Tata Consultancy Services conducted the TCS IT Wiz 2006 today at the Sri Sathya Sai Auditorium. Apparently, the whole TCS organising team seemed to have taken a pledge to insult the owners of the auditorium by repeating multiple times that they’d get a better one next time.
The show started off pretty late, and we’d sent in four teams, jointly from the Code Warriors and the Quiz Club. Main team was one from CW which had me and Prannoy, the rest were taken basically for some experience. I was disappointed about many QC members not going, or backing out at the last moment when I’d gone into trouble to send them for this, but I’d also apologise to Varun of QC, who had to suffer since members had backed out and couldn’t form a team.
It was conducted by Giri Balasubramaniam, ‘Pickbrain’ of Greycaps Quizzing. Yes, the same guy who’d conducted the CBSE Intel Science Quiz 2005 when I’d become the national champion. It was the first time this quiz had come to Delhi, so the crowd had no idea what was in store.
Preliminaries had 20 written questions, and the bad thing was they were too damn easy, thus effectively narrowing the margin for qualification. We did some silly mistakes, like me changing a correct answer at the behest of my partner, and elaborating on an answer, and then again cutting it out (also my partner’s suggestion). In a quiz with questions so simple, nothing less than close to 100% score would have worked, and we messed up on those two counts, and thus lost out from qualifying. Sad thing, because the prizes were nice too.
The stage rounds, the regional finals, were much better, as the question standard was better. We knew most, and the point was, we might as well have done well on stage if we’d qualified, but never EVER listen to someone who says AIFF stands for Apple Interchange File Format, rather than the correct Audio Interchange File Format. Also, always elaborate that Walter, Brattain and Shockley made transistors from semiconductors.
At the end of the quiz, when I’d gone to the stage to congratulate the winners, the quizmaster came along and said I looked familiar. Nice to know that he remembered, and then I told him about CBSE Intel, and shifting school etc. He probably was disappointed to see me down in the audience rather than up on stage I guess after what I’d done in the earlier one, but he wished me luck for next year. Which is definitely something I look forward too.
It’s been a roller-coaster ride for me as far as quizzing in DPS VK is concerned. Since all the members are new, as in I’ve gone very few times with them, it takes a bit of time to get the hunch on when they are correct, and when they are wrong. In a team where you’ve been going with a partner for many years, you automatically develop an instinct when and where to trust that person, which is what all the top teams right now have. Unfortunately, the quizzing circle is really competitive, and if we hope to win more, a strong team where that instinct is there between the team members is a big requirement.
