RELIVING ACCOLADE - ACCOLADE QUIZ

quiz cartoon

ACCOLADE was really a bouquet of events organized by bunch of novices turned professionals.   Lot of events were created to cater for every variety of college student in and around Coimbatore.  Infact all of Tamilnadu.

One such event was the Quiz competition.

This type of event was constant in every College festival, meant mostly for the FRUIT GANG kind of people.  Certain colleges were famous for conducting it. A group of 30-40 teams of two members each used to participate in prelims followed by actual finals between five to six teams.  Hope my details are correct because, one it was long time ago, two like most of us, I went in those competitions mainly for fashion shows, and three I am pretty old now with weak memory.

But Accolade was something different.  For the final quiz we had roped in Mr. Anand from Times MBA coaching institute.  Those of us who had ambitions of IIMs or other top business schools in those days thought of him as some sort of reincarnation of Rajini himself.  He was an excellent choice for the event as he had conducted similar events in some other colleges as well and was well known amongst quiz participants.

We were conducting the prelims in our final year class room with seating capacity of 30-35 teams of two members each.  We had twice as many sheets of prelims questions.  I think this was created by our own Fruit Gang at that time as people had tough time solving them.  Ten minutes before the schedule start of event, people started to trickle in.  Yours truly and Dicky bird (B Shreeram) were conducting this event.

To our pleasant surprise, the room was filled in no time and there were still some people waiting for their turn.  We hurriedly arranged the third year class room as well to accommodate the overflow.  The pleasant surprise slowly turned into a nightmare as even the additional room was filled in no time!!!  And people were still coming in.  Forget about the place for making them sit, we didnot have enough question papers to distribute!!

But in true spirit of Mech Cyclones, when pushed to the wall, ideas flowed.  We decided to divide the whole event into two batches.  Got some youngsters to conduct the first batch of prelims, while two of us ran towards Xerox shop.  While we got more copies done, we both looked at each other to let the thought sink in.  We were conducting prelims for about 100 teams of two participants each!!! This was more than twice of what we were used to seeing in other events!!

The brilliant ideas used to advertise the event had paid off big time.  Although we could not position life size cut outs of all Mech Cyclones from Karumathampatti till TCE as we had earlier imagined, but what ever we did was top of the line.  This was democratization of a hitherto elite event.

Although, the final of the event was a slight anticlimax, when our perceived Rajini turned out to be Prakash Raj.  He asked questions like, what were the names of characters in series Friends!! I mean come on, Allen could have done better than that!!  And then he said he was only mildly satisfied with the quality of participants!!

But with the participants, the event couldn't have been a grander success.  They had fun participating and we had fun conducting it.  

LISTEN TO YOUR BETTER HALF

This happened a few days back when I was coming back with my family from Coimbatore after my vacation.  Our flight was booked from an Air India flight in the afternoon.  I decided to to start two and a half hours early for the flight, which saw some resistance from my wife initially but I convinced her by saying "You are not aware of the traffic here... We may get stuck in heavy traffic you never know.."  Reluctantly she agreed.
As luck will have it, there was no traffic on the road and the drive from our house to the Airport was of all but 10 min. My wife gave me a stare as we approached the Airport but I said "Just wait until you see the crowd at the Airport.  The baggage check can take ages..."
We entered the Airport.  As Shruti and my parents waited outside I went in with the luggage only to find that we were the first ones for the baggage check.  I was back in a minute and half.  The look on wife's face now was of "I told you so!" or simply the one any husband would hate.  But as an adamant husband I continued... "You know it is always good to come early as you would get a good seat in the middle of the craft".
So we continued in and got our boarding passes wishing our parents goodbye.  The seats numbers seemed pretty good and now it was my turn to say "I told you so"... 

Let us get the security checks done I said as there was nothing else to do at the shops and security checks may be quiet cumbersome sometimes.  But when things do wrong they go wrong all at the same time.  So, against my prediction we breezed through the security...
While we were seating at the waiting area on ground floor I was thinking to myself how bad can it all go. I could have been proved wrong on a couple of occasions but I will not stop taking my chances.  So as we were getting bored sitting at the lounge I told my wife lets get closer to the terminal from where we were supposed to board.  Reluctantly she followed me...  As we were climbing the stairs we noticed the escalator was not functioning. So we laboured our way through the stairs.  I told her... "the escalators must have gone bad".

We waited for 20 minutes outside the terminal thinking we were the only ones to board the flight from coimbatore.  Then we saw the escalator suddenly started moving..."Oh they fixed it" I said... only to be proven wrong the next moment...It was always serviceable only that people had started coming only now...
Within minutes the whole lounge was filled and I could only say "Atleast we got the best seat around here!"
By now Shruti's anger was replaced with laughter as she thought "how many times can a guy go wrong in one day..."
Well atleast she was wrong on that count...I was proved wrong on one last time in last four hours...
The seats we had got on our boarding passes were the last ones on the plane, in the most uncomfortable location.
Well this was not the first and not the last time I thought I knew more than I actually did, but certainly this was the worst one...

WHAT'S IN A NAME

This incidence happened when we were preparing for our MBA entrances. Half of our class was here and our percentage appearance in these classes was better than in our BE classes. Although people said it was because we Mechanical herds of TCE found better pasture here, than in BE classes I never believed them.

This happened in one of our CAT preparation exams. Amol sat there with a grim face even before the question paper was handed over to him. Not because he suspected the Allen might score more then him in Maths this time, his expressions were saddened by the looks of his solitary writing device. His pencil. It was not sharp enough to make dark enough images on that sheet of paper, which they strangely called "Answer Sheet". Believe me it brought out more questions than answers.

But so we all wrote our exams. Vichu and I hoped against hopes that this time our "All B's or All C's" strategy will work. Amol came out of the exam hall, grabbing his leather bag in one hand and Pencil in the other hand, with a look which reminded us of Tom Cruise after final court room hearing in "A Few Good Men" (Ok I am making it up... I didnot see the movie untill recently.. But what the heck its my Blog).

During our "Post Disaster Analysis" Amol mentioned "yaar, how selfish people can get!! Before the exam I realized that my pencil isn't sharp enough and I didnot have my sharpner with me. So I called the girl in front of me... Pamela.. Pamela.. a few times. But guess what, she didnot turn. Speak about arrogance!!"

We were about six of us. Allen, Vikram, Sunil, Jacob, Vichu and self. All of us looked at each other for a few agonizingly silent seconds... And then bursted in to laughter.

I think it was Jacob who finally controlled himself and brought the truth in front of the flabbergasted Amol.

"Pamela was the name given to that female by some group for some obvious reasons, and her real name was......!!!" The look on his face was that of shock and awe. All Specko was really thankful was "Luckily she didnot hear me !!"

Memories of Goa.....

In a deviation from my normal blog about my college life, today I plan to write something about another experience of mine. Especially

because I was in Miami, Florida recently. Although there were many beeeuti-ful (punctuations are unintentional) things to see around, few people and memories came back to me. Although they were not as beeeuti-ful as the sight in front of me, but life is not always about good things....

It was Nov of 2005. We were on a sort of term break from our training. Self and three colleagues of mine decided to go on a trip to GOA. Here is a brief description of them....

Ghoda.... The horse. Yap, thats what they called him. Not sure why he got this name, but he always lived up to his reputation. He is a good cook and an even better hogger. Legend has it that nothing goes waste as long as he is at dining table. Overgrown horizontally, he always kept us on the edge of our seats - as there was no space left with him around.

Ballu..... The Papa Bear. Overgrown vertically, it is said that when he takes shower water dries up before reaching to his toes. Probably that is why he was so exited to come to Goa, as he could finally take a complete bath....

Kallu.... The lean. He had physical dimensions which can put Kareena to shame. There were rumors that he got selected in this course because of his size. They said he could go between the blades of the engine to inspect the interior faults. Truly I never believed those rumors as he would have surely tripped over the anti-vibration plates in the blades.

Tillu..... That's me. Can not brag about self in own blog, so it ends here.

We got to the shore and checked into our hotel at Calingute beach. Immediately we decided that the best way to travel in Goa would be to hire two bikes for the four of us. So we contacted the hotel to get us two bikes.

And there at 10 O' Clock position stood two bikes. A pulsar 150 cc, legend of a bike even today and the other one was a Royal Enfield , another legend made famous by the do

odhwalas (not to be mistaken with dabbawallahs). The name of the owner was written all over the bikes. BENTO it read. He gave his bike to us with one clear message, ' don't mess them up'. Oh well, we had two experienced bikers in kallu and Ballu. There was no way in the world we would mess up. We were sure to find that out very soon.

Like good (and intelligent) citizens we took photographs of the bikes from different angles. Ballu and tillu took the Pulsar and kallu and ghoda took the Enfield. A decision he will repents through out the day as the Enfield refused to start after every stop. It was understandable that Ghoda was excited to kick the Enfield on the first given opportunity as he might have thought it will make him look fitter on the beach, but it was not what Kallu wanted. He suffered through out the day as Ghoda could not do more than kicking the Enfield.... Yes, its true.... Ghoda and Tillu did not knew how to drive bike those days.

In the night we were making our way back to the hotel. Even though Ballu had four eyes, non of them supported night vision. So, we allowed Kallu and Ghoda to lead us on their Enfield. As we continued on our journey back from the nude beach (well we found only rocks there), on one of the turn we suddenly found the Enfield in front of us disappeared in dark. Ballu could only make out that a red bolt in front of him had disappeared. But well he had Tillu with him

-who calculated the speed of their bike, curvature of the road, speed of the wind, level of luminescence on th street and... and ....) to come to a conclusion that Kallu has made a dive in to the bushes with Ghoda being the first one to jump out of the sinking ship. Ballu stopped the Pulsar. And both of us ran towards the epicenter of the calamity....

'Thank god', Ballu said after close inspection. Tillu breathed easily. They were sweating now more than they had on the beach for the whole day. Really it was a miracle......

The Royal Enfield of 'BENTO' was safe....

And oh yes. Kallu had a few scratches. There was a crater where Ghoda fell. But they were ok.

SCREW THAT JACK

Engineers know how to draw. Yes, sure they do. But what finally comes out of the Engineering Drawing session is nothing less than modern art at best. It took our professors one complete semester to tell us how to fix a mini drafter on to the drawing table. No doubt they never expected us to draw something which manufacturers would understand. The instructions were very simple. There are two components, a 'connecting rod' and a 'screw jack'. Learn them and you can clear the exams. Although there were eight other component drawings in our syllabus we had complete faith in our education system. They cannot go beyond the basic two designs.

It was seventh semester final exams and next day was Engineering Drawing exam. As for the two of the class back bencher, vichu and I were playing cricket. Years later I realized it helped us to relax and perform better in the exams. Hell if we had know it earlier we would have made a pitch right in front of our class rooms. I casually asked my giant friend Vichu, (although he has lost a lot of weight now... god knows what they feed him in Australia. This is surely a fall out of the racism there and I strongly protest against it...) can there be a chance that they will give a component drawing in tomorrows exam other than the two we had just scribbled on our note books. He grinned as if he had just heard about news of infidelity of his girl friend. Thank god for the inertia of his extra weight he never came and hit me. But the message was loud and clear, we will not discuss of any other drawing (I still do not know what the other drawings were).

Next day in the morning we were again travelling in our beloved PNK SRT bus. After all these years today I realize we never tried to find out what it really meant. As usual we didnot get a seat, but our speko friend Amol had his seat near the window pretty well occupied. If I had that luck I would have slept all the way up to the college. But he ofcourse was the torch bearer of the 'RICH PEOPLE CAN BE HUMBLE' group. He was sitting with many drawing sheets and a giant smile on his face which said 'I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST AFTERNOON...' I kept my distance as I knew he can be a potential demoralizer, especially two hour ahead of the exams. But who can stop Vichu. He went ahead and asked the deadliest of all questions.... 'Hey, whats in those sheets'. The grin on the Specko's face grew another four inches either side. He said he had done all the drawings in the syllabus atleast once. He took names of components which seemed more like names of our forefathers contemporary to Greeks and Romans.

Just in front of the examination hall Vichu and I looked at each other as if our death sentence was about to be handed over to us. And whats worse we were not even married... As we entered in to the hall, Vichu recollected the names of all the Gods and Goddesses he knew. Some how I heard Shakila and Pamela also in those names, although I was not in mood to inquire about the details.

The question paper was of four pages although what really mattered was the last page, last question. I was somehow not finding the courage to open that last sheet. Then suddenly I saw the hand of Yuvraj going up in the air with a 'thumbs Up' sign. It surely meant 'All izz Well'. And surely it was. The SCREW JACK had lifted our souls. And we surely screwed it. All of us did pretty well. HAIL BHARTHIYAR.... HAIL BHARTHIYAR UNIVERSITY.....

Life with a school boy

By the time we reached final year, we knew project is the only thing that can save our skin now.  Three years of fooling around ensured this was our last chance to up our overall percentages.  After months of planning or lack of it, we finally had a team ready, and what a team it was.  

School boy remained the most exciting of them all.  He seem to know any good looking girl walking on the road from his school days, if ever we found one.  It was his innocence with which he thought we will beleive every thing he said that made him so 'kickable'.  

I remember our trip to Bangalore.  D***y bird had managed - or he said he managed - an internship program for us at Ashok Layland in Hosur.  We never saw the face of it.  Never the less the visit is etched in my memories because of one man, the school boy.  

It all started while we were on our way to Bangalore, in a KPN bus.  This was a no frill bus.  After a disastrous start to our project search at Rajapalayam and others, we didnot have a lot to go with any ways.  Four of us had occupied a seat almost mid way in the bus,  behind the driver seats.  Sometime late in the night, while we were trying hard to keep our heads stable on the metallic frame of the seat as the bus moved at fabulous speeds only managable by state transport buses, our school boy suddenly got up.  He stood on his seat as is searching for some body in the front row.  Bird some how managed to pull him down as it was dangerous.  Front seats are generally reserved for ladies if you remember.  "What the hell were you doing. You might get all of us beaten up before we reach Bangalore" Bird scolded.  

The response from school boy was as sweet and innocent as you can ever get "I couldn't see the driver from here, so just wanted to confirm whether he is still there"

The league of ordinary gentlemen