Exun 2009

Hallelujah. Oh joy, the domain hasn’t expired. The blog still works.

Anyway, I just realised that I haven’t been posting about symposiums at all this year. Which is all wrong. Apparently, people tell me that I wrote some of the longest posts on events in Delhi. Well, thaggyaverymuch everyone, so I’ll write one on Exun as well.

Firstly, I should tell you that this is the event I look forward to the most. Yes, we’ve won it for the past 3 years. Yes, it’s one of the biggest symposiums in Delhi. But above all, I go there for DOMINOS’S (will explain later) . Yes, there is not shame in admitting the fact that Exun has the best effing refreshments of any event anywhere in Delhi. When I got news that Domino’s was going to be there, my ears pricked up like a dog’s. A face split into a big manic grin, and my fellow Code Warriors edged away…

Anyway, I worked hard for this event. I truly did. As some of you may/may not know, my PC is dead for the time being. A replacement may arrive as soon as next week, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed. I was simply preparing for the quiz from my printed archives and any other morsels of info I could find. Also, any and every free period was devoted to spending time in the iLab, trying to get the stupid net to work, and trawling the net for archives and news. In the bus, at 5 in the morning. I was quite literally working my ass of for this one. Karthick obviously despised me for missing the PE periods, but my target was set, and I’d go to any lengths to achieve it.

As some of you may know, there are several irritating tasks that pop-up in the run up to an event. Deciding teams, getting names, addresses and phone numbers for the participants, listing them down, getting the list signed by the Vice Principal, photocopying the list a kazillion times and handing them out like flyers to teachers in the farthest corners of the school. Frankly, it’s a pain in the behind. So I’ve organised stuff by maintaining a database of all the Code Warriors, so at least one step is relatively pain free. Once the transport et al is arranged, focus can return to the event in question.

Exun. 8 events. Senior Quiz, Junior Quiz, Crossword, Programming, Swat-the-bug, Creative Event, Gaming and Group Discussion. I was originally slated to appear for SQ and Crossword. But we were having trouble in the Creative Event. The Code Warriors are in dire need of web designers. I could only serve as a substitute, but not really a very good one.

On the day before Exun, I was tense. But a very different kind of tense. A relaxed tense. I somehow felt confident for the first time in my life before a quiz. I guess this was because I spent quite a lot of time in the past few weeks preparing for this particular quiz. Anyway, I put in some more hours before going to sleep.

Day 1

I woke up early, around 5:30. And got to work. My Dad had come to Delhi, so I could use his laptop. My Dad insisted on dropping me at DPS RKP. I, prefer public transport, buses to be more precise. It costs very little, and is kinder to the environment. I also realised that I had no school pants. Not a big deal, because people often come to Exun in casuals. So a pair of cargo pants would be a suitable substitute.

The problem I’ve always faced as vice-president, is making sure that everyone reaches the venue on time. Luckily this time, this was not the case. Everyone was ready. We had a bit of trouble at registration, because our second team for Junior Quiz was still iffy. As a result, we were a bit late to get into the AVH, which consequently meant that we had no space to sit. Still, the video was awesome. Kudos to whoever made it.

Now, there’s a tradition that Karthick and I uphold. Before a quiz, down a lot of water, and don’t go to the loo. The explanation for this seemingly absurd series of actions is that the right amount of pressure stimulate the mind to work. The downside being that too much of pressure proves to be a distraction. The SQ prelim was not overly tough, though I missed a couple of sitters. What’s worse is that I missed the sole H2G2 question. It was about Disaster Area. I could give the entire bio for the band, but I forgot the effing name! I was so depressed after that, I didn’t want to have my pizza. That was of course, before the aroma hit me. By this time, the pressure was mounting. Big time. I was doing impromptu jigs everywhere I went to defend by dignity, and keep my pants dry.

I was slightly disappointed by the pizza. It wasn’t baked in front of us unlike the previous instances of Domino’s catering. On the plus side, each of us got a small bottle of Minute Maid Pulpy Orange, which I did not down for obvious reasons. SQ results came out after lunch. Me, Karthick and Anirudh had qualified for the final. But the other team, of Pulkit, Vishal and Abhishek didn’t. Then came a long and agonising wait for the crossword prelim. In the meantime, we went to watch the group discussion. Topics were relevant, but I was too distracted to care. Romil, our GD dude, didn’t make it.

Other results also started trickling in…our programmers bombed out of Swat the Bug, and our gamers didn’t make it. The gaming result was intriguing. The event was organised as a knockout. But our team was against DPS RKP, and we lost. This is kinda unfair, as DPS RKP doesn’t usually claim prizes. If there are 2 RKP teams among the 6 finalists in a quiz, 2 more finalists are added. But since this was not possible in a knockout, our team didn’t make it. All attempts to reason were shouted down.

Back in the AVH, it was getting unbearable. I was in the left aisles, walking, jumping and doing anything else in my power to control myself. It was fruitless. I eventually ran off to the restrooms.

This was a big mistake.

Plus, Karthick and I had a big problem. We had a VMC class that very same day at 3:30, and the crossword was slated to start at 2:30. We needed to reach Punjabi Bagh in time, because the people at VM were unwilling to reschedule our class. So we pleaded with Mukesh sir, their HoD, to prepone the event by at least 15-20 minutes, so that we could leave early. He agreed, but in reality, nothing ever happened. The Exun president got hold of us, seated us in the classrooms early, but the paper never came. Eventually, we got it with everyone else. It was a crossword that you could truly enjoy. I have to give more credit to Karthick, because he was simply brilliant. As was the case in the crossword at Exun 2007.

Eventually, we left halfway through, ran to Sangam, got an auto (were ripped off of Rs. 100), but eventually got there 15 minutes before the teacher got there.

Fastforward 3 hours. I’m in the bus going home, I’ve got about 10 bucks left on my mobile, but I still log onto exunclan.com, to see the result. Was a bit crestfallen. We didn’t get through in the crossword. It was kinda expected, because we didn’t really do that well in the prelim. At this point, a certain level of despondency also crept in. A cumulative analysis of the results of the day showed a pretty sorry state of affairs for the Code Warrirors. We had no points as of day 1. Just qualification for 2 events. The overall seemed a distant dream now…

Went home and prepared a bit more.

Day 2

The start to the day wasn’t too good. Woke up late. This time I decided to catch a bus. Also, I had to ensure that Siddharth got to RKP. He couldn’t make it on the first day, but he said he would be there on the second day. Unfortunately, he called up when I was in the bus and told me that he was unwell…puked twice in the morning. Obviously, I couldn’t pressurise the poor guy. So I guess Karthick would have to assist me, Nitin and Vaibhav on our impossible quest i.e. Creative Event. 30 minutes later, and Rs. 15 lighter, I arrived at DPS RKP. Again, the team was ready. We had an uphill task today. We literally had to win everything to even have a hope of winning the overall.

First up, me, Karthick, Nitin and Vaibhav had to go for the Creative Event. We were supposed to create a poster and a website for a quad-band rock concert, dubbed Distortion by Vaibhav. Nitin and Vaibhav, our DI afficionados, had already made a superb poster. The onus of making a website to match the quality of the poster fell squarely on me and Karthick, because Nitin and Vaibhav knew sh** about web designing. Vaibhav knew a bit of Flash, but there wasn’t enough time to use his expertise. I obviously can’t explain the entire design, but it was a fixed-width, two-column (uniform width) layout, in red and black. We spent a lot of time in the subterranean labs. In the meantime, JQ final results trickled in, telling us of a Dwarka whitewash (God bless Sopandev). On the brighter side, Shashank and Vishal totally owned the opposition in programming and got the first prize.

I did something, which is quite dumb. I skipped lunch i.e. I skipped Domino’s i.e. I broke the unwritten laws of Exun. However, after watching the volunteers munching on their lunch, we convinced them to at least let us keep the lunches with us near the PCs, if not eat them in the lab. They agreed. Nevertheless, I gave my pizza off to Tanay, a guy from Exun, who was really hungry. Not the Minute Maid, because I’d need it to build up some pressure.

We finished the website in the nick of time. Embedding the final flash slideshow on the homepage just seconds before they started hollering. On the whole, it had a few rough edges, but it was decent and presentable, and not offending either WebD or metal fan mentalities. Nitin obviously helped with the headers and rollover buttons, so on the whole, it was a great team effort.

Then was the SQ. I got to the AVH just as the crossword was getting over. I rued the fact that I wasn’t there on stage. Plus, I didn’t even get to watch it! I always found the crossword at Exun extremely entertaining. But I believe the star attraction of Exun are the quizmasters, to be more precise, Gursartaj Singh. Not only does he make amazingly balanced quizzes, but the quiz is always fun. UPDATE: He is the most ‘ossum’ quizmaster on the face of this earth that ever was, is and will be (taking into consideration temporal relastics).

Anyway, the SQ soon got underway, and almost the entire CW team was in the audience, cuz this was pretty much the last event. It could have been a high-scoring quiz, if anybody bothered to prepare for the thing. I prepared a bit, so I was able to answer some questions. After some initial nail-biting, we were in the lead, and maintained it. The finalists were DPS RKP (Aditya, Tanay and Vaibhav), DPS Dwarka, 2 New Era Public School teams (one with Prateek, Rohit and someone else, and the other was the junior team). Surprisingly, the Junior team was the one which was giving us a tough time. There was also a DPS Mathura Road team (with Karmanya) and I think a DPS, Rohini team. But what was a pleasant surprise was the buzzer round, which was also an A/V round. We got 2 questions right in that, most importantly, the last question. I always like to finish with a relish. But it was not all pleasant, because Prateek buzzed an answer for Puru Pratap Singh’s Google Doodle, but couldn’t satisfactorily explain the answer, so he got a -5. This really didn’t help them much they were on 0 before that. So, in a fit of blinding anger, he sorta buzzed again on the next question, and when queried about the answer, just said ‘I don’t know’. Naturally, this angered Gursurtaj, and he had every right to be angry. The next question was the Windows 98 Welcome music, which I buzzed and got right. We finished with a pretty good lead.

As usual, we got the quiz bags. The quiz bag is a simple, yet effect concept at Exun. The questions are printed up, the individual questions snipped out and put in a large brown envelope and jumbled up. Again, thanks to Gursartaj for being a sport…

After the initial euphoria of winning the SQ, we realised that we were within grasping distance of the overall. Two first positions had brought our tally upto a respectable 60. The fact that DPS Dwarka only got a 3rd position and the fact that DPS Mathura Road didn’t get any points in the SQ also helped, as they were our main competitors apart from New Era Public School. It all came down to the Creative Event. After the SQ, I was in a hurry to relieve myself of some pressure, so, while running to the restrooms, I bumped into the judge for the event, and I asked him if we got a position. He just gave me a funny smile, and told me to go down to the RegDesk and check. I ran, almost bursting and found no results for the Creative Event. Cursing, I ran up to the loo and found Anirudh in there. And he told me the happiest news ever. We had won the Creative Event. So I spent 5 minutes in the loo screaming and celebrating, at the same time feeling very, very relieved.

It was the happiest piss of my life.

When we got back to the AVH, people were whispering. It was a close one, as usual. Between the four contenders. But then, some simple math later, it was clear. DPS Vasant Kunj had done it again. For the fourth year running, we were overall champs. My teammates will vouch for me – I was dumbstruck. Out of nowhere, we had got 3 first positions and were 2 point in the lead. Confirmation arrived soon after – Bani ma’am called, told me that Mukesh sir had just congratulated her. It was just what I wanted to hear. Obviously, I didn’t tell them. Didn’t want to ruin the suspense. But still, we were still yelling like hell when our names were announced. And we did not forget the customary KEVIN when we were going off stage. A certain amount of confusion regarding Karthick’s certificate ensued, because his name was added only in the morning.

Called up Ankur on ISD as soon as possible. He did his usual happy little jig. I knew he wanted to hear this. An auto ride with Agrim later, I was at home. I had told my Mom that we had won nothing. So imagine her surprise, when I walked in with 3 trophies, including the overall.