify students who were willing to spend even that 15-minute time searching for answers for a quiz. Basically, identify the interested ones, because I’d decided in the beginning that I’d conduct an offline test to follow it up. Scores really don’t make much sense in such a scenario, and I was very lenient in choosing the selected ones because I know many people attempted the test honestly and I did not want them to lose out due to that fact.

In the end, 40 students from the senior category, and 6 students from the junior category were shortlisted. They’ll have their offline test tomorrow. Believe me, it’s going to be really TOUGH. About 40 questions, no choices (ha, go figure!), all to be done within 20 minutes. Which is nothing, because I’ve qualified in quizzes with 60 questions, no choices in 15 minutes. The paper itself has a considerable section on music, something that is asked a lot in quizzes these days; and also because of the fact that we couldn’t bring out the audio equipment so had to put in extra questions to test their in-depth knowledge in the field. It also has a section on movies, sports, a mind-boggling cryptic section, along with the usual general trivia.

Some questions come with hints, but the point is, in most cases the questions are hints themselves. If you think clearly and logically, then you have a bright chance on striking the answer. This is one place where going wrong may also be beneficial – I’ll be looking if a person came close to the actual answer; so leaving an answer unattempted WILL give a bad impression to me. I WANT people who can think and figure out, and personally, I try to attempt as many questions as possible in a quiz.

I conducted a ‘seminar’ today for those selected, and some other interested ones; I took them along even though they hadn’t attempted the test because due to a communication error the whole online event was publicized a second time yesterday. Well, actually we just discussed the answers of the online intra in that, and a bit of general discussion on quizzing. Not much possible with a croaking me, I’ve got a nasty cold that’s done some pretty funny things to my voice. The students seemed to be either very bright, or very good at Google Search (the latter being the correct option probably).

Let me see tomorrow. And if you’re among the selected ones, then best of luck.

| List of selected candidates | Junior Online Intra 2006 Q & A | Senior Online Intra 2006 Q & A |

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