TCS IT Wiz | ...The LuminaR...

TCS IT Wiz 2007: Lord, Why me everytime..??

Posted by Prashanth | Filed under Headshot, It's My Life, Quizzing, School Life, Technology

TCS IT Wiz is India’s largest IT quiz organized by Greycaps, and mastered by Giri Balasubramaniam or Pickbrain, in other words… AnkurB+Hair+Moustache+Deep Voice - Lethargy-to-walk-around. And then, my theory about quizzers, their physique and the rest is turning out to be right by the next quiz. The next generation of quiz masters are gonna be that way, its a new sub-species. Anyway, I represented Kalka Public School to this quiz and I ended going there in a bus. Nice…
The venue was Siri Fort Auditorium, which is a leap away from one of the FIITJEE hostels. Even then no one came with me for the quiz. Not only because there aren’t any tech quizzers in our quiz club, but also because the Phase Tests were nearby. So one soul with aptitude named Himadri tagged along with me. I gave him a bunch of acronyms to cram in. The rest was upto me…
TCS IT Wiz is known to be one quiz where you see totally new faces winning. Last time, Sardar Patel, which is never seen in computer symposiums won the TCS. That just shows the fact that there are more geeks in Delhi than we think. Other than that, the prelims are dámn easy, leaving cut-throat competition in the finals. TCS has big prizes too. They had an HP widescreen laptop for the winners of the regional finals, and iPods (Nano) for the runners up. Keep in mind that this is an all-India quizzing show. The national finals would have winners from 12 cities in India. Last time, a team from Kerala won it!
ESP told me that I am going to lose this, I went there only to check the purity of my Dynamix Quiz. Many people can think up the same thing together. So just to see if I need to scrap any questions, I went there.
The quiz prelims were quite easy. Pickbrain gave in hints for the questions I knew. Like for a question - “What is the Ui for Mac OS X called?”, i had the right answer Aqua in my mind, but he gave dumb options to it namely, Earth, Fire and Aqua. Keeping in mind Apple and its naming standards, it wouldn’t be a hard job in guessing aqua especially for one who has seen the UI of OS X. The blue watery gradiented buttons and bars…
Being a rookie at quizzing I didn’t qualify to the finals by just one point. And one of the schools which did qualify was Modern School BK, a school which does attend almost all symposiums but isn’t known to win in quizzes. We had Cambridge Noidea there. And as usual, we had DPS RKPee in the finals.

The finals were quite nice, and I did suffer from minor attacks of WARP ‘06 type fits there. And yes, I had to scrap one visual question in my quiz after all. It was of the inside skeletal structure of the Microsoft Surface which everyone missed. And despite me shouting my throats out the answer when it came to the audience, another girl studying in class 9th got the audience prize. And Pickbrain was like… “Such is the outstanding quality of the students of Delhi… A girl from class 9th knows about Microsoft Surface!” Mr. Pickbrain, please visit one of our symposiums. Also check this particular quiz if its you reading this post… And going there was worthwhile, as the entire horde of Exunites and all other computer clans attended the event. Having a question even vaguely related to something in another symposium would mean deadly embarrassment!
And of course, last year’s Lone Warrior, Gursartaj was remembered there too. The finals were ultimately, evidently and obviously won by Raghav and Vansh from Exun. They had their laptop along with loads of other goodies like a backpack, wrist watch, books, and a lot more nice stuff… Plus a free round trip to Mumbai for the All India Finals, which was telecasted on Television.
Pickbrain also briefed everyone about the IT potential of the country. These people are having a rural version of the TCS IT Wiz as well which aims to reach every small town of the country. There he was astonished to see that the children there weren’t able to answer any of the questions he asked. But then he started getting answers to the same questions as soon as they were asked in their regional language. he believes that language is one of the major barriers to compatibility in India. If what he said is right, we people do have a long way to go.
As almost every other quiz I attended, I returned home empty handed, munching some food for thought. TCS was enlightening, and Pickbrain is a fabulous quiz master and an orator.
PS: Pickbrain has this habit of roaming around the stage and asking children the answer while sneaking up behind them. Note that whenever you give out an answer, and the guy shows lots of interest in it, and speculates it a bit, it means that the answer is right. Although strange that he doesn’t have a regular quizzing show of himself. (Correct me if I am wrong!)

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Permalink | January 2nd, 2008

11 Responses to “TCS IT Wiz 2007: Lord, Why me everytime..??”

Ankur Banerjee Says:
January 2nd, 2008 at 2:14 pm
I think Dickbrain DOES do a Tata Crucible, and that’s one on CNBC.
Prashanth Says:
January 3rd, 2008 at 5:25 am
Hush Onkur… just think what Pickbrain might think of you if he happens to visit this page..??
Your offer letter to Greycaps would be dissolved in conc. H2-SO4!
Prateek Vijayavargia Says:
January 4th, 2008 at 12:39 am
Quite a few posts mate……..Better late than never…anyways quite fun reading them…Happy New Year to u and Wishing u all the success in 2008…in rat races, quizzes, etc.

Prateek
Prashanth Says:
January 4th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
@Prateek: Thanks mate, I guess that was just what I needed!
Bharadwaj Says:
May 17th, 2008 at 11:26 pm
Whoah! seems like a lot happened in Delhi! the competition we had in Hyderebad was not that big and not that interesting at all! it was one man’s game from the beginning..I managed to stay away from finals with two marks..that was really a big disappointment I felt the actual final round was way too easier than the prelims. Any info or help regard to clearing the prelims would be of grate help. Wish to meet you guys in the all India finals ..anyway thanks for your lovely post and keep rocking. And yeah this is my last chance to show Mr. Tata who I am i am sure this year’s fight would be tough..:)

Cheers!
Developer, Ubuntu
https://launchpad.net/~bharadwaj-j
Prashanth Says:
May 18th, 2008 at 1:34 am
@Bharadwaj: Stay in touch mate, coz I was a Hyderabadi too..
Impressive page on the Ubuntu Wiki for sure. Well, nice to have you commenting on my blog. Young Programmers with ideas is just what the open source world currently needs. And then, keep reading the blog…
Bharadwaj Says:
May 18th, 2008 at 9:31 am
Prashanth: ahhh! not a chance! there’s a long way to go..as of now I am planning to release an own GNU/Linux based distro…want to keep away from Ubuntu! at least for sometime…until I come up with FREctE..meaning…Freedom, Revolution, Enlightenment coming trough Eternity it is a fork and side project of Bodhi..I have applied for few patents and OS will be out the next month may be if lucky..
hey! I still don’t have any webpage for my project…and I don’t want to flood your comments page it would be grate if I could contact you personally…please ping me if you don’t mind..we can actually make up some team and you could help me in documentation…till then please keep in touch..

Saying so long until next time.
-Bharadwaj
Prashanth Says:
May 19th, 2008 at 3:16 am
I have actually sent you an invite to Gmail chat. And well , I personally feel that the emergence of more and more Linux distro is bad for Linux’s own growth. Big contributions to the existing code-base of the the larger and more widespread/popular distros would be better than say making a new distro and forking out developers from elsewhere…
If you have winning ideas, contribute them to Ubuntu. After all, the mission is to overthrow Windows with the biggest strength - Choice! Ubuntu offers enough of it. If you really have that talent, the zeal to come with new ideas, make the best of it by growing an already worthy distro.
Cheers, and keep visiting…
Bharadwaj Says:
May 19th, 2008 at 9:53 am
Prashanth: I agree with that..but have you ever thought what are the main reasons of GNU/Linux being neglected in a country like ours? In that case it is just difficult to get through in every purpose so I have broadly categorized em on the bases of purpose..
Almost 6 out of 10 people I meat are very much scared of command prompt theywant everyhitng to be done like windows.
And then come the gaming purpose what i cal as BUG #1 is that teenagers just can’t stay without games and Linux has got very few gmaes which are in par with Windows versions..even though Linux has a way too far graphic rendering than DX10 it’s just unlucky that not many people are taking advantage of it. As of now we do not have any chance except to wait until few companies or organizations emerge in growing needs for GNU/Linux. Till then we have to either seamlessly virtualize windows or run wine or may be Cedega.
And thirdly coming to school or high school environment every school wants their students to follow MS word or MS powerpoint or in order to write a small HTML script they want MS notepad even if Linux has got exclusive software for HTML scripting..see everything is embedded into their brains and is just hard to take it off unless we make them believe that it can run both apps..as of now one project is in beta stage http://www.reactos.org/en/index.html but is still in beta stage and I may be it has forgotten that it belongs to LInux. Everything has been tried to synchronise exactly like windows..
So on based on it..I have com up with a small solution for it..install wine by default and install more and more GUI, install more apps which are attractive and purpose solving..like inkscape and few media players..

This is the desktop I have worked out so far
http://img385.imageshack.us/img385/2650/screenshotbw8.png .not a lot of artwork has been put up..what I have used was brewn from Mac one of my friend is working on artork
this is the conceptual artwork for our theme
http://img171.imageshack.us/img171/6413/33si0.jpg

thats all for now..and hey! sorry man! I really don’t mean to flood you coments with irrelevent topics. I did not get any gtalk invitation..my google account is bharadwaj.j@gmail.com got it?
Aryaman Says:
September 27th, 2008 at 7:19 am
dude, whatya mean rkp won obviously?
DUH?
i was on stage representing Apeejay noida..
they were losing to us till they fluked on that round about TCS..
there is no OBVIOUS thing about rkp winning everytime..? there is us, VK, montfort and many others..
Prashanth Says:
September 27th, 2008 at 11:14 am
@Aryaman:
Yep, that’s true. Nothing very obvious about RKP winning too many tech. quizzes this year I guess, but then the year before that, RKP and VK had totally dominated the whole scene. Since VK wasn’t there, RKP had a huge chance there. And of course, it was the first time I had seen you people doing well in a good quiz. (I don’t really attend all computer symposiums!)
And well, you forgot me in the list. Here
You came to Access 2007?