3 SHADES OF TRIVIA

The desperation to make my blog better than my previous posts has for once turned trivial to me. Well, as you guessed it right, I am very much not in the mood to blog. The very thought of today’s flop show (21-02-09) gets me worked up a little. Defeat has embraced me as frequent as victory has but, still it annoys me when I get so close to tasting success and at last end up with bitter defeat. To be fair enough I haven’t even made anything clear as to what I am talking about. Okay! Let’s get on with it.

Wednesday (18-02-09):
This week (16th of Feb ’09 to 22nd of Feb ’09) has been a mix of fortunes as far as my quizzing stint goes. On the 18th of Feb ’09, “The Economic Times” hosted a quiz competition at GRD College. The quiz master for the competition was “Tata Crucible” famed Giri, a burly man whose voice could well be classified as Death Metal genre. GRD has always proved to be an exotic college if not for educational aspects but at least for other reasons. It wasn’t a working day so, our anticipation went in vain. Much to our surprise we came to know that it was an out and out business quiz and not a general quiz. We were under-prepared as always but, still stuck to the ritual of giving it a shot. The prelims proved to be relatively easy and we did fairly well. When the results were out, we were a bit upset that we couldn’t make it to the finals. The frustration peaked all the more when the Quiz master disclosed the prizes for the top six finalists. As always we stayed back to watch the finals and that did not go in vain as we managed to grab four audience prizes. Post Quiz, we managed to have a word with the Quiz master. We told him about our Quiz club and that we also have a proposal of hosting an open quiz in our college.

Thursday (19-02-09):
The department of Computer Science hosted an intra college Quiz competition as part of their 3 day fest which they termed as Sieger. We managed to win the quiz even though there was stiff competition from my club mates. That proved as an impetus for us and the win in the quiz competition made us to top the list after Day 1 of Sieger.

Saturday (21-02-09):
/>My outdated gizmo missed out to wake me up by 5 ‘o’ clock and fortunately, Deepak did the work of my alarm but understandably with a humanly delay of half an hour. We were instructed by our Placement officer to be ready by 6-15, that meant I had only 45 minutes before hell broke loose. I managed to be there on time, only to find that not all are as foolish as I am. Only a few had come. We (I and Deepak) decided to take a look at the proceedings leading up to today’s (22-02-09) eco club trek, a trek primarily organized for the first years. We reached the cricket field where around 50 first year students were present along with a handful of club coordinators, who were supervising the others. We started from college by 6-45 and reached PSG medical college by 8-15. The event TRANSITION’09 organized by CTS encompassed many events like movie making, paper presentation, ultimate techie, stall presentation and the all important Quiz (“AWE”). It was clinically organized and the event got underway at around 10-20 a.m. Much to our surprise, around 100 teams were there for quiz alone. The prelims got underway with “Lloyd” being the Quiz master. The preliminary round was easy and we got 15 out of 20 correct.

We had to endure a long break between prelims and the finals, which was the final event of the day. Fortunately, the anchor kept me occupied for the major phase of the idle period. She reminded me of my school senior. A tall and fair complexioned lady tidily attired in a dark green saree. She was gorgeous till lunch, (doesn’t make sense eh?) well, post lunch had a different story altogether. After lunch, I went in search of the free ice-cream that everyone was relishing on. I grabbed my cup and tasted it standing in front of one of the entrances to the auditorium. I accidentally happened to spot this girl sitting on the steps along with few of her friends. She was the odd one out of the bunch because, she was in salwars and the rest wore jeans and t-shirts. Coincidence you may call it, we both glanced at each other at the same instance. She looked like a mallu and that spurred my inquisitiveness further. She had the look of an innocent chubby kid with gleaming eyes beautifully bordered with an eye liner. I then resorted to concentrate on my ice-cream (this is how I portrayed myself) and occasionally I gaped at her. I decided to seek my classmate’s assistance to confirm what unfolded before my eyes. I then, asked ambi (rengerajan) to check if she was looking for me and I decided not to look at her again. Ambi as always proved to be a master in these matters, answered me in the affirmative and tell you what! That pleased me in fact, that delighted me. She then went inside the auditorium and I obliged to her silent invitation and convinced my friends as well to enter the auditorium. For about one hour this fairy tale continued before she left the place. I couldn’t do much as the results for the prelims was about to be disclosed in a matter of minutes.

I was a bit tensed and was on the edge of my seat. The quiz master disclosed the first name and much to our surprise we found ourselves as the first team to qualify. I was very much excited and we ambled across to the stage with huge applause from the mammoth audience. I was so absorbed by the moment that I just did not notice the beautiful anchor giving us some instructions. The quiz then got underway with teams from KCT, PSG TECH, AMRITA, CIT AND GCT (I GUESS) completing the top six teams. The first round did not fetch us any points but, by the end the second round we were tied at first place with CIT. The next three rounds were buzzer rounds which meant pace had to be mixed with caution, caution of earning negative marks for a wrong answer. We were out of sorts and couldn’t do much about the remaining rounds. The last round had only 3 questions and carried +15 for a correct answer and a -10 for a wrong answer. We had no other option but to go after the questions if we were to finish among the top 3 spots. Two wrong answers and that put us on the darker side of zero. Disappointment, frustration, anger and everything except happiness crept in one by one. Though everyone consoled us saying that it was a brave effort to risk in the final round, we couldn’t digest it that easily. I had to return home so that I could finish off the police verification for my passport.
SO CLOSE, YET TOO FAR.