Monday, September 27, 2010

Please Try To Remember The Third of Octember

I have been reading one too many Dr.Seuss books to my son, but that aside, please try to remember that although Raunaq Rao will ostensibly cast aside his lawyer's bands for one day, in reality this whole QMing thing of his may be just another way to hone his cross-questioning skills. Come prepared to stoutly deny everything.

SEQC October Quiz

Date: 3rd October 2010
Time: 5 pm
QM: Raunaq Rao
Flavour: General
Venue: CCP Hall, 2nd Floor, CCP Building, Opp. Cafe Central, Panaji
Participation: Open

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Tata Crucible - Goa Results

Winner: Savoir Faire Media (Harshvardhan Bhatkuly & Rajiv D'Silva) - 105
Runners-up: Splash Communications (Ameya Mardolkar & Aniruddha Sen Gupta) - 40
3rd: Bharti Airtel (Pragati Katyal & Wagesh Zade) - 25
4th: Cadbury India (Amrita R. & Chella Pandyan) - 20
5th: Syngenta (Joseph De Sousa & Raghvendra Rai) - 10
6th: Intertrade Agencies (Mahesh Prabhu & Prem Sharma) - 5

Find the official report on the Tata Crucible site.

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Road Quizzing

As part of ongoing experiments at SEQC to combine every fun thing known to mankind with quizzing, our first road trip will be held on the 26th of September. The idea, in a nutshell, is this. Take two points, say Point A and Point L, with the former being the starting point at the latter being the destination, and proceed to drive from A to L. Now, along the way are arbitrary points B, C, D etc. where everybody stops for a spot of quizzing. Once we get to L, we quiz some more, have lunch, quiz some more, take a nap, quiz some more, have tea and quiz some more. And on the return journey, that is, from L to A, we again stop at arbitrary points I, J, K, and, you guessed it, quiz some more. (For those who like to see everything graphically represented, here's a schematic of this journey.)
Anyway, so now that this diagram, which I spent three hours drawing, has made everything as clear as mud, let me make things a little clearer:
Point A: Mary Immaculate Church steps, Panaji, at 7.30 am on the 26th of September.
Point L: Nature's Nest, Tambdi Surla.
Points B-K: That's anybody's guess. Basically we stop whenever we want to. As long as we all get back to Panaji by around 7.30 pm.
Participation fee: Rs 250 plus 10 questions a head. The money covers the cost of transport, and the lunch, tea & snacks at Nature's Nest. The questions are to make sure we don't get to point F, for instance, and wonder what we're going to do there. Kids below 10 years of age are exempt from both charges. Everybody can get their questions along in the form of a print or on a pen drive, and we'll figure out when and how to run them. Basically the text-only quizzes can be done en route and the ones that require a laptop/projector will be done at Nature's Nest.
Registration: Prior registration is a must. To register, email me at rajivdsilva[at]gmail.com. We have hired a 35-seater bus for the journey, and that number is the limiting factor as far as the number of participants goes, so registrations will be done on a FCFS basis. The last date for registrations is the 24th of September. For any more details, email me.

Sunday, September 12, 2010

Tata Crucible - The Business Quiz

Date: 20th September 2010
Time: 4.30 pm
QM: Giri 'Pickbrain' Balasubramanium
Flavour: Business
Venue: Cardium Auditorium, National Institute of Oceanography, Dona Paula
Who can participate: Teams of two, representing their company/organization.
Prizes: Rs 75,000 for the winners, 35,000 for the runners-up
More details at the official site.

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

SEQC September Results

QM: Rajiv D'Silva

1st: Abhijeet Virginkar, Anand P. S., Aniruddha Sankolli, Aniruddha Sen Gupta, Anou Raut Desai, Kiril Vaz, Neville Monteiro, Omkar Borkar, Prajeet Madkaikar, Sohag Sen, Tanmay Naik - 230
2nd: Ajachi Chakrabarti, Anagha Panicker, Anant Lawande, Anisha Mahapatra, Anurag Panicker, Jatan Rodrigues, Kanchan Gatward, Leroy Veloso, Nitya, Noah Fernandes, Paola Mambro, Rahul Padgaonkar, Shukr Usgaonkar, Taran Mukherjee - 200
3rd: Adish Talwadkar, Atharv Joshi, Pranab Mukherjee, Raj Kunkolienkar, Savitri Rane, Shridhar Ramachandran, Shubham Tiwari, Siddhant Salgaonkar, Tallulah D'Silva, Vernon Fernandes, Vijay Kulkarni - 195
4th: Akash Kulkarni, Anil Rodrigues, Anirudh W., Kedar Naik, K. S. Rane, Neelay Thaly, Nikhil Arolkar, P. C. Sabulal, Shaswat Salgaonkar, Sunil Sardessai, Suyash Kamat, Valmiki Naik - 175
5th: Akshay Rege, Akshay Surendra, Eeshan Vernekar, Lara Pereira, Lucy James, Nellie Velho Pereira, Nitish Fatarpekar, Paul Gatward, Pawan Garde, Sachin Chatte - 165
6th: Amit Shet, Ananya Mukherjee, Anish S., Anmol Naik, Anusha Pai, Conrad Fernandes, Jayant Karn, Joshua Fernandes, Julian Fernandes, Mahesh Prabhu, Reuben Rodrigues, Shaila DeSouza, Shashank Venkatraman - 140

Click here to view/download a pdf version of the quiz.
The next monthly quiz will be held on the 3rd October, to be hosted by Raunaq Rao.

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Putting on weight

SEQC is showing an alarmingly familiar growth pattern. We started off in June 2008 as a slim 14-member group. Till the end of 2008, we hovered around that weight, barring the usual seasonal fluctuations. Then, as the new calendar year approached, we started growing, moving into the 20s. The next growth spurt was when we reached adulthood, so to speak, having completed our first year as a club. We moved out of the homes we'd been living in, and moved to our 'own place' at the Corporation Hall in Panjim and started topping 30 in numbers. Steady growth ensued, and the latest monthly quiz -- conducted by Rajiv D'Silva on September 5 -- certainly heralded the coming of middle age. A sudden expansion occurred -- our number shot up to over 60 -- and we found we no longer fit in our chairs.

As I said, an alarmingly familiar growth pattern -- I seem to remember going through the exact same thing myself!

However, what was not such a welcome trend in my case is great as far as SEQC is concerned. The bigger and fatter we get, the wider the spread of quizzing in Goa. And that can't be bad.

The quiz itself wasn't as chaotic as it could have been, given the number of participants. Okay, in some teams, members were having to walk from one side of the team to the other to discuss answers, but other than that, it was reasonably smooth sailing. Rajiv conducted a crisp, exciting event -- one that everyone could relate to and yet learn from. The main competition was largely between Team Ajachi and Team Annie, with the latter edging ahead in the final round (one of two written rounds with an overarching theme).

There's quite a lot of quizzing in the months ahead, and Goa's quiz gluttons should be quite satiated. Here's to a lot more around the middle, guys!

Postscript: Let's not forget, we also had our first canine member this time around though, sadly, I never got around to meeting him or her.

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

GVM's Inter-Higher Secondary School Quiz

Date: 4th September 2010
Time: Written preliminary at 9.30 am, final at 10.30 am
QM: Wilson Vaz
Flavour: General
Venue: Ravindra Bhavan
Participation: Open to students of Std. XI & XII, in teams of two. Both team members must be from the same school. No pre-registration required.