MINDWORKS - The LIBA Quiz Club

Bangalore is awesome!! I have fallen in love with the city. I was last there in 1998 when a tap of beer cost 50 bucks and today it costs 60. 10 years and an increase of just 10 bucks. Wow! So much for inflation! And the weather is amazing. I could go on and on but I would run out of adjectives so I go on flashback mode.

When we were filling the BT Acumen form, I had not even thought that I would be writing in the blog for any other reason than the visit to IIM – B. But there was reason to cheer. Shelton and I were semi-finalists in the B-school debate where we faced ISB, Hyderabad.

The trip didn't quite begin on a pleasant note. First of all, our train was delayed by 2 hours and we had no idea so we just kept whiling away our time waiting. And when we enter our compartment, and it's full of water. Anyway, after overcoming the initial pitfalls, our only worry was whether we would be able to reach IIM –B on time for registration.

Ravi and Arjun could take the liberty of sleeping but Shelton and I were feverishly preparing for the morning's preliminary debate round. But ultimately our sleep deprived eyes finally gave way and it was curtains for us around 3 am.

Next I get up and we are nearing Bangalore, there is a slight chill in the air. Of course the awesome weather of Bangalore has its effect on the surrounding areas as well. We reach Bangalore station and then we embark on numerous haggling sessions with autowallahs, taxi drivers and others and in the end we get one guy who seems to be reasonable totake us to IIM – B. Thank God for keeping the IT companies closed on
weekends. We get there in time to catch some grub and then register.

Shelton and I get to our preliminary debate round and wish all the luck to our quiz champs, Ravi and Arjun. Once again God was o our side because we got the very same topic for which we had prepared the maximum which said "You can't create great brands without Advertising".

The prelims over, we trudged along to meet the quizzers and then headed of to catch some more grub. Meanwhile, we got to meet our host for the rest of the day, DK. History of DK… naah…some other time. Results were to be out at 2 pm so we coerced DK into waiting a little longer. Well the IIM – B mess food is not all that bad. But our North Indian mess is better.

After lunch we are off to see the results and guess what? Debate Semi-finalists LIBA vs ISB and IIM – B vs IIM – K. This was the most pleasant surprise of our lives and I can safely speak on behalf of Shelton as well. This calls for a celebration so immediately we head to LOR and quench our thirst with four pitchers of draught beer.

Now its time we eat something, so we drive around with DK and get some Chicken Shawarma Rolls and 3 huge grilled chickens which u won't believe me, were being cut with a pair of scissors!! I was seeing scissors used for this purpose for the first time.

Then I thought we were going to a mall because it certainly looked like that. But no, it was just the Bangalore equivalent of our friendly neighbourhood TASMAC. Yeah! Can you believe it that I mistook it for a mall? Well that's what happens when you are subjected to the TASMAC phenomenon for too long.

Arjun and Shelton were so eager to get into the shop that they forgot to close the windows and doors of the car though. Of course this we noticed only once we got back. We rushed to see if our laptops and food was intact and guess what…it was. Then Shelton proclaims, "This is Bangalore".

We then head to buy some other stuff and then we see a man, driving an Indigo Marina wearing a helmet. There was something weird about the guy. First he was talking to himself. Second, he suddenly started playing traffic policeman and was signaling us to reverse the car. And to top it all he was wearing a helmet inside the car!!!!

The rest of the story I think has been narrated time and again by me and Shelton. Brand ISB was stronger than Brand LIBA and they got through to the finals where they lost to IIM – B. However, all was not lost. Shelton and I got a cool 1 year subscription to Harvard Business Review and some cool vouchers from Allen Solly. I can't mention the amounts for the fear of getting mugged.

Truly a wonderful experience and I hope LIBA is the South Zone champion in Acumen 2008.

By Soubir Ignatius Ghose

It was the first quiz of the new academic year and there was a peculiar buzz about it. Mindworks the Quiz Club had a good start to its season as almost all the quizzing enthusiast from the seniors turned up and few from the first years also made an appearance. The quiz was hosted by Ravi and it had all elements of a typical “Ravi Quiz”. Around 12 teams consisting of 3 in a team battled it out in the prelims and 6 teams qualified for the finals. After some fun and interesting rounds of quizzing, it looked like a 3 way battle, but the team of Soubir, RIddhi and John after a brilliant start fizzled out and it looked like the wild card team of Divya, Praveen and DJ could pull out an upset win (tradition of LIBA Quizzes) but a few crucial missed chances saw the more experienced team of Arjun, Kenny and Pama win the quiz by answering the last question. Never the less a very close quiz and the winning team sort of retained the crown which they won last year (Yours truly was joined by Arjun and Kenny that time around). Madhav one of the founders of Mindworks made a special appearance much to the surprise of the participants. It was good start to the club and the events in college and a special thanks to Penny, Dinesh, Ruchir, Debhasish, Mayank and Tudu for helping out with the quiz.

What can I say, a new season is here, so the first version of this seasons Mindworks Quiz will be held at the college campus at 6 PM this friday. Here is the poster for the event.

Just Another Day !! Men and Women destined to become managers of tomorrow running to the library and clinging to the seniors to know HOW TO SCORE Os AND YET LOOK DUMB. That's when I ran into Ravi and Arjun. There was a Quiz organized by the Mark-iT Club of LIBA. Hence THE OUTSIDERS happened.

We were looked upon as a wild card entry. But in the end, we steamrolled past everyone. People saw us in a different light. Since then, its been quizzes and quizzes. But one thing remains the same. People still love the books and the profs. They do not pay any heed to their heads. What can you say: Some things never change!

I have not played a big role ever since that first quiz. However, it has been a different experience. Hoping to contributing in whatever small way possible !!

Adios Amigos!!
Kenny Chavez

Well I sure missed that question in one quiz. My quizzing experience has been pretty wonderful. On the personal front, it was a wonderful season of quizzing for me. Though with a set partner could have done a lot but never the less finally managed to find a partner in the fag end of the season. Keeping my fingers crossed as the last time I said the same thing, well things dint work out and anyway I don’t want to start on that as a few individuals know about the trials and tribulations I went on with motivating the person. Had I done the same thing looking at a mirror, well I would have improved further and could have become a one man destruction crew. Enough is enough and it’s all in the past so just leave it.

I was actually surprised to find that there was no quizzing club in LIBA and I decided to start on. Thanks a lot to Madhav, Sundeep, Arup and Kenny, and a whole lot of others for this club running. Well I had a range of partners this year (Arjun, Arup, Sundeep, Madhav, Divya, Kenny, Anupama, Karthik and Riddhi) and managed to reach the finals for most the quizzes but then could be placed only for 2 quizzes (Ethiraj and MOP). Towards the fag end of the season, reached the last 14 of one the big 3 quizzes (Tata Crucible). Well now that the season is over, am all geared up for the coming season and I think that with Arjun, well we guys can achieve a lot more provided we stick as a team and work together.

When people are asked about quizzers, the things which come to them are a geeky guy which big classes and just do not have any dressing sense. That’s what you call is a perception. OB classes do help at times, anyways enough of OB that should be on the HR blog not here. Quizzers are not some geeks or nerds who just know everything, in reality great quizzers are people who typically do not ace the class (they just can’t mug up and score marks!), they are good guzzlers (how do you think they able to identify all the liquor brands?) and have a very casual sense of dressing (some even were caps as they feel it’s their lucky charm!). We will always have the exceptions, but again most will follow at least one of the 3 clauses mentioned above. Another age old thing is that girls are non-existence in the quizzing world. This may be true at times, but recently a lot of girls have shown interest to quizzing and their population in the quizzing circles is on the rise. Finally, whoever says that quizzing is boring, well sorry to say this, but it means that the person has never been to a quiz or is an idiot! Quizzing can be the most exciting things to do and if the quiz master is good, you will never even realized that you have spend so much time in a quiz and you have had a blast. So all the critics of quizzing, either you just keep quiet as the more you criticize it; it brings out your ignorance to the open!

With the quizzing season almost over and due to lots of Chrysalis work could not post. Well the veteran team of Arun and Sundeep managed to come 4th in the Economic Times Quiz which was a great achievement for this team. The next Quiz was the Tata Crucible and this team around 6 teams from LIBA participated and the team of Arjun and Ravi managed to reach the 2nd round. This was the official debut for this team, a late one though, but I guess LIBA finally has a set team for next year.

LIBA also organized Chrysalis, its annual b-school management fest and this year Exquizite, the corporate Quiz was a big success. Giri “Pick Brain” Balasubramanium was the quiz master and he managed to keep the whole affair into a very lively show. This could have been one of the toughest quizzes, but the finalists were up to it and some of the city’s best were pitted against some very strong teams from places like Bangalore, Mumbai and Delhi. The champions of this year were the young Infosys team of Prasanth and Vinod. They simply rocked the show and proved that Chennai produces some of the best quizzers.