Wednesday, July 27, 2011

SEQC Margao July 2011 monthly: Results

The July monthly quiz of the Margao chapter, moved up by a week in order to accommodate documentary filmmaker Sarat Rao, saw the largest turnout yet for the venue. School student Akshay Rege put together a good quiz, and conducted it with equanimity.

QM: Akshay Rege

1st: [Abhijeet Virgincar, Atharv Joshi, Chadwick D'Mello, Haniyah D'Mello, Harsh Hegde, Jose Lourenco, Julian D'Costa, Nitish Wagle, Paola Mambro] & [Aniruddha Sen Gupta, Anjali Sen Gupta, Bruce Barreto, Ira Almeida, Maria Barreto, Nitish Fatarpekar, Prashant Maurya, Zibane Paes] - 135
3rd: Blessie James, Danny Travasso, Doreen Dias, Lynn Barreto Miranda, Nathan Abranches, Nathan Moniz, Paul Gatward, Sanjay Parab, Sarat Rao - 120
4th: Chantal D'Costa, Fatima Moniz, Elizabeth D'Mello, Jaiprakash Hegde, Kanchan Gatward, Leander Paes, Russel Barreto, Terrence D'Costa, V.R. Muralidharan - 85

The next monthly quiz in Margao will be held on the 27th of August. The QM for the quiz is yet to be decided, and will be announced later.

SEQC Mastermind Junior - Prelim results

Here are the scores of the preliminaries of SEQC Mastermind Junior. Ties were broken using starred questions and sudden-death countback.

1. Shaswat Salgaocar - 17
2. Atharv Joshi - 16
3. Kunal Naik - 16
4. Julian D'Costa - 15
5. Akshay Rege - 14
6. Tammanna Aurora - 12
7. Akash Kulkarni - 12
8. Ashwin Mascarenhas - 10
9. Soham Gaunekar - 8
10. Saheel Wagh - 8
11. Agastya Keni - 8
12. Anand P. S. - 7
13. Shubham Tiwari - 7
14. Jatan Rodrigues - 7
15. Nitish Fatarpekar - 6
16. Sahil Prabhudesai - 6
17. Maithili Majithia - 2
18. Iona Francis - 2

Details regarding the first round will be communicated to the participants shortly.

Monday, July 18, 2011

Southbound Again

Its that time of the month again when all of us on the more happening side of the Zuari cross over to the more beautiful side for a spot of quizzing. And tea - a huge incentive in weather like this.

SEQCm July

Date: 23rd July 2011
Time: 5.00 pm
QM: Akshay Rege
Flavour: General
Venue: Urban Health Centre, opp Hospicio Hospital, Margao
Participation: Open to all, entry free

Friday, July 15, 2011

SEQC Mastermind Junior - Preliminaries

Date: 24th July 2011
Time: 9.15 am
QM: Rajiv D'Silva
Flavour: General
Format: Written
Venue: Zuari Hall, The International Centre Goa, Dona Paula.
Participation: Open to students of Class XII and below.

For more details about the event check this post.

Quizmastering For Dummies (by dummies)

SEQC Quizmasters' Workshop

Date: 24th July 2011
Time: 3 pm
Programme:
3pm-3.50pm: Aniruddha Sen Gupta
3.50-4pm: Tea break
4pm-4.50pm: Rajiv D'Silva
4.50pm-5.30pm: Technical session
Venue: Zuari Hall, The International Centre Goa, Dona Paula.
Participation: Open to all. Participants will have to pay a registration fee of Rs. 100. Pre-registration is essential. To register, email seqcgoa@gmail.com.

SEQC Kids' Special

Date: 24th July 2011
Time: 10 am
QM: Akash Kulkarni & Shubham Tiwari
Flavour: General
Venue: Zuari Hall, The International Centre Goa, Dona Paula.
Participation: Open to students of Class XII and below.

SEQC Mastermind Junior - Call for entries

Tournament format: 27 contestants will be chosen through a written preliminary and organized into 9 groups of 3 each based on the preliminary scores. Winners from each group will contest in three semi-finals of 3 each, following which 3 finalists will contest for the title.
Quiz format: Classic Mastermind. Two minutes of rapid-fire questions on a specialized subject of the contestant's choice, followed by two minutes of questions on general knowledge.
Key dates: Written preliminaries - 24th July 2011
First round - 11th September 2011
First round - 18th September 2011
Semis - 13th November 2011
Final - 18th December 2011
Venues: The written preliminary will be held at the ICG, just before the Kids' Special. One of the first rounds will be held in Margao, at the Urban Health Centre. The Semis and the final will be held at the ICG.
QM: Rajiv D'Silva.
Participation: Open to students of Class XII and below. To register for the preliminary, send an email to seqcgoa@gmail.com. Spot entries will be accepted provided there are spare answer sheets.

Thursday, July 7, 2011

SEQC and the Battle for Corporation Hall

A report on the July monthly by Aniruddha Sen Gupta

Though we've stopped reporting on quizzes of late, and despite Rajiv having already done a mini-report on the July monthly, there was enough action on the day to make me feel that it was worth providing a full run-down (I suffer from the opposite of Writer's Block -- it's called Writer's Blog). So here you are.

It was a dark and stormy evening. (No, seriously, it really was.) Some time before the quiz, Rajiv, Anjali and I had met up with a small contingent of quizzers that had landed up from Hyderabad. Shepherding them around Church Square was one of our own Lost Boys, Sirish von Synapse. After a cuppa at Kamat's, we dispersed in the rain with the intention of re-gathering at the CCP Hall.

When Anjali and I got there, the Hyderabadis and a few others were milling around near the main gate of the CCP Building. People tend to do that, so I wasn't surprised. The surprise, though, awaited upstairs. When we got there, sundry other early SEQC birds were hovering about on the staircase and in the anteroom, with the bewildered air of sheep who have been locked out of their pens without a shepherd or sheepdogs to guide them to their beds. Amidst the unhappy sheep sat a bald-headed overlord revelling in his moment of glory. Bewildering sheep is evidently something he got off on.

Let me explain about these small-time CCP overlords. We've been secretly battling them for a while now -- behind the scenes of your comfortable SEQC quizzes has raged a gritty, grimy battle not unlike the hidden conflict in Matrix. The Corporation (ah, what an ominous name for a faceless group of super-villains), as with most government bodies, is run not by the known names at the top, but by the unknowns at the bottom. The Mayor and Commissioner and others like them are there for all to see, but the real keys of power are in different hands altogether, those of the peons who let people into the rooms and halls, and lock up when they're done.

And therefore, while the people at the top have shown all manner of overt support for our club's activity (the Deputy Commissioner had recently averred that he was himself something of a quizzer in school and college, and expressed his interest in attending one of our quizzes), the little men who really run things have been looking for ways and means to sabotage our events. For a while, that had led to us having to move our monthly quizzes to the unearthly hour of 4pm (unacceptable to many of our siestakar SEQCites). We thought we'd won this battle when we got permission to return to the old time slot, but that only took the conflict to the next level.

So what we were now facing outside the CCP Hall was the secret weapon that the enemy had deployed -- the ostensible 'loss of keys'. That's an obstacle that, short of breaking and entering, we had no defence against -- and despite some oblique refences and suggestions, none of us were willing to let the situation escalate to such a level of Mutually Assured Destruction.

But the lack of a room was not the only challenge we were facing at the moment. Looking around the by-now-crowded anteroom, it was clear there was another key ingredient missing -- the quizmaster. Dr Muralidharan, who was supposed to have the conn, was instead conspicuous in his absence. When it turned out that there had been no confimatory conversation with him in the days leading up to the quiz, some of us feared the worst. No, no, not that he was dead -- come on, guys! -- just that he had forgotten that he was supposed to be conducting this particular event.

The phone calls were now flying thick and fast. Rajiv was in touch with Tallulah, who was talking to the Mayor and the Commissioner and perhaps God himself. Anjali was trying to talk to Dr Murali, whose number she didn't have, through the medium of Ira, whose number she did. The Sharada Mandir kids were calling each other while sitting on the same sofa. Mahesh was closing a business deal. The overlord was unimpressed and continued to be as bald and keyless as ever.

In the midst of it all, one ray of hope appeared. Dr Murali rode through the gate, his shirt front stained -- not with blood, but with what we assume must have been the rain. His sparse hair was standing on end, but his brave head was unbowed. Looking like Hamlet's father's ghost (by the way, did you know that the dad was also called Hamlet?), he said, "I could a tale unfold, whose lightest word would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood, make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres, thy knotted and combined locks to part and each particular hair to stand an end, like quills upon the fretful porpentine." (Of course I looked that up -- what did you think?) And he proceeded to unfold his tale, one full of crashed cars and mad dashes by numerous modes of conveyance from Margao to Panjim, not unlike the tale of Phineas Fogg and Passepartout.

Dr Murali's dramatic appearance didn't solve everything, though. If anything, it added another spanner to the collection that was currently messing up the works. In the course of his harrowing adventure, he had had to leave his trusty laptop in his crashed car. He had managed to get away with just the clothes on his body and the Powerpoint file of the quiz on a pen drive. Unfortunately, a close search of the anteroom revealed that there wasn't any other laptop lying fortuitously around. More calls followed -- this time to Sachin who, thanks to his enviable ability to never be on time, had not yet left home. He promised to bring along the critical piece of hardware.

By the time he got there, our telephonic bombardment had exhausted our ammunition, but got us no footholds in the ongoing battle. We now turned to the possibility of conducting the quiz in the anteroom itself, which had begun to resemble lodgings that Siraj ud-Dowla would have been proud to have dreamt up. If Paul -- our sole resident Brit -- had been around, no doubt he would have fled screaming, "The demons of 1757 are upon me" followed by unitelligible curses about black holes and Calcutta.

But though we were willing, even eager, to shine a light in this dark claustrophobic space, the bald overlord would have none of it. More recriminations ensued, and more telephone calls were made. Finally, Rajiv made the call that worked -- to Arjun at the International Centre Goa. The ICG gang has always been staunch supporters and allies of ours, allowing us free use of their facilities for so many of our events. Even so, this request seemed to be really extreme -- but Arjun pulled out all the stops and told us he could arrange a hall for us.

So it was that the battle-weary platoons of SEQC trudged off to the heights of Dona Paula. Some forty men, women and children had braved the hour-long conflict and there were very few casualties. Only a handful of would-be quizzers quit and went home. The rest of us made it to ICG, where we were treated to a quiz that, like all of Dr Murali's creations, was quite a revelation. As J. Krishnamurthi, one of the Hyderabad contingent who attended, put it, "a whole lot of bouncers with a few full tosses thrown in". Well, that's not unlike what the Indian team has currently had to put up with in the West Indies. And if they can do it and come out winners, so can SEQC. With some help from ICG.

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

SEQCm May monthly questions and answers

This is the Powerpoint file for the SEQC Margao May monthly, conducted on May 28 by Annie Sen Gupta:


Monday, July 4, 2011

SEQC July Results

QM: Dr. V. R. Muralidharan

1st: Amit Shet, Ashwin Mysore, Nikhil Shirsat, Nitish Wagle, Sajan Venniyoor, Sirish Nimmagadda, Tallulah D'Silva - 80
2nd: Akshay Rege, Amita Kanekar, Anjali Sengupta, Anil Rodrigues, Fiona Cardozo, Lathish Venugopal, Lynn Miranda, Reeju Datta - 70
3rd: [Ameya Mardolkar, Atharv Joshi, Jatan Rodrigues, J. Krishnamurthi, Paola Mambro, Parind Phadte, Soham Gaunekar] & [Aniruddha Sengupta, Ashwin Mascarenhas, Atul Pratap, Dominick Da Costa, Mahesh Prabhu, Raghunandan Mysore, Ruchir Dessai, Srijit Kumar] - 60
5th: Agastya Keni, Conrad Fernandes, Pranab Mukhopadhyay, Rajiv D'Silva, Sachin Chatte, Taran Mukherjee, Varun Kumar, Vikram D'Silva - 40
6th: Ananya Mukherjee, Joseph de Sousa, Kunal Naik, Prasanna Karmarkar, Sacheen Pai Raikar, Sudanshu Pai Raikar, Shaila De Souza - 20

The next quiz will be held on the 7th of August, to be QMed by Sirish Nimmagadda. The venue for the quiz will be confirmed at a later date.
For those who missed yesterday's quiz, it was quite an eventful one. The 40-odd people that braved the heavy downpour to turn up were greeted by a locked door at the CCP, and a peon-type lackey that claimed he had no knowledge of where the keys were. This was the culmination of a running battle we have been having with the lower echelons of the CCP staff, who it appears do not share the enthusiasm of their higher-ups to host our quizzes and have been throwing all manner of red tape at us for a while now. Well, one can only fight so much, so its time to call the whole thing off. For starts, we're doing away with the CCP logo in the "SEQC is supported by:" tab to the right. The Commissioner will also receive a stinking letter one of these days. This will be a messy divorce, by God.