Sunday, November 23, 2008

Quiz

"These guys are probably the ones with the worst hand writing i have ever seen." Thats how My Team Mate and I were called onto the stage for the El Dorado, Quiz at Ensemble '08 , Conducted by Barry O'Brein. No prizes for guessing, whose writing was it on the paper.


I wish i had written this post some 7-8 years ago. While I watched atleast hundred episodes of BQC and always wished i was there , and watched some hundred other quizzes of different types, i never realised what actually will take me there.

Well, it seems to me now, i finally discovered the key to step into the arena from the audience. One- Persistence, Two-Reading.

Actually speaking, i am not really good at either of these. One thing that is churning its results almost after years after is my ability to sit through all the quizzes even after not getting through preliminary rounds.

Ok, wait, this really seems like an underdog story, i dont really mean it to be so, because i ended anyway 5th out of the 6 teams in the finals. (Excuse the dull tone - its 7 in the morning with no sleep)

Yeah, the second part, i am absolutely bad at reading, the amount of literature i have read is zilch. I have no idea of 99.9999% of the authors that exist on this planet. And my current affairs suck. Thanks to my peer group at XLRI and ofcourse lots of free time in the second year, i have finally started to read the sacred newspaper everyday. I have started to read Economist,TIME, Newsweek(makes one look sophisticated, but indian mags are equally good, Economist scores a bit high though). One of the reasons i never did this earlier is i always used to take the excuse that there is no big deal about it, how does it really help , etc, etc. 

Just from my quizzing experiences over the last 3 months, i kind of have an idea , how it helps.
I traced few of the answers that i knew or got right and how i gotto know them.

1)Identifying Mf.Hussain's Painting : Heard of the controversy around saraswati's painting on anews channel, while surfing channel.
2)Watson's Quote on Sherlock Holmes : Having done merchant of venice in 10th, i had to miss Hound of Bhaskarvilles, only to be bugged by the story in +2 hostel for 2 years, that finally made me read a bit of sherlock holmes.
3)Identifying D.V.Subbarao : Yeah, the gult connection of him following Y.V Reddy, but going through hazaar articles on subprime crisis and its effect on India, you cant help it. This part of reading up on subprime crisis helped me in atleast 5-6 questions.
4)Identifying Movie Alam Ara : Of all the long lectures from my father about being disciplined etc, he also discussed in some rare moments about one of the firsts of Indian Cinema.I should remember it for sure.
5)Identifying You Tube Founders : Setting a quiz in TCS quiz club, i made the same question.
6)Identifying Sound Track of My Best Friends Wedding : It was my direct question in a Movie Quiz which i couldnt answer, so better answer it now.This time , it was a pass question.
7)Identifying Singer of Jab We met Song as Mohit Chauhan: As I Scout for every damn interview of Rahman on the net, he mentioned in one of his interviews that he had been listening to 'Mohit Chauhan's  song over and over. If its rahmans favourite, you shouldnt forget it.
8)Identifying but not recollecting the name: Sulljja Firodia Motwani : Read an inspiring article about 3-4 years back on how a lady turned around an ailing Kinetic Motors. But the name was too long to remember and she was too beautiful to go beyonsd the photo after that.
9)Identifying the couple who won the Raman Magasassay award, but forgetting their names : Reading the middle pages of The Hindu. Just starting, so should make the habit of recollecting names.

Ok, i really feel old, when i see how much time i have wasted without reading up a lot of stuff. I should be happy that i realised later than never. Well the point is, i had no clue that all these things i did, will come to help in this quizzing season.I believe there is more to come like this, if i keep up what i am doing.

The quiz part: We messed up in the buzzer round. It was the first time that i ever sat infront of the buzzer.
Our scoring went something like this:10,10,-5,-5,-5,-5,10,5,10,-5,5,10,5

One good experience : Answering 9/10 in a rapid fire round in a movie quiz , genre being Suspense/Thriller. I missed the name of Psycho :(

Thats it for now :)

1 comment:

Rohit Anand said...

Dream come true, eh!
In case you are not through the whole of Sherlock Holmes yet, i have the complete collection.