Exun ‘07: Loser’s Lurgy+Envy+Frustration=Lack of posts on the blog…
Posted by Prashanth | Filed under Quizzing, School Life, Technology
Yep, that is a well formulated and mathematically accurate equation presented there. Ever since Exun 07, you can say that I have started making a priority list of stuff that I should do, as I have bigger long term aims. Resultantly, blogging seems to be falling in the lower side of that list. Partly because I feel embarrased with loads of stuff happening at such events that I don’t feel like showing up myself on the internet. Anyway, with a few very small endeavours I achieved, I am cheered up to resume blogging once again and you guys can now expect it to be this way till some other competition comes up (and I lose badly in that too…).Anyway, lemme start off with what I went through at Exun. For reviews from the bigshots, check here. You might scroll down just in case you want to look at the personal observation of a guy who didn’t really win the Airy Power-PC.
Exun Day I: Hopes Up..!!
As many of you might know, in symposiums I belong to a school named Mt. Caramel (again censored so that the Principal of that school doesn’t land in here ego surfing!, Google spiders are dumb you know…) We had an experimental team ready for everything. Almost none of our team members had ever participated in computer symposiums before. It was just to give the kiddies a vista to what goes on in their own city… and also for Gaurav to show off his newly purchased iPhone!
The very first thing that I noticed was that Domino’s WERE NOT PRESENT. What a dissapointment even before an entry! Secondly, Exun this time apparantly was about to award fuel çøçkš and radiators to the winner as they had Pawna, a corporation better known to supply parts to Suzuki India and alike. It came to us a week before the event that these fuel çøçk makers started making PCs as well. Interesting as it might seem, I went in to investigate a new brand increasing my choice in the wishlist-in-the-making. Will analyse Pawna Computers later in this post… hang on!
As always, Exun has the tradition of showcasing the clan’s video editing skills, public speaking skills as well their mastery in achieving big stuff truly at the very start of the symposium to have our faces coloured in RGB. Red for people like Code Warriors who get angry, green for people like me who don’t win, and Blue for people not interested like [fill in any examples, there tons!]. So the thing started out with Sahil Bajaj wearing an insanely formal blue coat, tie and ‘addressing the gathering’ in the deepest vocals I have ever heard from him. And then showcased a very cool video featuring time-lapse, club flattery, and unthinkable ways of making the crowd read the four-letter word again and again… “Exun!”. Quite nice though, especially the sound track, Renegades of Funk (although sounded badly mispronounced!) by RATM. Mrs. Chona’s speech up next followed by what I was waiting for, details from the Pawna guy!
This speech by him answered each and every one of my questions including the one that asked “Where the hëll did DPS RKP get these guys from?” He was yet another alumni, wanting to showcase a new brand and be of service to his school. Symposiums like these do benefit any kind of a corporation in terms of publicity, advertisement and for its own flattery, Do you get it you dìçkhëádš at HCL, TCS, Vodafone, Airtel [and a few more which I won't mention due to ethical reasons]??
Pawna, as we did refer to them in our Crossword at DX were infact big airbags of money for Exun. Despite all that inflow of cash, due to stereotyped illogical reasons that most Principals blurt out, we still didn’t get Domino’s. This guy gave us people the story of Pawna, starting from a spare parts manufacturing unit at Aligarh, to the now ready-to-compete PC manufacturer. DPS RKP does have very special alumni which gives them every reason to be proud of. Oh well, one of the facts mentioned was that Pawna uses the same parts which HP and alike use to manufacture their hardware. Ask the Code Warriors how good their stuff is though, as I found it really tempting to buy all their stuff as the ‘tentative’ price for their stuff was quite low.
So first came the Quiz Prelims, which clashed with the Group Discussion like it does in most symposiums. That itself was the most dissapointing thing to start a day with… Couldn’t stay to listen to the answers after that, I just ran off to my Group Discussion.
When I reached there, I saw people discussing about Open Source. [Shìt, I missed it!] None of the idiots sitting there to discuss knew anything good about it. I finally had good thoughts about my GD. [It seems they are giving in neat topics for people to discuss... Looks like they want people to be speechless!] I went up there for my GD and my topic was… “Have men become tools of their own tools?” [F*** it!, it almost felt that I was in Mont Fort again, except the fact that I had alumni moderating and there was no social networking in the GD...(correct me about the last piece of info in case I am wrong!)] Firstly, I had made a good begining, but then later, I got pìššëd off about the topic and also I didn’t get a second chance to speak. Everyone were speaking as they want to. They made GD batches into groups of 5-6-7 even though groups of 6-6-6 were perfectly possible… [Copyright, Maneel!] Unfortunately I was in the 7-man group which was IMHO the best batch of the GD. We had people knowing stuff, and we didn’t get the kind of topics we would love playing with. As you might have inferred by now, I DID NOT qualify for the finals.
Finals were equally disappointing too… Well, when they have wonderful alumni, why don’t they give good topics to discuss about. Exun should look at a few pages in Access’s book. [Insult, Insult... 
]
Crossword up next. Wait a minute, did I mention anything about Tenzin, our new discovery at Mouse Caramel..?? Doing a Ctrl+F, I observe that I didn’t, so, well… Tenzin, the head boy of Mouse Caramel, one of the members of GeekeD!, and a techie is our new discovery at Mouse Caramel. He is a guy with loads of potential for both quizzing and programming. He is my partner for all IT quizzes from now…
Coming back to the crossword, a few clues were nice some were dumb. On the whole, I solved around 14 clues. Bad… bad… bad. I so badly miss the crosswords which I attended alongside Uma. We usually used to solve almost the entire paper. Came back to the hall now, all set to head back…
Then suddenly, an announcement mispronouncing Tenzin’s last name said that we qualified for the quiz finals. To confirm our hearing, we went to the notice board to see a note misspelling my first name saying that we indeed qualified for the finals. A similar cycle repeated for the crossword announcement as well. So, hopes were good, food wasn’t so good, plates were covered in a thin film of grime which we could literally rip off!
In the end, we had a surprize event, Venture Labs. In this people had to to propose a winning business idea (in 5 mins). We had the most impractical of ideas coming up there including teleportation, etc, etc… We people had a nice idea which thankfully Gaurav messed up. We had a nice new design modification to the OLPC concept and Gaurav and Varun forcibly added elasticity to the existing plan. It was evident that Exun alumni are intelligent enough to question them about the kind of material used. To top that up, this guy exceeded the time limit and he gave the entire speech roaming around the sr=tage in the most casual way ever. When he was asked after 4 mins and 42 seconds of his speech to come to the point, he said it was a ‘Surprize’. He had the audience giggling in the background with his wisecracks but then one should know that arrogance should never be shown to Exunites! He was DQ-ed despite showcasing fabulous concept designs! End of story. Period.
Day II: I am the world’s biggest loser!
The Day began with the world’s most demoralising Crossword. We missed dámnëd sitters up there on stage and the team next to us, from DPS VK consisting of cute little babies from class 9th totally left us behind scoring 6 times as much… It was great to see intra-club rivalry and the babies losing out from the biggies by just one question. At the same time, it feels bad to lose the thing by such a huuuuge margin. The Crossword was very nice, and it was something unique. So we didn’t have to scrap any clues for our own crossword at DX. It was a nice big one completely tailor made by the Exun alumni using nearly 70 man-hours (As Gursartaj said it.) I thought I would face the same fate in the quiz as well.
Exun, as always is an almost alumni-run event. Except the video, there is hardly anything of the brainwork (not event logistics and management) that the alumni don’t do. Also correct me if I am wrong in the previous statement, the part about the video that is… 
The quiz too was no exception. Like last year, this year too, Exun alumnus and Yale University student Viksit Gaur compiled created the paper. But then one good thing was that this time, it wasn’t a history test up there on stage. Loads of questions about the current IT world with my brains just not working there. I couldn’t recognize the logo of Silverlight even though I went up Microsucks’s website to read it’s documentation quite a few times. Anyway, with DPS VK sitting on one side and Mont Fort sitting on the other, I hardly got any easy passes. Moreover, I got the same old unlucky seat that I had got last year with Uma. The quiz was nice and clever. My quiz did take a page or (forty) two from Viksit’s quiz. As in, not questions, but quizzing ideas. But then I really don’t like looong questions to be read out from a chit of paper. I am a bad listener. not that I am a very good reader, but then I am better reader than a listener. Whichever long questions I got, I asked Viksit to repeat them. That left everyone in splits, and Viksit probably mad at me! Anyway, Viksit was a very kind, not to mention a patient quiz master. He gave in points for vague answers and calculated guesses especially in the visuals. So by giving nearly 6 fractional answers to questions, my team finished 3rd in the quiz. Am I happy now..?? Happy my foot!
The announcer decided not to take Tenzin’s last name this time, during the award ceremony. The prize distribution ended with DPS VK taking the Pawna Power-PC with a thundering roar of… “Forty Two” and a picture of the 42 exunites along with quite a few alumni. Truly, Exun is more than an entire classroomful of talented technocrats.
PS - We had chinese on the second day. A tad too oily but far more edible. We had squeaky clean ceramic plates this time. 
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6 Responses to “Exun ‘07: Loser’s Lurgy+Envy+Frustration=Lack of posts on the blog…”
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Ankur Banerjee Says:
January 2nd, 2008 at 2:22 pmFar out man, we pwnt EVERYONE at Exun. They themselves came third. Best parts? MG getting pìššëd off at not getting answers on stage, and that big “YES!” when he did get one measly question. And of course, BA asking the ’secret of the current rise’…
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Uma Says:
January 4th, 2008 at 7:33 amGee even I missed solving crosswords with you.Even in the one crossword I attended this year I realised how crosswords can be so dull when you have an incompetent not-interested partner who doesn’t even share your joy of discovery let alone help you solve the paper.
Takes all the fun out of the thing. -
Prashanth Says:
January 5th, 2008 at 4:42 pm@Ankur: Alright, almighty… you are the best!
(bowing down!)@Uma: I am happy that won’t be the case with me this year! And can we people be blessed with posts from your side in the near future?
PS- Do you know that Sanchit reads this blog too..?? -
Saurabh Mishra Says:
November 26th, 2008 at 9:54 amdude i saw u at code wars 08. you rocked man. you swept the quiz like anything..!
keep rocking. and nice blog btw..
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Prashanth Says:
November 26th, 2008 at 11:33 pm@Saurabh:
Thanks a lot mate! You guys were amazing too! Surprisingly, St. Xavier’s was never seen in any IT Fest (winning) before this. Happy to see that the Delhi Geek Community is growing. Best of luck to you guys, hope to see you in future events as well…
PS: How did you find my blog? (Just curious!) -
Saurabh Mishra Says:
November 27th, 2008 at 6:39 amI googled “exun” and as usual went for results other than first 4.
So i found your blog this way.
Dude, Xaverians won the Columban Fest this year!!
(i guess our school is in north thats why we are not known down south)
Ciao!
