The prelims had been simple and thus made it more hard to attain a position in the top 6 for the final round in 2009. Anand and I had it tough as did Gowri & Deepak along with the other teams from the college.
2010 was altogether a different story. Quiz Trac'10 at PSG college of Arts and Science last month saw us going through to the final of any major open quiz we had ever taken part in. We were pinned against the heavyweights of the Coimbatore Quiz Circle plus V.V. Ramanan and Ramkumar aka Kabbalah ( I still don't know why they call him that). Needless to say we got our asses whooped but were graceful enough to take away the 5th place out of eight finalists.
Riviera at VIT was another hole burned in the pocket but the bird-watching made up for it more than expected :) , as did a fun filled night concert by Motherjane and the classy Shaan. We wrapped up our Vellore tour by laughing our hearts out at Goa - a film by Venkat Prabhu and returned to the hub of inactivity(No need of my mentioning the name I reckon).
Up next, Kriya at PSG Tech was one fest to savour. Anand and I managed to sneak into the finals of "Mathemagic"- a math challenge and secure the runners up position. The " Marketing Challenge" too ended with the same result albeit some very conspicuous gushes of favouritism to the PSG teams who finished first on both occasions (Using our keen senses of detection, it wasn't too hard to notice that the judges themselves were from the same institution). The main quiz that evening was a disaster yet again. We saw ourselves on very familiar grounds with the rest of the spectators staring up at the stage.
There was this memorable moment I would like squeeze in which probably has a moral story for all. " 2500/- for second place aaaahhh !" - This was the common reaction shared by the Marketing Challenge team (Anand, Arun Paul and yours truly) after the announcements. Deserves a celebration right ?
3 cheese burst pizzas and 4 chocolava cakes packed a pretty neat punch that night. And next day the punch was even harder as we got it first hand from the prize committee that our actual prize money was just 1000 bucks. "Sorry guys, but director has approved that much only! Not in our hands you know."
What an absolutely fantastic day! We decided not to bitch about it too much as there had been approximately no net profit or loss . We ourselves had had plenty of experience on similar notes with our own director . We had certificates to flaunt, right?(Certificates, as many know are the most important things valued by your college regardless of their own knowledge about what the events actually meant).
One more business quiz at PSG Tech gave us a breather with the third place and 250/- apiece. This one was really well conducted and ran smooth.
Now these events were all the preparation we actually needed for Tata Crucible. Plus some occasional googling and wiki'ing. This how the chain of events unfolded at the biggest business quiz in the country at the regional leg in Coimbatore :
Time: Well they said that the quiz was due to begin at 1:30 pm but it was 2:45 by the time Giri "Pickbrain" actually made an appearance. Anand, Sujith, Satish, Kumaresh & his teammie and I had caught some up-front seats. I was discussing with Sujith that we should take a trip to Mumbai someday to kill time.
The prelim had 20 questions and here are the highlights of our answer sheet (as far as I can remember)
Hits :
- Pro-Lease is a BPO headed by which south Indian actor ? Aravind Swamy
- Official price of gold was set first in which country in 1717 ? England ( I remembered this from the Landmark 2004 book )
- Visual of Adi Godrej(was asked in the previous year prelim as well)
- Unit of measurement of oil trading globally -Barrel (sitter)
- Logo of Esselworld amusement park
- Car company's name which meant "I roll" in latin -Volvo (this has been asked a gazillion times i think)
- Author of "Fortune at the bottom of the pyramid" - CK Prahalad (sitter again)
- German company famous for its "Universalwaschmittel" as its first product - Henkel(very obvious one)
- Which restaurant chain based in London has the sign on its entrance "No guns or Nuclear weapons allowed inside" - Hardrock Cafe (Remembered this from a prelim round at VIT)
- What did a guy named Murugavel Janakiraman from Madras establish when he met his wife online(some more details) - bharatmatrimony.com (easy one yet again)
- I have a jinx. I always get the very first question of a prelim wrong 99.99% of the time. This one read " Nipper the dog is one of the most recognisable logos in the world. Which entity?" ; Our answer - Hush Puppies vs Right answer - HMV (clean bowled on this one)
- Forbes' Manager of the century ; Our ans- Steve Jobs vs Right answer -Jack Welch
- Visual of Barclay's old logo ; Our A- Slazenger (we were kickin ourselves for this one)
- This one was interesting :) Viagra was actually developed to aid which common disease ; Our answer- We were doubtful whether to put influenza or heart ailments but Right ans- Blood Pressure
- Dil ki baat ek touch se sunao was whose campaign - Our ans : Samsung vs Right answer : Nokia (Sometimes you never know why this happens)
- Logo with the company name blanked out and the tagline was "Better ideas for a better planet" ; Our ans - Suzlon ( we were in a hurry to submit the paper so we scribbled crap) vs right ans - Pricol( I never knew such a company existed until Giri read it out)
- chairman of Global Health Private Ltd ; Dr Naresh Trehan (don't ask me I dunno!)
- worst miss ever; production company of Surya's "Ayan" - We wrote Red Giant thinking it was Aadhavan, turned out to be Sun Pictures
And Giri read our names out for the first wild card round. We were onto something finally.
Our strategy was simple : We let the other teams goof it up. I thumped the buzzer on the very first question "Which country advertises itself as 'It's possible'". If you were seeing the IPL season2 you would have known this cos' the South Africa commercial would keep propping up in every gap it got.
We in fact knew the answers to the next three also : Mastercard, Coke and MTNL but were utterly nervous. And like I said the rest goofed up and quoting Giri "Sometimes silence does pay".
Through to the very 2nd edition of CRUCIBLE in Coimbatore. We sent the messages to every contact known to us(well almost).
Now I don't wanna bore you further with the final round questions. In a nutshell, it comprised of 4 short rounds with a new scoring system(a cricket'ish style) that gave advantage to teams which would answer last on a pass question for the first two rounds.
Our score at the end of the first one: ZERO
Our score at the end of the 4th round: 45
We might have created a mini history of our own had we scored a half century, which has never been achieved in the annals of Tata Crucible quizzing according to Giri. We capitalised on the buzzer round connects which multiplied quickly, giving us a huge, comfortable lead over the others.
And I did not realise that we had won the regional level when I answered the last question which was a buzzer. Anand was keeping track of the scores and he uttered softly, "We won da". I replied, "This round right? Yeah we still have more to go da".
" No we won the regional round."
Ok, obviously we were in disbelief ourselves.
We were the only engineering team on stage and were going to Bombay(Ya, I said Bombay Mr.Thackeray ..BOMBAY) to battle it out agianst IIMs. Giri was absolutely entertaining the crowd with his elan and he encouraged us to prepare well for the final 20 city showdown.
I do not have any pictures of us holding the prizes or anything yet with me but will soon upload it when I do get hold of one.
A special mention of thanks to our friends Satish & Sujith and Kumaresh & his teammie-whose-name-I-forgot. They were cheering us on till the end. Satish carried that mega "man of the match" checks they gave us till we reached the college.
And make no mistake, this time the dinner at Pizza Hut for them was on us. At least with a safe backup of 27,000 per head which is yet to arrive. New backpacks, Fast track sunglasses and DVD players (which we have to collect at Bombay) were additonal goodies of the gift pack.
I will surely remember February 24th, not for one but two things. I missed one of the greatest sporting spectacles in the history of a 39 year old format of a game but won 75,000 with my friend. But that number was clearly eclipsed by a beautiful 200*.
God is great.
