Quizzing – Page 42

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.

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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.

Yup, you already know the Code Warriors were the overall winners at WarP 2007 (held at DPS Mathura Road, on 10-11 October 2007), but read on if you want more behind the scenes stuff…

Day 1 (or read Vivek’s version of it)
The driver was NOT drinking fucking tea. That was a GOOD sign, to start with. I feared that Arjun, the VP had turned over to the ~~Dark~~ Dork Side of the Force, preparing for his VMC phase test; but he did turn up. Here’s what he had to say about his marks in the half-yearly exams:

I didn’t study for chemistry, that’s why I got 63. And I made a real silly mistake in computers, so I got 69.5…

69.5? Sigh. He disappoints us…doesn’t he? You can see a pre-not-drinking-fucking-tea video of the CW team before we left below.

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Figure out the answer…

Was surprised to find small kids to escort us around the venue there. Registered, got two extra coupons (Abhimanyu begged me for it), and proceeded to twiddle our thumbs as the Chief ~~Bastard~~ Guest hadn’t turned up. Thankfully, we spared from listening to speeches by him on ‘the reach of IT technology‘, unlike last year, because we’d been accommodated in some other hall. Loads a friends at DPS MR, and with me hailing out and speaking to them every few minutes made Eeshan wonder:

“Did you stay here earlier?”

Event started, I had the quiz prelims first. Easy stuff, got quite a few of them. Came first in the prelims. It had some questions like this though:

What is Amdahl’s Law? OR Where is it used?

We wrote (and Vivek gave a garbled version on his blog, so trust THIS one):

In Google’s kitchens, there’s a policy which say ‘never put aam aachar in dal, otherwise the employees will get flatulence (ie, fart)’.

So we answered BOTH parts of the question. As for other events, Arjun and Feroze Pimped Their Ride by making a Forty-Two-fied VW Beetle *from SCRATCH*.

A ‘screenshot’ taken by Feroze using his cellphone, will be putting the original version up later.

Nothing in the Cadet Quiz, because our cadets weren’t that good. Nothing in programming, because our team made a WRONG attempt (and got -50 points on a question); and the rest of the time was frittered away by one of the members unsuccessfully trying to solve a question. Yelled a lot at Avani for it, need to yell at Tushar for not coordinating well. Eeshan didn’t even make it the final round of the group discussion, in a topic that was ultra-easy, because a) he went off-topic; b) he shouted at the moderator. So there WERE some stuff we need to work on.

Gaming saw a very close finish, with Abhimanyu coming third, two frags behind the leader. The Next Question (quiz) finals were sitters too, with us finishing 65 points ahead of the runners up. Actually, we got lots of questions on open source software, so it was easy for me.

On stage, before the quiz finals started.

The day ended with us trailing 30 points behind Apeejay Noida on the overall points tally. Needed to win lots of events the next day.

Day 2
Lots of people going from our school, some for the Talent Fiesta also being held at DPS MR. Four events for today at WarP – Slides Toggle (presentation), Spin a Web (web designing), War of the DJs, and Surprise Event. AND we needed to win at least three of them to ensure an overall.

This day was a bit boring in the beginning though. I’d no event in the morning, and the WarP guys had been pushed off to some other hall in the junior wing. Nothing, but transferring stuff via Bluetooth with others, and listening to songs. Must say, teachers have become very tolerant these days, for there were LOADS of them around, and nobody said a THING when they played Nirvana’s Rape Me at full volume. They also (almost) played Suttah before Ramit stopped them. Teachers did get fed up of rock, so they put on James Blunt, but they didn’t like that either, so we (thankfully) went back to sensible stuff like Metallica.

Changed the teams to me + Vivek to me + Dork Vader (LOL, Arjun, I hope you don’t mind) back again to me + Vivek because I was so confused. Anyway, Arjun was busy in the web-d event, so I went with Vivek. Arjun (with some brilliant inputs from Vivek) made an absolutely stunning side. Arjun is not yet lost, you know, he hasn’t turned over to the Dork Side totally – for he still uses lame ’42’ jokes on his site.

First round of surprise was a crossword, which we 19 / 20. Easy stuff, and I wanted to go off and have the refreshments (which weren’t as refreshing as the day 1). Round two started soon after, and we were supposed to add dialogues, sound effects and stuff to clippings from the movie Madagascar, from scratch. Must say, it was a bloody brilliant idea, and a fun event. We both came up with funny and non-veg stuff. Got the organizers into some trouble, when the teachers wanted to watch it, but Ramit stalled them by muting volume, and claiming hardware failure. Thanks dude, or that’d have been the end of us. 😉 Anyway, we this event. And the DJ event, where the participants were supposed to remix *ghazals*. Again, a brilliant idea. We won in this event too!

Ex-WarP President Ankit Sahni and me, at WarP 2007.

That put us ten points ahead of Apeejay Noida on the points tally, it was that close. Kudos to the WarP team – Ramit, Adhish, Abhimanyu, Japmeet, Naman, Kunal, Varun, Abhishek, Abdullah, ex-Pres Ankit Sahni; and all other WarP members – for coming up with such good ideas, and conducting a well-organized event. There’s a nice little WarP video to watch out for too, which I guess will be uploaded soon; along with our entry to the surprise event. What are we most jealous of – those custom-made shirts!

PS – More pics in my earlier post.