Ok its time for *that* Tuesday, that’s got Jhayu all excited. So here is to Jhayu’s 15 seconds of fame, on my blog that is. Tuesday, Twisday, Mardi, Marte or Mangalvaar, whatever you call it, Tuesday still remains a crappy day. And this week it proved to be no different.
Why do I hate Tuesday so much? Well when I was kid, I grew up (despite the general consensus that I didn’t) knowing Tuesday to be the only day of the week you could eat no non-veg, hell not even eggs! What kind of crappy day is that? No wonder I hate Tuesday from the bottom of my stomach.
Anyway fast forward to this Tuesday. So this was the Tuesday when once again my big mouth got me in to trouble. I mean seriously what was the need to brag about being on a school quiz team in my job interview? Now when Sun Microsystems announced a business and technology quiz at Technovate 2008, our CD turned to me. All of a sudden all that bragging started to seem very stupid. I mean I knew a bit about technology, hell I am a certified geek, but what do I do about business. So I did the smart bit, roped in a fall guy. Jhayu!
Jhayu, having recently joined P******m, didn’t know me very well and he seemed to trust me a bit because of Lil Nat being our common friend. Fatal mistake. So he fell for it and we both were signed up as the official entry from P******m at Technovate. Being the only team from P******m guaranteed that we would come back with the best finish amongst all the P******mers by default.
But since when do Fate and I agree upon anything. I propose and Fate disposes. Mean woman. Just a few days before the quiz the CEO returned to office and He decided to sign up for the quiz too. His partner? The CD. Gah! They both are known to be active on the quiz scene since their school days and achieve good results more often than not. Now we were doomed to be the bottom performers.
In a frantic attempt to change Destiny’s mind, I bought some magazines for Jhayu and myself hoping they would magically include all answers to the questions they might ask. Though within I had that sinking feeling, yes *that* sinking feeling. And the hangover on Monday laid to rest my plan to mug up a day before, like I used to during school exams.
Come Tuesday and it was time to dress in formals. Yes formals. Stop laughing, I do wear formals and I look quite good in it too. So I dressed myself in formals. Which meant a white full sleeves shirt over a light blue, clean and ironed jeans. Of course the mandatory Caterpillars to boot. I also brought along the jacket I had bought recently to create the illusion of a suit. Unfortunately no one at office agreed with me. Hell they didn’t even find the white shirt formal. WTF.
Jhayu seemed all set for the quiz. Dressed in *formals* with a spot on his ass to boot. And we were as confident as Indian Government during No Confidence Vote. As the time of reckoning came over I and Jhayu threw in the towel along with the magazines and resigned ourselves to embarrassment. But even we had no idea it would be *SO* embarrassing.
So at stipulated time we reached the venue, The Grand H hotel, and registered ourselves to be hung till death. There were over 40 teams with people from Yahoo, Microsoft, Rediff, Wipro, SUN and what not. And with that went any hopes we had of scoring in the technology part of the quiz.
The first round was an elimination round. There were 30 questions and top 6 teams were to qualify for the finals. It was a mixed bag of easy question, damn hard questions and WTF questions. Mainly WTF questions. One of them showed two pics. One of a man holding a camera and other of a residential type building. We had to link them to form a brand name. Jhayu got all excited, “Ooh ooh oooh, I know that’s a condominium!”
Obviously we couldn’t think or anything that rhymes with condominium except aluminum and that even we knew wasn’t the right answer.
Turns out the dude with the camera was Picasso and the building was a Casa. So the answer was Picassa. Bloody brilliant. And it got worse from there. In the end we were pretty much pulling answers out of our asses, hair, armpits and the air. No wonder we got like maybe 5 out of 30 right. Hell we missed out on the question based on “Pappu can’t dance” because I mistook Rado for Prada! Luckily for us they were kind enough not to announce all the scores so we can still claim that we didn’t end up in the last place (due to lack of substantial evidence). The funniest part was then asked us to fill the blank in this quote “Both LSD and ____ came out of LA and I don’t believe that to be a coincidence”. My answer obviously was Jim Morrison. But theirs obviously wasn’t. It was BSD! Obviously they don’t know their music.
Needless to say We, and by we I mean I and Jhayu, got eliminated and They, and by they I mean CEO and CD, went through. Ideally we both should have headed back to work but then neither of us is anywhere near ideal. So we stayed back to cheer our bosses on. Over next 2 hours the teams fought tooth and nail for the points. And I wont even get started on the questions as they bordered on WTF and even deep in to ridiculous. In the end team P******m ended a credible fifth and won some money too! It’s a different story we had to come back to work to the looks of we-knew-you-would-suck and pending work. On the brighter side we got free tea and cookies at a 5 star hotel! On the not so bright side, we, once again I and Jhayu, have been signed up for the Tata Crucible quiz coming up in September. Oh boy.