History Repeats Itself

I went for HT Pace today, and like the title suggests, I came third for the second year in a row. I really hate this quiz, its too easy, its even easier than University Challenge, and its too gimmicky, but what more can you expect from Siddharth Basu.
Congratulations, firstly, to Shakey, for getting Delhi Runner up, and of course, National Winner of the quiz.
I also have got yet another flat screen TV, 15 incher, this time, so if anyone wants to but it, please drop a line. I'm willing to go under MRP for the thinggumy, its Samsung CTV and all that. Me want to sell, and buy myself and iPod with the proceeds.

Anyhow, back to the point. Let me Describe the HT PACE Inquizsitive quiz.
We show up, obviously early, so walk around Talkatora Audi, waiting for teams to show up. Only, this isn't a quiz, its a "Mega Event", so not only do 5000 participants from schools as vague as Little Flower Sr. Secondary School show up, they also bring 1000 person cheering squads, so they have a shot at winning the Best Cheering Squad prize. Someone needs to remind the organisers, that this is, in fact, a quiz.
So, the whole audi is packed with huge cheering squads, some with drums, and usual riff raff nonsense, who are shouting at the top of their lungs, so us poor quizzers can't really hear a thing. Next, for the next one hour, before his hairlessness Sid Basu decides to arrive, we have to listen to Ma Tujhe Salaam, by A.R Rahman continously, OVER AND OVER AGAIN! For crissake, you'd think they'd change the song, maybe, but no, for two years, and probably all the years we didn't take part, its been the same damn thing.

Finally, after ages of waiting, the prelims begin. Sheets are distrubuted, and we find that the Prelims are all of 15 minutes long, with 25 questions. That, of course, is not the worst of it. The quality of the questions was so shabby, they actually asked who the columnist of Rude Food was. Qualifying score was, get this, 21 on 25. That, ladies and gentlemen, is how terribly simple the questions were, so the first miracle of the day was that we actually qualified, as several quizzing stalwarts, such as MIS, and Saint Francis De Sales failed to do so.

The main round, to make things worse, was almost all on the buzzer, with negatives. This made guessing a virtual impossibility, as no one wanted to risk points. Not that it was really important, what it came down to was fastest finger first for a majority of the questions, as pretty much all teams on stage knew the answers.

Well, we had the fastest fingers for the first 5 rounds, and were leading, but lost our touch in the final buzzer round, and hit a couple of negatives, and end result, came third.
Blah! St. Columba's came first, and Springdales DK came second, and qualified for the national finals.
Now, don't begin to think that National means representative of our great nation. National means whichever town HT has a prescence in, which includes Lucknow, Jaipur, Bhopal, and that true bastion of quizzing genius, Chandigarh. If the Delhi teams did not beat them, they should have felt ashamed of themselves, these were terrible terrible teams. Thus, St. Columba's deserves a kick in the groin for coming 5th, and not taking second place. Kudos to Shakey, and Springdales for taking advantage of the situation, and picking up a nice DVD home theatre as the first prize.

Well, all done with the quiz, we return to the debacle in the auditorium. They had a chief guest, of course, Veeru had showed up, and this drove paagal vela audience even more into a frenzy, and they begged and pleaded with us quizzers, who were close to him, to get them autographs, and the like. He's a sweet chap, Sehwag, doesn't say much, though, kinda overawed with everything. At any rate, he signed the T Shirts we got for the quiz, so we were nice and pleased.
The highlight of the quiz came right at the end, when they were announcing the prize for "best cheering squad". Now, there is this silly ass girls convent, called St. Thomas School, who send a 3000 girl cheering squad for each one of these big show events. They have huge banners, and shout themselves silly, which is really stupid, as their teams have never once managed to qualify for any quiz in Delhi. But they pride themselves on their amazing cheering capabilities, and get very hyper about it. So, the announcer dude(who Basu's wife was flirting majorly with), calls out the winners, as Saint (and at hearing St. 3000 girls of STS start squealing their heads of, and start of in insane victory dance) George's School! St. George's now go wild with excitement, while the girls from STS finally realise they haven't actually one, and the collective look on their faces was priceless. Imagine having the one thing you thought you were good at taken away from you. They looked like a boy who's puppy had died. Hehe.

Right, enough of that. There are more important things to move onto.

Happy Birthday Eaps!

Vinay Eapen, or the Mad Mallu Maniac, or the Government Servant Lackey, or simply one of my best buddies, celebrates his heppy budday today. Gawd bless him, spending it in school with a bunch of Shriramites, but hey, it'll be the last of its kind, so all the best to ya, Eaps.

Right, must now prep for Columban. Clash of the Titans begins tomorrow, DPS vs MIS, for the umpteenth time. Lets see who comes out tops in the Quaters and Semis.