Sahodaya IT Quiz 2012 - An unforgettable memo

Yes, this is an unforgettable memo of my life as a growing techie, one I cherish the most than the ones that boosted my fame for the previous years. Why? -- Because I never cracked it until yesterday! Yes, it is true. And you may wonder -- me being quite a prodigy in these matters never got a prize in this little quiz. Well, my reader, you are totally mistaken.

Sahodaya is the grandest fest of the CBSE schools, here at South Kerala. It is referred to as the 'Kalotsavam' of the CBSE schools, an event where the youngsters from all the schools come to participate in various colourful events with a highly competitive spirit. The first part of this mass fest is the district level competition which is conducted for the schools of specific areas. But all the quizzes except for the GK Quiz has just the district level competition. So, it's just a direct win and there's not a state level competition for the IT Quiz. Now, you will be thinking how stupid I'd be if I never had won a similar competition before.

Well, it is true. I never cracked the IT Quiz before, not because I never had a perfect trio to accompany me nor I never had enough mettle to win one. It's just because it is the toughest I ever faced. Yes, this is also the pure truth as considering the cyber olympiads and other computer exams, they were much easier. The IT Quiz is pure IT, nothing else. I started my participation back in 2010 while I was in 9th grade. Well, that was a beginner and even though I gave my level's best, I failed big time. I had better hopes during 2011 as I had comparatively a better team with all the three being geeks -- Anand Ramesh, my best buddy and Annuai, a past techie friend of mine who shared almost the same views as mine. Well, we were pretty glad when we passed the prelims for the first ever time. But at the finals, we faced trouble.

The QM puzzled us with a few mathematical and logical problems at which, we fell silent. Not only us, but other teams too did. But luckily, the other two teams got one question right. We were put in the back seat along with the two other teams (There are 5 teams in total). But starting from the second round which was what they call the visual round where the questions are based on images and videos of personalities, different pre-modern computers and other technological stuff, we were able to gain momentum by answering almost all the questions and even the passed ones. By the end of this round we were able to move to the front seat and we had hopes we'd crack it for sure. In the Rapid Fire round, where the questions will be asked repeatedly and a time of 1 minute is allotted and you are to answer as much as questions as you can within the time, we were able to lead. But the final round where questions are asked directly and a high marks was awarded for the right questions, we lost our questions and gained a negative which pulled us backward and at the end, we had to rest at the third position with a loss of 15 marks with the first team. Thus, we had got just the third position.

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Thus, this one was very important to me. I had failed for two years repeatedly to crack it open but this was one among my final shots in bringing the cup back home. As usual, my team consisted of Anand Ramesh but Annuai left the school this year. We had to opt for one another person of the commerce batch, a friend of mine, Zan. But he was unable to reach by the time we were about to leave and he was replaced by Abel Thomas, another close friend of mine who studied under the same batch as me and Anand. Abel was quite nervous -- one being he never knew this would happen and he was totally unprepared. Second, he was worried he'd make the team lose it. But we gave him confidence and I told him we could do it if we just try it. The prelims were truly simple and I had hopes we could pass it. Oh, and the host school was the infamous Chinmaya Vidyalaya of Kannur.

Boy-oh-boy, was I right, that too being the first among the other 11 schools who participated in the quiz that day. I had able to score a 24 out of 30 right and that filled my appetite. Meanwhile, the juniors too managed to get into the finals. The juniors were first to go and they showed a nice performance but lost the first position by mere 5 marks. Well, they did well, for being first-timers. Now, it was our turn.

Truth to be told, I was nervous. I was hoping high we end this stealing the first place. We sat at our positions and held hands and prayed to our beliefs to give us spirit for the competition. The first round started with two direct questions to each team. Frankly, the questions were easy as a pie! But I loved the way they were asked -- combined both modern and historic concepts. The answers came out of my mind even before I could utter a word. The first round felt to me like it was totally made for me. One such question asked was -- the famous website which hosts most open source applications. At a first glance, I couldn't crack it. However, when I looked past my memories, I found out one -- sourceforge.net. And before confirming, the answer jumped out of my mouth. My buddies looked at me jaw-dropping -- just like the competitors  Well, I felt pride streaming through my nerves. Lol!

The second round was a Rapid Fire one. I hoped we could crack it easily but this round tumbled all our expectations upside down. Even though the questions were familiar, like the expansion of GPRS, we couldn't recollect the words in our memories. Time was running out and I was able to answer one question which I don't remember well and for the next, being the creator of Perl language. I could only remember the first part of his name, Larry (Larry Wall). The other question was why blu-ray was called so. Anand came to the rescue by giving a solid answer for it which gave us a 5 points. Blu-ray is called so because it reads and writes data with a blue coloured laser instead of the usual red of the infrared one. Unfortunately, I couldn't complete Larry Wall, we were thrown to the third place by the end of this round. Hopes shattered.

Blu-ray discs are read and written using blue lasers instead of the infrared lasers used for writing DVDs. 'Blu' because by law that a commonly used name cannot be used.

However, the next round was visual round. I was more nervous and was worried it'd be tough. I tried to recollect all my lost spirits. For my relief, the questions were another damn bunch of easy arrows. We (especially Abel who gave us clues) were able to answer all the questions targeted at us except for the logo of Python which we saw for the first time yesterday. We were back to the top once again with a 10 point lead.

The final round was crucial -- the video commercial round with a bunch of ads of the companies. We must at all costs answer all the questions or else, there will be slim chances of wins. A huge drawback came for us as the final round excluded passing of the questions. And for the worst part -- the questions carried 20 marks each with a negative 10 points for each wrong answer. Now, it was high-time. Either we answer or we lose or the other teams don't answer. I just can't stop laughing at the moment when the first team was presented with the ad video of the Surface Tablet. Even a noob would've got it but they never got a hint on what it was. That gave us relief as we confirmed the second place. When it was our turn, we were presented with an ad of the 19s. A woman in front of an old computer model explaining the computer's functions and it could recognize voice and thus it would print the words as the woman uttered them. Well, a typical voice recognition software bundled in an old computer but we couldn't get any clue on what computer it was. Anyways, since I'm familiar with Microsoft and Apple models, I was sure this wasn't one of those. We thought of other possibilities. One main possibility could be IBM. Anand suggested the same and suggested that her appearance looks like one of an IBM-er. Anyways, we had no other chance. With high hopes, I said our answer.

We won! That was unbelievably the right answer. Boy, so damn luck, right? Even if we didn't answer, we could still have won the competition since the next team failed to answer their question. However, we got a bold lead of 25 marks with this answer. After 3 long years of waiting, I finally cracked the Sahodaya IT Quiz. I was very glad and so did my partners, Abel and Anand without whom I never would've achieved this. At this moment, I'm thanking them wholeheartedly. Specially, I thank Abel for being a part of the team and helped us win this one for real. Dude, without you, we never would've passed the prelims and boy, you did well too. Also, I pass my congrats to Pranav, Shawn and Sanjay, the junior team for getting the second place. They did their best and I'm glad they were able to win it in their first ever try.

With a relieved mind, a tiring body and a chilled soul, I journeyed back to my home travelling through the golden rays of the sunset and hoping high for the next day's PowerPoint competition and for a quiz win next year. This is the end of this poignant memo. I'm sorry for not putting any pictures up here as they didn't allow us to take cams inside however, I will try to update this post with some if I get them from the officials somehow.

Adios.

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