Day before yesterday I took part in the Tata Crucible Quiz at Pune. The event was held at the Taj Blue Diamond Hotel. The event was scheduled to be started at 3 PM, unfortunately it started raining at around that time, so they had to delay the start by around 45 minutes. It was a thoroughly enjoyable experience for me. I was taking part in a quiz like this after around 10-11 years…and it was great !

Jawed @ Tata Crucible Quiz 2009 Pune

Originally I had planned to participate with Yatin Suvarna(a colleague of mine). Just when we were about to leave office for the venue, it started raining. As he was not feeling well he did not come..I was very keen to participate so I thought I would take a chance and request them to allow me to take part individually. But that was not allowed, so I requested Prashant Brahmbhatt, our SAP Abaper to be my replacement partner. He promptly agreed and I was able to participate.

In the preliminary round, there were a total of 25 questions. Based on the score, 6 teams were to be selected to compete on stage. The questions were very well balanced and the quiz master ensured that there were enough clues for the participants to think out the correct answers even if you don’t know. That is the hallmark of a good quiz master. The qualifying cutoff was 19 and we could get only 14 correct out of 25.

Some of the interesting questions were like …

• In the world of fashion accessories what does RL mean?
• Under what brand does Pepsi export Basmati
• According to japanese what’s 20th century greatest innovation
• what’s the ad agency Crayon’s claim to fame (clue: elections)
• Identify Ad of Surf Excel
• Identify Ad of Samsung mobile phone
• Origin of the word Limousine

I chanced upon this book a couple of sundays ago when I was visiting Crossword at Senapati Bapat Road. Having heard so much about this book, I purchased it right away. And spent the next 4-5 hours reading it.

My first impression of the book is good. I liked it. It makes for a good light hearted reading. I first heard of this book when the author had come to Jaipur for some literary meet and he was praised to the skies by the Indian authors. From that day onwards I had made a mental note and was looking forward to reading it. Incidentally, one of the names used in the book is of Kayani, who is the current chief of Military apparatus in Pakistan. The book is funny at times.
I had read Perwez Musharraf’s biography a few days ago and then I read this book. I got two different views of the same person(Gen Zia).