e-Spice

Getting bored with all the studying, and with serious guilt complexes about not doing enough for Exun, and becoming a useless member, and with a couple of other hidden motives, Mesa decided to go for the Group Discussion at e-Spice 2004, DPS Noida's computer fest.

First, about the event.
Going for any computer symposium has its own charms.
Firstly, you get to sit in egurucool lab indefinitely, till someone decides that it is about time to move out of school. Invariably, this is the only branch of inter-school competition where we are actually late, and not five hours early for an event. This terminal lateness syndrome of the Exun Clan was compounded by the fact that the bus broke down, and decided to return to school, thus delaying us even further. Well, it worked out for the best, as this event also had terminal lateness syndrome, with nothing in particular starting on time, and everything in general going on too long.
Secondly, you have acess to Rrrrungta's iPod, on which you get to play Parachute. Parachute is a great fun game, you have this little Anti-Aircract gun, which has unlimited ammo, and you're supposed to shoot down helicopters, and the parachuter's they decide to drop by.
Thirdly, like quizzes, its perfectly acceptable to be a little insane in a computer symposium, in fact, it's even encouraged, so I feel at home.
Ah, so we arrived, and I got to carry out hidden motive number one. I talked to the MIS quizzers, who were there, and we have formed super-team for IIT Rendezvous, as rest of my DPS team is not vela enough like me to go for quiz two days before a maths paper. It is fixed, and I shall be going to Kombat with Melange-Man and Shreyas.
Anyhow, back to my event. I went for Group Discussion, (GD), where I was up against some known faces, including Melange Boy. Our first topic, in qualifying round was "Can India become and IT Hub?", and was, well, quite boring. Anyhow, I did manage to qualify, so all was well. So far so good, and other such things.
Then, after the second round of qualifying, the six finalists, including moi, went up for the next GD. This time, the topic was "Open Source-Threat to Microsoft Supremacy", and mesa had great fun. This was of course helped by the fact that I was the only person on stage, for some reason, who had any real idea what Open Source was all about, and the only one at all to have used any open source software. As a result, this is how the discussion would go.
Moderator would put up a point for discussion. I would elaborate, state my opinion, and usually rave about how great Firefox is, and how crappy Internet Exploder is. Following this, five other people would try to latch onto some information I provided, and somehow coerce a point of out that. One of them openly claimed to not know a single thing about the topic, and her summarisation included something about "grey areas". She wanted to unite Microsoft and Linux, into some whacko middle ground. I wish the poor girl well.
Anyhow, so me winning was a pretty much forgone conclusion, and well, I did. Alls well that ends well, as Mr. Mukesh had requested me to win, as I had not been for event in long time. Goody.
Now, on to quiz. Karan and Abhishyk qualified, and got on stage, where they massacred the opposition, in a cruel and undignified manner. Compounding the competitions problems, we decided to set up huge and loud cheering squad, and made a lot of noise in support, and even attempted starting a Mexican Wave. That, however, didn't work out too well.
Unfortunately, we didn't win any other event, and thus ended up missing the winners trophy by a point, and picked up overall runners up, instead.

Why did we win these two, you ask? Were we good? Yes. Were we capable? Yes. Did this have anything to do with us winning? NO! We won these two events, for one reason alone.

Maria!

Our new lucky pen, Maria, also known as "The-pen-with-girl-who's-ass-lights-up" did it all for us. For a long time, we heathen have gone without a lucky pen by our side, and now we have found one with far greater power than our first. Along with the power of luck, it also has the amazing power of distraction. Fellow quizzers/GD members cannot concentrate on the task ahead, as they are mesmerized by the brilliance of Maria.
Thus, further events hold good prospects for us. With Maria by our side, all things look possible again. Our terrible quizzing season will soon change course.
Ah, few believed at first, but now Exun has succumbed to the lure of a lucky pen. Karan has gone to the extent to request a picture, to post on his blog.
All will view the splendour, the might, the sheer insanity of our lucky pen. Be in awe, ladies and gentlemen, you will never see such things that come with warnings, that they contain small parts.