I know, haven’t been posting for a while. Mostly studying these days, and well, got bored of writing posts. A few movie reviews and other posts in the wings, but haven’t been written yet.

I went to school yesterday to conduct an intra for the quiz club, and to discuss about organizing the Inter-DPS Contemporary India Quiz to be held in our school next month. Things have gotten ’strict’ in our school ever since a bunch of guys walked into school last month on the pretext of meeting someone and beat a chap up. These days, they log all visitors in, click the photos blah blah. All useless, if you ask me. People who want to beat somebody’s face in may as well do it outside the school. The downside is that even alumni have trouble getting in these days. I had to call the vice principal, and Varun who came to help me also had to jumo through a few hoops to get through.

The question paper I made was mostly pulled from HT Inquizitive and Times of India Fun-da-Mental archives, because I wasn’t really sure how many serious students would be turning up and didn’t want to waste time making a paper if that was the case. It happened with Varun and Rach the last time they went to conduct an intra. Still, the question paper has a few funny questions, rather, people giving funny answers so you might want to check it out.

Click here to download the DPS VK Quiz Club Intra - August 2008 edition paper (with solutions)

Update: There was a mistake in the first question, which Prateek Vijayavargia pointed out. The Football World Cup in question was not the first, but one in 1950. He knows, after all he was Delhi champion at Times of India’s Olympics Quest 2008. Narrowly missed out in the national finals.

Code Warriors were the overall winners at Montfort School’s tech event, Gateway 2008. Or as they’d have it, G@teway 2008. Guess that opens up the tab of wins for this year. This, despite having less hands on board. Dunno if MINET’s gonna be conducted this year, they don’t seem to have anyone left in their club to conduct anything. Congratulations to current Code Warriors!

Just got news from Vivek that DPS Vasant Kunj Quiz Club’s team were the runners up at this year’s edition of the Columban Open Quiz, finals held today at St Columba’s. I really can’t express how happy I am at the meteoric rise of the DPS VK QC for the past two years, culminating in this amazing feat. I’d have loved to go and watch it happening, except that I’m down with a bit of viral fever and cold right now. I’m sure it was great fun. Apparently, I was missed there too by some folk, my antics are still remembered it seems. I think a big round of kudos is in order for the whole current DPS VK Quiz Club team, especially the for the guys who came runners up today.
Update: Read Vivek’s post on the Columban Open Quiz 2008.

PDGM Group Photo (visit this link to view the notes on who’s who in this pic of the Who’s Who of the Delhi geek circle). For more photos from the Pan Delhi Geeks’ Meet 2008, visit the my Flickr page for this tag, or view the slideshow directly.

Okies, this post is WAY late, because the Pan Delhi Geeks’ Meet 2008 happened around two weeks ago, but I’ll use the excuse that I wasn’t in Delhi. Surprisingly, I find that nobody has blogged about it on their blogs yet! Even the ones among who have digital watches.

I think it was quite a success, despite the fact that many people who said they would be coming couldn’t turn up because of reasons best known to them. Still, a turnout of around 17 people for the very first meeting wasn’t bad at all. As Dhruv said, someone has to start off the whole thing and take the first step. We were initially supposed supposed to have the meet at Nirula’s in Outer Circle CP, but we decided later that Piccadelhi near PVR Plaza would be a better place. I gather that Rach spent quite a lot of time hunting for us in and around Nirula’s on that day. I reached a bit late, to find that Mukesh sir, Dhruv, Naman, and Abhishek were already there. Other people trickled in soon, and we thought it would be a good idea to make a poster. We did make one, plus bought blank ID cards so that everyone knew each other. Some waited inside (Piccadelhi), others waited outside to see if more were coming. I *had* to be in the latter group, since I knew most and / or more people coming knew me. Quite loony, us standing with that poster looking like kids from some orphanage, asking strangers if they were geeks, people who were coming for the meet asking random people whether they were Ankur Banerjee, and police lads turning up to find out what the hell was going on.

We finally got with the Last Stage of Civilization Question (i.e., “Where shall we have lunch”). Quite a lot of alumni turned up, like Pony, Dhruv, Gursartaj, Roshan, and Abhishek - we even had Ankit Wadhwa, from DPS RKP batch of 2000, who’s currently working at McKinsey. Later, Ashish Chopra from the Indian Bloggers and New Media Society (or, IBNMS) also turned up, along with one another IBNMS guy. Everyone had a nice time and incredibly spicy food (which I couldn’t eat); discussing stuff (not necessarily geeky), talking about the good ol’ days when they were in school, and trying to find out whatever happened to Pony’s lasagna (it never came). Later, Mukesh sir took some of us to meet a schoolmate of his who owns a Sony World showroom in CP, where we got to check out some pretty neat gadgets and know about upcoming Sony product releases. There was a lot more stuff after that, but I’m a bit bored of typing now.

I think the Pan Delhi Geeks’ Meet 2008 panned out reasonably well and could become a yearly / quarterly fixture. Many will soon be leaving to join their colleges, so maybe such a thing can be held again when there’s a college break and there are enough people in Delhi. Now that the people who turned up there know each other, future meets could turn out to be much more fun - and be held in restaurants which have less spicy food.