My Quizzing life Part -1

It’s known that every one will be having their own interests in some extra curricular events. Some have this by birth , others acquire it during their life and some accidentally fall into it. I fall into the last category. As I had been living with my grand parents since my childhood as my parents did not want me to travel with them as my father was getting transferred frequently. I didn’t get a chance to change many schools and many places during my childhood. Let alone these things it might get boring if I continue the story , I will put it in another post for people who are willing to read it.

Coming on to my interests, I accidentally fell to quizzing. In high School days I was in the great Mari’s in Mysore. I didn’t have any clue of GK then; I was not following it all. One fine day a memo came for the Ramakrishna Ashram’s annual quiz events selection. I thought lemme give a try for this. Of course there was an entry fee for the same. I took part in it. As I saw the paper it was Greek and Latin for me. As known I was not selected and I didn’t loose heart. Then I began participating in the quiz events which used to take place in and around Mysore. I had never dreamt that I would be organizing some quizzes in coming days. In those days Achar and his gang wee good at winning quizzes, today also he keeps on winning many quizzes. As the high schooldays passed by and as I entered the college, I was not able to find any good quizzing partners, by that time I had developed interest in sports so was able to crack sports questions with ease. Also as I wax leaving with my mother I had every freedom for extra curricular activities. This was a boon in disguise for me. I was excelling in athletics during those days. So quizzing was again part of my ECA. So time passed on and was able to attend some quizzes with Kashyapa and some other guys. by that time Achar , BK Vijay, Vamshi, Vachas , Rajesha and BRK were in the same college apart from BRK(kashyapa) all were in same class. Achar BK were dominating in quiz with Prof (vamshi) & vachas managing to enter into finals for some quizzes, me and BRK were mere spectators. Those days there was no Google or wikipedia to form a good quiz. Only some newspaper cuttings and ordinary tape recorder for A/V questions. Though the quizzing standard was good but technology wasn’t there.

After my PUC I had some good friends who were mere good quizzers. When I entered my B.E @ VVCE, I had a good bunch of quizzers who joined VVCE, Achar along with Rajesh went to Royal Mech @ NIE and BK went to SJCE for his B.E. But every one were in touch apart from Rajesh and BK all people were playing cricket and football near my place. So there was no difficulty in reaching people. The quizzes were aplenty by then with SJCE, NIE organizing annual quizzes and also pitiching in were Mysore uni’s MBA dept , also our Yaptech, NIIT, STG, and some computer isntitues chipping in with some quizzes. Achar and rajesha formed a good team along with BK and vamshi was along with BRK by that time as a team.

Our first experience of good quizzing was @ RVCE , what a bouncer for us to face Avinash mudaliar’s quiz @ VTU’s inaugural youth fest. That fest saw me, BRK and Prof representing VVCE. After the events me and vamshi thought of organizing a quiz @ VVCE for so that we could get some good quizzers. That’s how the quizzing stated for us. It was in 1999 we attended the quiz at RVCE. It was good to see that some really good quizzing was there, of course Avi and Mr. Arul Mani had organized the same. I really thank them for providing some good quizzes for the public till date. Our team had a chat with arul mani to get some idea on organizing quizzes at college level. We had some good inputs from Arul mani. You believe it or not I always thank RVCE for changing our lifestyle. When I went to RV in March 2008 for presenting a paper, I made it a point to thank the college. It was this college under on Tree where Uday and Prof got idea to start Vidyuth. Hat’s of guys, Vidyuth now rocks. I will make it a point to mention abt how Vidyuth was born in next few posts. After we were back from RV , me and vamshi decided to organize a good quiz at VVCE. That’s where my quiz organizing started. We wanted to be different, that’s where we introduced sponsorships at VVCE, we both should be proud of ourselves. “Kumuda enterprises”, the cassette shop next to my grandparent’s house were ready to sponsor the event. We got 20 blank cassettes which we could give away as prize for both winners and audiences.

The quiz had an amazing response with 30 + teams participating in it. We had a printout which was a DT matrix printout for which me and prof had to run around pillars to get the printout. Those days we used to get the paper XEROXED with the money that we got as entry fee. That quiz was quite a success with BRK and Amith harsha winning the quiz. After that one more quiz was organised which vachas and Prof had organized. The quizzing fever had caught up us, from the first quiz onwards I made sure that organized one quiz every year, now it’s one in 3 months for me, thanks for all the quizzers world wide who share their questions from which I can use some of them , twist some of them and get some ideas for forming the questions.

After that I organised one GK quiz for the annual fest of the college. Then one each every year at VVCE.I still feel sad for not getting the chance to organize inaugural Vidyuth quiz, which was done by vachas and Prof. in 2001 and 2002 I had good exposure to quizzes as I was involved in both attending and organizing the quiz. The team was now split Vachas replacing me in the youth fest at Belgaum, at DSCE, in 2001 we 3 (BRK, Prof and I were a team). After my B.E I was at my uncle’s ISP where I had free access to net. But I had no option to organize a quiz. Luckily the dumb Mysore IT forum wanted to organize a quiz on IT for which they were searching for people, I approached Shankar Prasad, owner of my company who was in the Mysore IT forum, he gave a nod for the same, at the same time he was approached by Jaynath, Kriran maribashetty, and Shashi shekar . They took over the quiz from me, but they became good friends of mine, amazing guys with amazing talent. I was meeting shetty during SJCE and NIE quizzes he was familiar face in the Mysore quiz circle. That quiz gave an exposure to the outside world, though the three guys didn’t get anything for organizing the quiz, I had made a lot of friends during the process, jayanth was pissed of by the event went off and how the lobbying was done to advertise some people’s software and how people worry for advertising was very clear from the way the event was organised. Though teams were of a good quality, the quiz was a mere flop by their standards. Luckily I learnt how to prepare the quiz for some good events, thanks guys for the same.

As I was getting ready for my Masters, Prof for his CAT and his journey to GIM/Symbi and Achar was as usual free. We 3 were approached by Pavan and his team for organizing quiz for Vidyuth 2003. We were offered 1K for all the 3 quizzes (India, business, GenQ). We were thrilled by the offer; we made ourselves busy and the quiz came of very well with very good response from all over the Mysore crowd. That was one more feather in our cap. That’s were we made a name for ourselves (god knows how much). But at the end we were deprived of our earnings and pavan was very sad about it as he was not able to keep up his words. By that time I and achar had attended a quiz organised a quiz at star of Mysore and we had royally screwed our selves in the finals( that’s how our story of loosing in finals started) not to forget , SJCE’s 2001 Jayciana’s sports quiz with Swagath , we were last in the finals. I have a bad habit of loosing in finals, but in 2007 I broke the jinx. After that I paired up with Vachas for the Times of India feiro quiz, where we royally got screwed for not writing the correct answer which we knew, that happens all the time. That was 2003 for me no more quizzes, but I got to know the internet of quizzing, where to collect questions, how to set and how to mange the quizzes.

After I came back to VVCE in 2004 , as a faculty , I met Amar Harris( harish) I knew him before I joined ,also many guys with whom I was playing football, Amar was very much into IEEE activities and also his quiz, here was his classmates Dushyanth Mullur ( incidentally , this year’s Tata crucible campus edition winner) and Ananya, those guys were good at quizzing ,so I was very surprised to see some good quizzers @ VVCE, there was karthik who incidentally won the Tech quiz I organised as part of the IEEE fest. My quizzing was back to track, this quiz though due to bad advertising didn’t get crowd, I was able to start my quizzing back. In 2004 I teamed with hari shenoy (NIE boy) for the sports quiz, which we won by rigging as hari was calling his friends and getting the answers for the unknown questions. That was heights of rigging. Though we had answered some 20 + questions out of 40 we would have easily won without hari calling his friend.

Then came the 2005 Vidyuth sports quiz, my favorites quiz, I still enjoy sports quiz today. By that time I was restricted for only organizing the quiz as I was not allowed to participate in the quiz ,but it was my first sports quiz which I was able to organize well , as usual , Mysore quiz crowd is less, but I got to make some SJCE friends. People loved my quiz. Incidentally I found a new quiz partner after some time, this MECH guy named Jayram, who is now in INFY, helped me in organizing some quizzes in 2006, 07 and 2008. Along with him I won my first quiz as a student (I was doing my M Tech at SJCE). This guy was an amazing quizzer, unfortunately he was overpowered by SJCE guys who were very good at rigging in the quiz, he was able to win some quizzes there( I know that it will hurt SJCE guys, but this is common in Mysore quizzing since last 10 years or so). He partnered me for many quizzes at SJCE and NIE but we didn’t have any luck until a fine 2005 December where the sports quiz at NIE had us some cheer where due to organizer’s goof up we won 2nd prize. Then there was no looking back, we were attending some good sports quizzes, I really feel sorry that both the years (2006 and 07) I missed Jayciana’s quiz due to miscommunication, any how the event was pathetically organised. Then I got a chance to organize 2006 Vidyuth sports quiz once again as Jayram was here. By the time I was called sports quiz expert by my friends circle. I was into sports quizzing by that time. I really felt bad by the way I and Jayram were cheated of the prize at MMC fest’s sports quiz. But we were able to compensate the same at NIE’s Mech fest, courtesy jayram’s amazing form on that day, we won 2nd prize in the quiz.

As days passed by I went to Bangalore for my project and I was at Motorola and achar was settled in infy s ER-HR, it was good for me as he was calling me to organize football tourney and was asking for some inputs when he needed them, one day I asked him whether he can organize a sports quiz so that I can conduct it for them, he agreed and so my debut for the corporate quizzing happened, thanks Sandy for this. But unfortunately that quiz had no audience except Sandeep’s wife Vindya. That quiz was well received at Infy. As India were playing lanka in the cricket world cup 2007, the audience went to see the match rather that the quiz. That time I had move into L&T Infotech for my project. I made KK as a new friend in the quiz , where he partnered Achar at the finals. That was my infy’s debut quiz, this quiz was alongside Jayram, who incidentally joined infy, good to be amongst good quizzers.
After that one fine day I was called by Shubha (our company HR) as L&T Infotech were asked to organize a technical quiz at CMRIT as part of their tech fest. As I entered the conf room my boss, YV and Samsung’s Amreesh were sitting and talking to the CMRIT guys for the quiz, as I entered and we started discussing the quiz, by the way the discussion went on the quality of the quiz that was supposed to be organised was clearly evident, I asked the organizers and amreesh about the questions that they were going to set. As soon the questions started to roll. I thought why the hell on earth I am doing quizzing , let me stop it and start some useless thing , I stopped them there and said some questions and the level in which the quiz has to be organised, they were puzzled, I said to Shubha that let them leave me to organise the quiz , I will get it done. As soon as I got the nod, I was thrilled; I was dreaming of organizing a quiz for Bangalore crowd, it was dream come true, thanks for that. With the help of my partner jay ram, and help from Sandeep, KK, and some good quizzing websites the quiz was ready. The crowd was good with some 50+ teams attending the quiz, as expected, the level of answering was amazing, and that’s Bangalore guys. Though jayram’s stage 2 wasn’t cracked the quiz was well received by the audience, it was for the first time in my life I did a quiz in front of capacity crowd and as Avinash mudaliar say’s the level of quiz depends on how many leave the hall and enter the hall during the quiz. Believe it or not there were 0 people who went out of the hall. Though the quiz had some starting trouble I and Basi Reddy who helped me during the quiz along with Shubha and our one more HR Shashi were able to run the show very nicely. That was on June 15th 2007. I thank Shubha for the same as she gave me the platform to do the quiz. I wanted to do one more quiz at L&T Infotech but I had to wait for that until July 4th 2007. ok folks that was my quizzing career until I joined an IT industry , in my next post I will be there with my current quizzing career. Before that I would like to thank innumerable people for helping me to get into quizzing and also they are encouraging me to carry on the same… until next time cya, have a nice day .