Ressurecting myself from the Rubble of that Past...

Finally I got a new PC. My third machine and yeah this time my kid bro assembled it himself. Specs are not important. It just made me realize the value of my lovely Flinstone aged P4 PC. My kind bro did not delete anything from that PC and so one of the first things I did was to take a backup of all my resources. Well of course a 1TB external hard disk comes in handy :D. So going through the ruins of that PC I found a curious text note called links and I was momentarily stunned!!!. It brought back fond memories of a day when I never knew how to operate a machine and how to grapple up terms like C/C++ and Java. Looking back in retrospect I feel that I had a greater sense of direction then than I ever had in my entire life. Life had a purpose then. The goal of learning for learning's sake and not for achievement was imbibed in my veins. Each and every vein responded in sync to that single desire of learning something new. Achievements never mattered. Hell who cares whether I win or not? Is it not the fact that I learnt that I could use pointers to traverse arrays today when I was using subscripts yesterday more gratifying?.

Thank goodness I found that out. Waking to life is the most important thing that was required for me. From a stress filled day to think about what I achieved!!!,is it not better if I start piecing the links and go ahead. At least I shall cover some ground instead of sitting tight :-). Thank you my dear old PC, you have truly woken me up :-). It was then I realized that in pursuit of something called success I truly forgot what was more important. Self realization dawns and Longfellow comes to my rescue.

Not for enjoyment,Not for sorrow
Is our destined end or way
But to act that each tomorrow
Finds us farther than today..

Yeah he was right :-). Life is not always about that success. It is about that experience. It is about living for the right things, for living without hurting others and for helping when they need your hands and not regretting it later. It is about going forward as a underachieved human being than a successful monster. It is about cherishing those wonderful moments from which we learn and piece together an entirely new puzzle in this amazing world. And finally it is about the joy that comes out of Learning for learning's sake.

Landmark Quiz at Bangalore (Nov 2009) Prelims

Ohh yes, The Noob has been loitering in and around quizzing competitions for ages now. So the day was the Rajyotsava and as goes tradition, The Landmark Quiz 2009 Bangalore edition was held at St.John's Auditorium in Koramangala. We had Dr.Navin Jayakumar as our host. The enthusiasm was palpable. The entire crowd was brimming in confidence. Me and my team mates also saw the usual QFI and the KQA folks and then we realized that definitely we are not going to make it any big there. Of course that doesn't stop us from learning new things or trying out our luck in these quizzes. I'll just post the questions from the Quiz for a lot of folks who did not attend them. These were the prelims questions. Mind you, some questions are not in order. For the nth consecutive time I forgot to bring my quiz notebook and yeah I did feel bad. Of course two tissue papers came to my rescue :P. Thanks to Transit at The Forum ;-). Hmm without further ado, here are the first fifteen questions from the prelims. I'll post the remaining in some time from now.

1) The question was about a treaty that formally came to effect on November 1st 1993 by some European Countries. Treaty of European Union as it is known officially. Also some details were given. My team mate cracked it the moment he saw November 1st. I took some time to decipher that. But we both got the answers right :-).

Ans) MAASTRICHT Treaty

2)After Taj Mahal this monument is the second most visited place in our country and has the second largest number of tourists visiting it. Name this monument.

We got confused by the 'word' monument in the question. The answer was so obvious.

Ans)The Mysore Palace

3)This American sitcom has an ongoing narrative revolves around four children—Stan Marsh, Kyle Broflovski, Eric Cartman, and Kenny McCormick—and their bizarre adventures in and around the fictional and titular Colorado town.

The name Eric Cartman was enough here :D

Ans) South Park

4)The question was about a variety of grain which could be stored for decades and was made famous by the Arabians and the Mediterranean Muslims. Some more lines describing the trivia of the grain was also given.

Obviously I know only how to eat and not to think about the food stuff. Turns out that the answer was actually easy if we had guessed properly.

Ans) Durum Wheat

5)What new words were added to the constitution of India during the 42nd Ammendment by Indira Gandhi?

Yeah we found this out. It is not so dificult

Ans) The words were Socialist,Secular

6)Theatrum Orbis Terrarum was a book published in 1570 and first introduced a word in the English language which perhaps was the best word for what was published in the book. The book was published by Gerard cramer. Some more trivia also was there.

We thought it was Encyclopedia

Ans)Atlas and Gerard Cramer was Mercator

7)How do we celebrate Hockey Legend Dhyan Chand's birthday?

Ans) National Sports Day. Also the Arjuna Awards are announced on the same day.

8)This sweetmeat got the G.I ( Geographical Indicator Tag) for it's uniqueness. I have forgotten the exact wording.

Ha ha ha.. I got this answer right. Thanks to Priyanka. Her quiz at the office had that question and so pat came the answer.

Ans) Tirupati Laddoo :-)

9)In 1883, when a printer in Cheyenne, Wyoming working on a regular telephone directory ran out of white paper. What did he do?

Of course you need not be Einstein to figure this out. :D

Ans) Yellow Pages

10)In nuclear weapons, a ________ occurs when the testing of a nuclear bomb fails to meet its expected yield. The reason(s) for the failure can be linked to improper bomb design, poor construction, or lack of expertise. All countries that have had a nuclear weapons testing program have experienced this. What is the one word used to describe that low yield.

Ans) Fizzle

11)This question was related to mythology about an Avatar of Goddess Earth who actually killed Narakasura when Krishna fell asleep just for a moment.

Ans) Satyabhama

12)The question about a species of Elk which was named after an American President.

Ans) Roosevelt Elk named after Teddy Roosevelt :D.

13) Hmm I forgot what question this was.

14)A question about the Hugo award for 2009 and how it was inspired from "The Jungle book".

Ans) The answer is Neil Gaiman for "The graveyard book"

15)The domino effect suggests that some change, small in itself, will cause a similar change nearby, which then will cause another similar change, and so on in linear sequence, by analogy to a falling row of dominoes standing on end. This was the Domino Theory of the United States referring to the growing Communism in Asia. Where did it all start?

Ans) Vietnam

I'll post the rest of the questions in some time folks. Needless to say I did enjoy the Landmark quiz as always. Yeah waiting eagerly for the Chennai Edition next year :-).