Category: life

Quizzing
8 hours of questions and answers (and excellent guesses) with my partner – Shruti parimoo
General Quiz #1: At NIE, Mysore. We reached about an hour early and talked about neuroplasticity, and the like. Then, the first round started. There were about 14 teams and about 24 questions. Some of them:

What does the following cartoon represent? (Of course it wasn’t this easy in the actual event)

Whose old logo is this?

Cricket question.
“I would say the difference between the two side is the fielding. England
are an all-round good fielding side. I do believe that India have
few…3 or 4 very good fielders and … X”
Fill X.

Which phrase in English owes its origin to the fact that density of water at 0 degree Celsius is 0.93 g/cu cm and that of water at 4 degree Celsius is 1 g/cu cm?

And, we didn’t get selected for the second round.
But we watched it along with very active others.

Dry round – a lot of questions based on “pounce and bounce” format (That is, after the question is read out, every team has a chance to write the answer and “pounce” on it, getting +10 for correct and -5 for wrong; and then teams who haven’t pounced will get the questions in infinite bounce format)
List it – to list all the 13 individual olympic medal winners of India, all the 9 movies of Ranbir Kapoor, and all the Shiva temples based on 5 elements.
Short Visual Connect – A set of images on the screen, find what connects them.
Long Visual Connect – A long set of images coming one by one, find what connects them at the earliest. This one was about Raghu Ram

Having been only to quizzes where the quizmaster rein and the participants open their mouth only to answer or “pass” this first quiz in two years was mind-blowing, not blowing, mind-expanding for me. I’d never thought quizzes could be fun too (and not just exciting)

And then General Quiz #2 at SJCE Mysore
Here’s where I got really surprised. Not just that all the teams who participated in the previous quiz was here, one of the QMs at the previous quiz was a participant, and one of the participants there was the QM here.
For now, this is the longest (5 hours) and the most interesting (unlimited fun) quiz I’ve ever been to.

Questions have all been uploaded to slideshare here.
The preliminary round was much easier (in terms of the number of questions we could answer). My personal favourite would be:

What is this? 😀 (See how the big circles are linked)

And all the 9 teams participated in the second round (which turned out to be a wise decision, because the teams left out would have to watch from outside the rest of the quiz)
In the second part, I started with a -5 for pouncing. I said “simple majority” where it should have been “The common parlance for the minimum number of members of a deliberative assembly (a body that uses parliamentary procedure, such as a legislature) necessary to conduct the business of that group and its requirement is protection against totally unrepresentative action in the name of the body by an unduly small number of persons”

And a lot of questions later, including one that looked very similar to this tricky graph question I found from Quora, the Sheldon Cooper round started.
We had to give the Latin phrases for the descriptions. And Shruti absolutely rocked.
So did she in the round about books, and also the Southpark round.
The LVC about Cricket stumped us, but those about buildings were easily solvable.

And then it was late night, they had already began singing songs at Jayciana outside. So it was time to find out the winner, and as there was a tie between KP‘s team and the other awesome team. It couldn’t be resolved even after a few questions, so everyone left in a jovial mood.

But here is a way to conduct quizzes that I’ve never experienced before. Find excellent questions. Pose them. And let everyone have fun. Get up from the seat. Argue with the QM. Argue with other teams. Go touch the projected image, just to see if the texture gives any clue. Look for clues in all the words spoken by each member in the hall. And successfully spend a lot of time into something that’s well worth it.

And, Rock Music
If I had returned to hostel straight away, it would have been an above average Sunday, but not an exceptional one.
There was some kind of musical show to be expected later in the night. So I stayed back to join my friends. And after the fashion show, beauty pageant, results of previous events, etcetera, it started. A sexy male voice attracting crowd like shit does to flies. +Akshaya Fadnis and I climbed inside the VIP section with the first song. And within minutes we were right next to the stage. And the crowd was going crazy. The music would awaken even the comatose. Hands would not agree to stay down. And the rhythm shook the whole body.

After being completely lost in that experience, I spoke: “Buddha calls it meditation, we call it rock music”

Now, that tranquillity was thanks to Underground Authority.

And that was a Sunday truly worth its name – Sunday. 😛

“Where you come from does not determine where you can go”

Hard work might be the secret to success. But in medical college it is the only way to survive.

Getting the first shot of it, I started preparing for the first year exam over a week ago.
And it has led me to the following understandings.

If you try to negotiate with mind, you’ll end up with a bad deal. The only way to win your mind, is to shut your mind up and do what you need to do.

The way the mind tricks you can be very easily observed with self awareness.
“I’ll check out the social network notifications just for a minute, and be back”
“I’ll listen to just this song, and be back”
“I’ll send just this sms and be back studying”

All those are the deals mind throws at you. And if you accept just one?
“Somebody has tagged me in a post, omg, he’s uploaded the party pics, lemme comment on each one of them”
“That song was so good, feel like listening to another of the same artist. How about some chips too. Ah! Relaxed drowsiness”
“Wow! I got the reply so soon? And lemme ask her about what she’s doing next weekend”

The story is always the same. The presenting deal was fair. But, once you sign in, the terms and conditions are changed unilaterally.

But fortunately, there’s a way to prevent losing to mind.
And that is, to not accept any deal. Strict no!
“You have a deal, go to hell with your deal”
“I’m not using my phone, I’m not using my internet, I’m not listening at all!!”

And then, mind will shut up.

My school life had been what I believe it should have been. A perfect platform for life, a nice learning experience, and a lot of exposure.

To my juniors,

Here are some of the things I’ve learned from school.

• Do 5 stupid things per day.
• Ask 5 answer-less questions per day to 5 different teachers (or to 1 teacher if you are willing to take that risk)
• Do not laugh inside the room of the principal.
• If you don’t actually have an illness, do not skip the morning assembly. Vice principal will be patrolling.
• Never note down the time table. Teachers never follow it. Just keep all your books at school. You wouldn’t be opening them at home anyway.
• Know what day it is, every day. You don’t want to go to school on a Sunday. Nor do you want to be in bed at 10 o’clock on a Monday morning. And always wear the right uniform, if you don’t want to be standing out from the crowd.
• Never be absent (unless you have conjunctivitis). Everything happens on the day you are absent.
• Participate in every competition. Just tell your teacher you’re attending without asking what the item is. If it’s a quiz and you don’t know what the answer is, create the funniest answer. If it’s a literary item, make the most of the free time and paper you’re given. If it’s a stage item, just set the stage on fire.(In fact, preparing for some of these items will make you competent for situations that you may face later in your life)
• If you don’t play at least two games, you’re good for nothing. The ground is one place (after the loo) where you’re the king and you rein free. 
• Everything that can go wrong, will go wrong. But fortunately at school you’re always safe.
• Some nights, life sucks. But it’ll be alright by next morning.
• Some days, life rocks. But it’ll be over by the time you open the textbook.
• If you are ever going for an excursion, make sure there are no temples in the area where you’re going.
• Find many reasons why parents meeting is canceled this month.
• If you want to score 100%: Just chill out. If you can learn well, you can score cent.
• If you really want to score 100%: Forget every word in this post. Our exam system is pretty much screwed up (as on the 22^nd of March, 2011) that scoring 100 is impossible unless you waste a considerable amount of time mugging up the slightest details of your textbook. Stop enjoying creative pursuits in the core subjects (or extracurricular subjects). Learn what you’re being taught. Repeat that again and again till you can easily reproduce portions of your textbook.  
• Set realistic aims for your projects. If you really could make that 3 idiots helicopter on your own, you’d be in a special school. Nobody ever did a project that their seniors hadn’t done.
• Exams are designed to be hard. If you’ll surely pass, write only what you know. If you’ll surely fail, copying is fair, provided you learn what you copy.
• When you need help, call someone.
• When you feel really down, call your best friend.
• Try to schedule your birthday on a holiday. It’s a lot more healthier and cheaper.
• Don’t make the following birthday resolution “I’ll start learning properly from today onwards”. It never works. 
• Don’t think about the future. There’s only the present.
• If you break test tubes, just throw the pieces away before anyone sees. If you break the burette, you’re dead.
• Be active in house activities. But know when to slip out of teachers’ sight. You seriously don’t want to be ‘Maveli’ (or worse, his assistant) in the theme show. 
• Choose what your heart says when you are alone, choose what the teacher says when one’s around.
• Play a lot of “truth or dare” games because you’ll soon realize that life’s a big dare
• Learn from your mistakes.
• The best part of volunteering is the food. Ask for it.
• Always eat from your friend’s plate. Your mom’s food, you can always have.
• Be sure that the unexpected will happen. If you’re singing, the mic won’t work, if you’re dancing, the song’ll stop in between, if you’re playing tabala there’ll be a gaping hole in its face.
• If you don’t have a love or at least a crush there’s nothing to worry. It just means that you haven’t attained puberty, and you have a lot of time left. If you are in love, you know.
• Never lose hope. One day she’ll say “yes”.
• But friends, if you don’t have friends, at least a handful of them, it means you’re not learning one lesson that school must teach you – to connect with people. Remember all those friendship forwards you receive everyday? Make them meaningful.
• Do not keep anything for the future (Except may be homeworks, they may be forgotten by the teacher). Because time flies, and you may miss things for ever. If you have nights when you lose breath in your bed thinking of how dear your friends are to you then please, for the sake of love, tell them that.
• Finally, have fun. Have a lot of it.
  Shatter window panes
  Break benches (in teams)
  Start a fight (for fun)
  Do no pay vehicle fee. Enter the bus without a bus pass
  Miss the bus, walk home, try to earn a suspension en route
  Hack the main computer in the lab, copy all official photos to your pen drive, put up a status update as proof (remember to log out and clear history)
  Sit in another class and see whether the teacher notices you
  Increase the volume of the song gradually till its barely audible for the teacher
  Push others into the swimming pool. (Keep your watch inside the bag before doing so)
  Swap class name boards
  Pass chits asking about the teacher’s love bite
  Conduct polls and debates on who’s better – Mammootty or Mohanlal
  Form circles and conspire
• And do every imaginable thing on earth. If you can’t do it in school, you can’t do it anywhere else. (From doing business selling pirated version of kaspersky, to digging hole for planting your own tree sapling)

And then, one day it’d all end. All your friends excluding none will wave you bye and go away. Some may even go without a glance at you. May be you’d meet them again some day. Hey, that was the story my father wrote. Everyone will be on facebook. If not, they’d keep texting. If they don’t you can. And then you’ll join a nice college (if you’re lucky) and make a lot of friends there. And then you’ll decide the climax of the story – you can forget everyone, or do keep in touch.