GREY MATTERZ?!?!?!

A convivial meeting for drinking, music, and intellectual discussion among the ancient Greeks.Guess the word.No,not friday nights.For,discussions about size of yasmine bleeth's skirt(if she ever wears one) in BAYWATCH is not intellectual.the word im looking for is SYMPOSIUM!!!! Yes Ladies and gentlemen! That is exactly what a symposium means.How i wish my symposium was like that!!

Any disinterested final year engineering student(which is pretty much everybody) can tell you that the most exciting part of the final year college involves organising the symposium,not just because we have usually homely looking females serenading in sarees wearing loud make
up but also because of the fact that at the start of the fourth year it dawns on you that you have done nothing worth mentioning in your three completed years of college(getting laid does not count) and this is probably your last chance to do something that will make your juniors look up to you.

It was precisely with this notion that i started working on my symposium with the "expertise" gained from the previous year's symposium.Little did i know that it involved more than just flirting with classmates.Sometimes you even have to flirt with staffs.It gets worse,sometimes it could be even male staffs.But,seriously,there was a lot more work than i thought there would be.I was incharge of the quiz and inspite of having an efficient team at my disposal it was tough going.

The tough part of the quiz is not in setting the questions.You have to deal with a lot of self doubt.Whether the questions will be tough enough?Will the quiz be enterprising enough?What if the participants start throwing rotten tomatoes?How do you deal with such situations?

After being literally forced to get rid of my self doubt we set about the data mining part.The team basically comprised of three people who formed the crux with some generous contributions from quite a few people.Since i have decided to refrain from naming people i shall give them nicks.The team comprised of me,Mr.IN-YOUR-FACE,Ms.FAULT-FINDER.Both did their works to perfection(statutory warning:this line is only intended to make those two people feel good).

After getting considerable amount data,we set about the unenviable task of framing the questions again,i might add,with some considerable help(unwanted as well).Deciding the rules and the rounds for the quiz was yet another painful task.But thankfully the other gentleman in my team took care of that(If you are wondering what exactly was my work in the team,im getting to it).

With only a few days left we were almost done.Nothing untoward happened till the D-Day of course.The day arrived and the crowd started trickling in.The quiz registration started and after 15 minutes there were only 3 registered teams and it looked like my nightmare of empty halls
might just become a reality.But as time passed by more teams started pouring in and we actually had a difficult time controlling the crowd.Close to 100 teams turned up.The evaluation did not take up much time since most teams did not cross 5.With the finalists decided i was getting to do the hosting on-stage.(Yup,that was the only thing i did in the quiz).

If lady luck smiled at us in the preliminaries,she was clutching her stomach and laughing her ass off in the finals.Because things went horribly wrong.Participants from some of the most prestigious institutes drew a blank to most of the questions.With time running out,i decided to
scrap the last round and end the quiz and give out the names of the "winners".The scorers (Ms.FAULT-FINDER,i might add,along with Mr.I-DONT-KNOW-WHAT-IM-DOING-HERE) throw yet another bomb.We have one team with 20 points and all the other three teams have 10 each.So i needed to arrange for a tie-break between three teams.Simple,you might say.Yes,I might add,if only i had three buzzers.I had only 2 buzzers with me and when i announced on stage that two teams will first fight it out and then the winner with the other team.The teams protested.I decided it was time to shed the cloak of professionalism.I went close to the teams and said "Macha,We dont have three buzzers(big grin emoticon)".They grudgingly agreed and so the show ended with a "thrilling tie-breaker" where one team did not know how to use the buzzer.

Thus ended a "spectacular" quiz(im getting tired of these quotes).But everything said and done,we all had an amazing time working on the quiz.The endless hours spent looking for questions,the non-stop bickering over the rules,the abysmal ignorance of some of those i
worked with...all memories,that shall stay with me forever.I would not be doing justice if i dont mention the other parts of my symposium but that requires a separate post....so for now ciao.