Quizomania
Last week it was full of quizzes here in Chennai and we were there attending all the quizzes like quiz maniacs :-D It all started on Friday Jan 25th with Open Kurukshethra quiz @ Anna University, Guindy around 3 PM. Yes, we bunked the office for the rest of the day and went directly for the quiz from our office :-D Then the next day (Sat) @ Music Academy was the big one "The Annual Odyssey Quiz" (conducted on the eve of Indian Republic Day, Jan 26th)...After finishing out the prelims and the finals of Odyssey quiz we straightaway went to IIT Chennai for the Main Quiz finals show @ around 10:00 PM...It went on till Sunday morning @ 5:30 AM...Goshh! was so much tried that i was sleeping the whole day of Sunday to catch up for the lost sleep on the previous day(Sat) @ IIT Madras.
Kurukshethra Open quiz was conducted by Dr.Navin Jayakumar (The best Quiz Master I have ever known) and after attending the prelims I felt like it lacked that Old Dr.Navin's flavour as it used to be a few years back in the Annual Landmark Chennai Open Quiz (conducted on the eve of Indian Independence day, Aug 15th)...Becos when we were in college our team (myself,shiv,pradeep) attended the 2002 Landmark Quiz which was like too good with almost all the questions workable, guessable but trivial ones...But now attending the Kurukshethra quiz prelims by Dr.Navin Jayakumar I felt like those workable questions have dried up to a larger extent, the foremost reason of which i guess, could be to the fact that these days quizzing has become like war and you need to have a good mix of arbit questions that are too wayward in terms of statistics to make sure that hell lotta teams don't get qualified with the same score...Anyway our team (myself,kalyan,Sanandan) got around 10 points whereas the cut off for qualifying was around 14..Yes! we missed it by a Cat's whisker!!! 4 points or questions :-( but i am sure there would be many teams who would have missed by this margin or for that matter even just 1 point too, so we can't really call ours a Cat's whisker miss :-D
The Chennai Odyssey Quiz Prelims and Finals...This is another Annual open quiz conducted by Dr.Praveen Goday (Gr8 Quiz Master!!!) which I never miss if I am in Chennai...This quiz is more special amongst our college guys as one of our team (Naveen, Bharath & the guy from JIPMER (donno his name)) cracked the prelims and got qualified for the finals during its inaugural quiz...
But this time I was late for the quiz, as by the time I reached Music Academy it all started and Dr.Praveen was already in his 21st prelims question and I thought to let it go and sat there as Audience besides kalyan's team..Considering the fact that our college team has got shattered becos of guys moving to different parts of the world for work, I really wasn't looking forward for this quiz and was just being there @ the venue to see if there were any 2 member teams waiting outside which needed a boost up in terms of head count to take advantage in the prelims...
Neways, both the prelims and finals were good, although the prelims had some vague questions which is understandable and justified by the same reasoning as that for Annual Landmark Quiz cited above...Going by the questions asked in the Finals, one could easily figure out without any doubt that extensive research was put in for coming up with the questions for finals which was vivid when Dr. Pravin asked the audience an Audio question, by playing the AIR (All India Radio) Theme music and asking for the composer...As expected no one knew the answer and he said it was Mehlin Mehta (Father of Zubin Mehta) who composed the music for AIR...OOOHHHHH! thats a tough one...ain't it??? 8-)
IIT Open quiz Finals...This is the first time I am attending the Open quiz @ IIT, Madras conducted as part of the Annual Saarang culturals...When I was in college we would attend the Open quiz prelims and goof it up so badly that we won't even qualify it and naturally we won't have the enthu to stay back and attend the IIT Open Quiz Finals which is like a very very Informal event conducted late nights @ IIT OAT (Open Air Theatre) as there will be a hell lotta questions that will be thrown @ the participants the whole night from 12 midnight till late 5:30 AM with 2 to 3 arbit breaks here and there or none et all again the decision lies solely in the hands of the Quiz Masters who conduct it becos generally there will be 4 to 5 quiz masters for this Open Quiz...
Being known that its an Informal event, myself Sana and Amar went straight to Saravana Bhavan hotel @ Mylapore, Chennai after watching the Odyssey Quiz @ Music Academy.. Then having stuffed enough in our stomach to keep us alive and kicking for the entire night @ OAT we drove to IIT, Madras for the Open Quiz..We were there @ around 10:00 and Singer Kartik's show was going on at the OAT..We asked couple of IITians and they said that after the show they would be starting the Open Quiz Finals @ around 12:00 Midnight..So we were just roaming around the vast IIT campus and hanging around in the stalls put up for the Saarang...
12 past by and 1 struck and still there was no signs of the event to start and when asked one of the guy said that the QM (pota) was sleeping in his hostel room and they have gone to wake him up..I wondered where these IITians get these strange nicknames like the one the QM had "POTA" may be some mallu guy would have kept it from "POTTAN" :-D just kidding! need to ask only POTA about the origin of his nickname ;-)
Then they started the quiz @ around 2:00 AM after wasting half an hour without having a Connector cable for the projector...The Quiz went on till 5:30 AM and by 6:00 AM I was @ my home with my eyes red and swollen wanting for sleep..I slept the whole day and got up @ 5:30 PM :-)
(Aftermath of quizzing! he he he)
Indeed, It was fun attending all the above mela of quizzes and we got to know a lot of things that was shared by the QMs in their quizzes...
- Suresh Gangadharan
Kurukshethra Open quiz was conducted by Dr.Navin Jayakumar (The best Quiz Master I have ever known) and after attending the prelims I felt like it lacked that Old Dr.Navin's flavour as it used to be a few years back in the Annual Landmark Chennai Open Quiz (conducted on the eve of Indian Independence day, Aug 15th)...Becos when we were in college our team (myself,shiv,pradeep) attended the 2002 Landmark Quiz which was like too good with almost all the questions workable, guessable but trivial ones...But now attending the Kurukshethra quiz prelims by Dr.Navin Jayakumar I felt like those workable questions have dried up to a larger extent, the foremost reason of which i guess, could be to the fact that these days quizzing has become like war and you need to have a good mix of arbit questions that are too wayward in terms of statistics to make sure that hell lotta teams don't get qualified with the same score...Anyway our team (myself,kalyan,Sanandan) got around 10 points whereas the cut off for qualifying was around 14..Yes! we missed it by a Cat's whisker!!! 4 points or questions :-( but i am sure there would be many teams who would have missed by this margin or for that matter even just 1 point too, so we can't really call ours a Cat's whisker miss :-D
The Chennai Odyssey Quiz Prelims and Finals...This is another Annual open quiz conducted by Dr.Praveen Goday (Gr8 Quiz Master!!!) which I never miss if I am in Chennai...This quiz is more special amongst our college guys as one of our team (Naveen, Bharath & the guy from JIPMER (donno his name)) cracked the prelims and got qualified for the finals during its inaugural quiz...
But this time I was late for the quiz, as by the time I reached Music Academy it all started and Dr.Praveen was already in his 21st prelims question and I thought to let it go and sat there as Audience besides kalyan's team..Considering the fact that our college team has got shattered becos of guys moving to different parts of the world for work, I really wasn't looking forward for this quiz and was just being there @ the venue to see if there were any 2 member teams waiting outside which needed a boost up in terms of head count to take advantage in the prelims...
Neways, both the prelims and finals were good, although the prelims had some vague questions which is understandable and justified by the same reasoning as that for Annual Landmark Quiz cited above...Going by the questions asked in the Finals, one could easily figure out without any doubt that extensive research was put in for coming up with the questions for finals which was vivid when Dr. Pravin asked the audience an Audio question, by playing the AIR (All India Radio) Theme music and asking for the composer...As expected no one knew the answer and he said it was Mehlin Mehta (Father of Zubin Mehta) who composed the music for AIR...OOOHHHHH! thats a tough one...ain't it??? 8-)
IIT Open quiz Finals...This is the first time I am attending the Open quiz @ IIT, Madras conducted as part of the Annual Saarang culturals...When I was in college we would attend the Open quiz prelims and goof it up so badly that we won't even qualify it and naturally we won't have the enthu to stay back and attend the IIT Open Quiz Finals which is like a very very Informal event conducted late nights @ IIT OAT (Open Air Theatre) as there will be a hell lotta questions that will be thrown @ the participants the whole night from 12 midnight till late 5:30 AM with 2 to 3 arbit breaks here and there or none et all again the decision lies solely in the hands of the Quiz Masters who conduct it becos generally there will be 4 to 5 quiz masters for this Open Quiz...
Being known that its an Informal event, myself Sana and Amar went straight to Saravana Bhavan hotel @ Mylapore, Chennai after watching the Odyssey Quiz @ Music Academy.. Then having stuffed enough in our stomach to keep us alive and kicking for the entire night @ OAT we drove to IIT, Madras for the Open Quiz..We were there @ around 10:00 and Singer Kartik's show was going on at the OAT..We asked couple of IITians and they said that after the show they would be starting the Open Quiz Finals @ around 12:00 Midnight..So we were just roaming around the vast IIT campus and hanging around in the stalls put up for the Saarang...
12 past by and 1 struck and still there was no signs of the event to start and when asked one of the guy said that the QM (pota) was sleeping in his hostel room and they have gone to wake him up..I wondered where these IITians get these strange nicknames like the one the QM had "POTA" may be some mallu guy would have kept it from "POTTAN" :-D just kidding! need to ask only POTA about the origin of his nickname ;-)
Then they started the quiz @ around 2:00 AM after wasting half an hour without having a Connector cable for the projector...The Quiz went on till 5:30 AM and by 6:00 AM I was @ my home with my eyes red and swollen wanting for sleep..I slept the whole day and got up @ 5:30 PM :-)
(Aftermath of quizzing! he he he)
Indeed, It was fun attending all the above mela of quizzes and we got to know a lot of things that was shared by the QMs in their quizzes...
- Suresh Gangadharan
posted by Suresh Gangadharan at 10:48 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home