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. 
DynamiX ‘07… The Inside Story of Ramjas!
Posted by Uma Damle | Filed under Headshot, It's My Life, Quizzing, School Life
Note: This particular post is written by Prashanth on my behalf. I know its a bad mimicry of my writing style, but still… it pretty much says what I had in mind.
Adhering to the fact that each coin unfortunately has two sides, I am compelled to write something on top of Prashanth’s single sided vantage report on the making of this event. Despite being a small event, I know we are making it look like a making of a movie with a series of multiple posts coming up about the same thing! As Luminaries, its our duty to narrate the whole show to all those people who missed coming to the event. Before wasting more time of you future-IITians who couldn’t spare a few hours for the event off their package solving sprees, let me start off with the story.
The organization process started off with problems, and solutions to problems that do not exist, courtesy Prashanth! Ever since he came up with the concept of the Mouse Caramel (Its actually Mt. Car_mel, hidden so that Google’s dumb spiders don’t direct this page for some confidential stuff!) computer clan, namely GeekeD!, (which primarily consists of Varun Mishra, Gaurav Marmat and a few more) to help DX take this event off. Coming to think of it, it wasn’t a bad idea after all. DX, as you might have read in the touchy part of Prashanth’s post, has lost all its priceless alumni to Universities and Institutions outside Delhi. So a small group of technically sound people with great contacts in the geek community could help the event greatly. Prashanth hypnotically managed to convince everyone for sure, including the GeekeD clan that DynamiX GeekeD! would be a happening event. On second thought, he missed one person, and that wasn’t the DX incharge from Ramjas, Pandey Sir.It was Ramjas’s good old, respected but presently troubled Principal. With so many outlaws in the school, nobody in the seats of the Principal would be in a sound mind to listen, especially if the person suffers from a kind of reverse amnesia (a fancy term for incorrigible amounts of memory).
So that’s where the issues begin. Not with involving GeekeD, but involving Prashanth, who is actually a prized ex-student of Ramjas. As I mentioned before, Princi suffers from reverse amnesia, which means any kind of data in her head is as secure as it is in this blog’s Dreamhost servers. And Prashanth and his cocky nature finally made him pay after six loooong months of quitting school. Let’s move back in time… Prashanth wanted to quit school in style. He did it by giving the principal a piece of his mind about the school right in her face. For now, the Principal had a wonderful time ignoring him, lecturing him, refusing him, nodding her face sideways in front of him and scaring everyone who is for him to death. It almost felt as if it was easier to get GeekeD! in than Prashanth!
Prashanth and I finally decided that he would work for the event whether or not he is allowed to join on the day of the event . The hard point was to somehow send this message in the Princi’s head. Whenever this particular issue propped up in any DynamiX meeting, the others i.e the so called lions and Gothkings at gaming transformed into cowardly meerkats at the very thought of facing the principal, scared that she might whip her semi-automatic out and shoot ‘em up.
So it was me all alone as the only ‘Man in the Clan’ who trembled fearlessly into the Princi’s cabin almost daily making her mind up. And each time I came a step closer in doing so, some jackass sprays paints, someone bursts a cracker and loads bunk and disobey. With tons of law and order issues, Princi’s equilibrium was disturbed adding a whole lot of FUD, or Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt about the whole event.
We were sooo sorry, yet helpless for ourselves as well as Geeked!, who were so excited about it and came up with lovely artwork for the event. Eventually, we did manage to boot Prashanth in, especially after she heard that he got the sponsors. Anyway, Prashanth was in, along with a new wave of problems with solutions to problems that do not exist!
I must really thank Tushar N. for taking care of most of the paper work, registration work and certificates and stuff, Sanchit and Anirudh for the programming paper, Shakti just for NOT creating any troubles on the two days and Sanchit, Tanmay, Tarun, Nisheeth, Kartikey and the rest of 11thies and 10thies for taking care of installation, refreshments, signboards and other stuff that from a distance appear to be pieces of cake tasks but in reality involve unbelievable amount of running from pillar to post. DynamiX was, is and will be a symposium planned, supported and executed ENTIRELY by students.
Ever since the sponsors finalized, a new surge of excitement made me give in my best yet work here for DynamiX ‘07. Yes, I had made quite a few questions and clues for last year’s edition as well, but this time… the work had something special. The next half of a week were spent with nothing but thoughts of anticipation, last minute reminders, invites to schools, query solving, and keeping both Pandey Sir and the Principal in good humor. The meerkats took away all the burden away of the critical logistics. Finally, the day had arrived. 26th and 27th… I guess Prashanth would be vela enough to blog about that!
DynamiX 2007… Behind the scenes first!
Posted by Prashanth | Filed under Downloads, It's My Life, Quizzing, School Life, Technology
Well, as many of you regulars might know, DynamiX ‘07, Ramjas School’s 4th edition of sucky IT fests was more or less in the hands of Uma and me this year. I would like to start off the post the same way I started it off last year. We used to have really dynamic founders who have now turned alumni namely Roshan, Shashank, Anshuman, Som, Ayush and a few more. Even though these guys weren’t actually pros when coming to organizing events, they were however excellent competitors and used to make every other school chew dust in the computer symposiums before 2005. Since they passed away (Sob..Sob!), Ramjas, in the section of computer symposiums and stuff has been looking at only one direction of development, the negative y-axis. Well this year however, things were destined to be different. A recently turned alumnus, Prashanth Kanduri decides to power up this edition of DynamiX along with the existing clan primarily consisting of Uma and Sanchit. The saga of problems start here. And this time, since these problems are already solved, I decide to keep this to myself. Close buddies in the Geek Community know about them.
Anyway, we must pay a good deal of homage in the form of thankfulness to our alumni for teaching us with live demonstration for 3 years in a row on How not to organize a computer fest! If one of you is actually reading this, let me elaborate and explain myself correctly before you start thinking otherwise.You guys were technically very sound and had a great deal of gray matter in the head as well, but then none of the events seemed to have got competitive participation that it deserved. On top of that, the paper work was usually finished in the nick of time. The events were just way too innovative or high minded for the kind of participation they received.
This time however, I had different plans. Plans to start off the paper work much before the event dates were even decided. It was just me and Uma for the most brainstorming of events, i.e Quiz, Crossword, CodeX, Surprise Event and Group Discussion. Other than that, I wanted to settle things out and show some nuts in the geek community that a good quiz containing trivia means much more than a history test. And also that a clever crossword can contain answers that people have heard of. Other than that we wanted to have fun with our participants. Speaking of participation, I tried to mob in as much as I could through my tentacles spreading into the community. Although we officially sent invites to over 50 schools, just 22 could actually make it owing to the fact that the event date was decided on a Monday when most schools have a test. Bad Planning… I know but couldn’t actually do much. I am no Ramjasian.
Uma and I started working on the quiz and crossword way back, somewhere in the end of August, with quiz tilting on my side and the crossword tilting on hers. I wanted to keep the quiz current, the TCS IT Wiz way and still make it fun making people go “Sheesh! I knew this!!” after every pass. And then I did learn a great deal from some of the quizzes I attended this year and I decided to incorporate more visual rounds and the infinite bounce system in both the quiz and the crossword. The idea for the latter was omitted though. But then starting work early had its own paybacks and prices. For once, I could attend every successful event, borrow ideas from them as I have never done anything like it before. You probably might not know/believe this, but then I am fairly a newbie in the world of quizzing. But then after each event, we had to scrap out a great deal of questions and clues or to the least modify them to a great deal. I was especially scared during the TCS IT Wiz (which is actually my kind of a quiz) which was why I saw the entire final round despite suffering from successive attacks of Loser’s Lurgy of type WARP ‘06!
So then we also had the task of getting the sponsors. The task as such isn’t a big one. The companies start showing interest as soon as you start speaking of an IT fest, inter-school computer symposiums, prizes, publicity and stuff. But then all of them seemed to get cold feet as soon as it was announced that it was Ramjas School doing all this, whether it was Airtel, HCL, Chip and many more! “What’s the school name again?”, “Where is it?”, “Who is conducting the whole thing, students of the school?”… we were looked through the eyes of skepticism and doubt as I proceeded in selling our show to them like a marketing agent. Well, perhaps we are not the ones to blame for that kind of a response from the potential sponsors. Finally, after some good negotiation and grace from a supreme power, we finally got no cash sponsors, but then two great ones for the prizes. We had Jasubhai Media, the publishers of Digit and Skoar! giving away magazines and free issue coupons. We also had Cybermedia the publishers of PCQuest and Living Digital giving away annual subscription for the first comers. I know they are rival publishers, but then they don’t know that they co-existed! Ssshhhh….
But still, single-handedly I guess I did a pretty decent job at getting these two to the event. Anyway, the school agreed to spend some amount from its treasury for the trophies, certificates and the refreshments (about which I am not interested to write!). Coming back to the brainstorming work, let me remind you guys once again that it was just Uma and I involved. The alumni gang, which turned handy during last year’s fest has been scattered across the globe now. The reachable ones couldn’t make it either, due to 42 unique excuses which I wasn’t bothered to listen. And honestly, I must say brag that as a quizzer, as a thinker, as a techie, and as a guy on whom you can depend on organizing events, I have grown a lot in the past year after close association with one of our alumni Roshan Shariff, Uma as well as many close buddies and especially GQ in the geek community.
Anyway, after tons of efforts, countless hours of arguments, and Skoar!(s) of compromise, we finally got the date finalized on the 26th and 27th. As an external student, I wasn’t actually supposed have as much say in the event as an internal Dynamite should. Even then, with grace shown from Pandey sir, our computer HoD and cooperation shown from most members in the Dynamix Clan, I could actually suggest a lot for the event. Even though we had bigger plans, we couldn’t really execute them as we wanted. Will blog about this as soon as I receive my Letter of Acknowledgment from the Principal of Ramjas… Can’t take the risk you know!
For all those who missed coming to the event, please solve this CodeX clue. Read between the lines above… you have no idea on what you missed!
Finally we ended up with a kick-ášš crossword, a fun quiz and clever CodeX paper along with a nice idea for the Surprise Event (courtesy Dhawal, Uma’s biological brother!) courtesy the two of us. So many of the posts that you might read in the blogosphere might be actually praising the two of us. But then we do owe a lot to the rest of the clan, for getting the paper work done, convincing the Principal, installing stuff, getting the rusty computers usable, letting me in, for being co-operative and a lot more. Let me roll in the credits… Sanchit, Anirudh, Tanmay, Tushar, Nisheeth, Nikhil, Shakti, Tarun, Stefan and a few forgotten ones. Also ex-Dynamites Anshu and Rahul for the site as well as getting a laptop for us for the quiz and crossword finals. You know its Ramjas… A laptop might sound like a big thing there!
More about how the event took off and a review of it from the organizer’s eyes in the next post, till then… adios! FIITJEE Packages stay untouched since forever! For now, a few downloads for you people… Too impatient to add in answers to that. Just work it out till then. The answer keys should be up in the next post.
- DX 07 Quiz Archive (Slides + Prelims)
- DX 07 Crossword Archive (Finals + Prelims)
- CodeX Presentation (PPS Slideshow)
- and… Wallpapers!
Feedback would be appreciated, it wasn’t easy making all that stuff up.
