Today participated in the Brand Equity Hyderabad Round. Teamed up with my colleague Aviroop Ghosh. Convergys sent in two more teams. Quiz was held in the Taj Krishna Hotel. The prelims started off with a guy from Derek O Brien's team shooting out the Q's. Was quite surprised to see Derek not conducting the prelims, Is he getting too mighty for his boots? His future conduct in the quiz was just gonna reinforce my doubts.
Aviroop was a on a hot streak in the prelims, and we hardly missed any in the first 15 odd Q's, second batch of Q's we goofed up quite a bit, and ended with a score of 22. As with all simple prelims , its a question of who makes less number of mistakes, and we scored on that point.We did not miss any of the easy ones and many of our guesses came right. I thought it was a pretty decent score and would take us to the stage, and when they announced the finalists was pretty surprised to hear that we had topped the prelims. Vizag Steel, Future First, Agro Tech foods, TIME(the coaching class guys) and Deloitte were the other finalists.

The final was going to be held in 3 stages, after 24 q's were over, 2 teams would be eliminated, then 2 more teams would be eliminated after 12 Q's ,and for the final 8Q's on the buzzer , there would be only two teams left.Some of the ads which Derek came up were pretty risque, and his jokes were of course extremely derogatory. He had this act, playing a Russian General which was simply ridiculous. Anyway, one knows what to expect out of Derek, so we kept our faces straight and our abuses under our breath. One does not go to a Derek O'Brien quiz too satisfy one's quizzing instincts, one just laughs at his antics,and will hopefully land a share of the goodies being passed around.

We started of slowly, and at the end of the 24 q's we were fourth with 35, Vizag Steel leading with 55, Deloitte and Future First getting eliminated. In the next 12 Q's we got 2 Q's and ended up on 55 alongwith Agrotech foods, with both Vizag and Time tied at 65. since we had scored more in the prelims , we were awarded the third prize and Agro Tech had to be content with the fourth. Third prize was gift vouchers worth 30k for the team.
Then the final tussle started and it was pretty tight , both teams scored 2 Qs each out of the 8, and Aviroop and myslef told ourselves that we were unlucky since we knew atleast 3 Q's which the other teams missed, if we had reached the final round we would have won! In the heat of the moment vizag Steel missed playing it smart (at one stage they had a 20 point lead, and if they had even scored negatives 5 on each of the last 3 Q's they would have still ended up winners) But they missed the trick, and TIME ended up level with them. Luckily for vizag steel, they had scored one point extra in the prelims, so they were declared winners of the Hyderabad round.
Kudos to Murthy and Ramesh, who work as managers in the steel plant. Murthy got quite emotional in the prize distribution, saying that last year they had finished third in the tie break, just becasue they had scored less in the prelims, and thankfully the tables turned for them this year. Ramesh and Murthy make a formidable team, and there was no shame in losing to such a fine pair. Infact they won the hearts of the Hyderabadi audience and were lustily cheered, and Derek did remark that only in Hyd, would the audience cheer so lustily for a out station team. the winners got prizes worth 40k each and a shot at the National rounds in the Aamby Valley, Mumbai.
We had our own cheering squad too; Sumit, Ram, Manish and Raj were all there lustily encouraging us up. Thanks guys for the encouragement!
This is the second quiz, in which avi and myself have teamed up and luckily we have reached the finals in both. This was totally his show and he was definitley the dominant partner today. We need to particiapte in more quizzes to shake off the rust, only problem being there are so few quizzes which are organized in Hyd.

Some Prelims Q
1) Cactus and ....: biography of S Kirloskar2) Plant on Encyclopaedia Brittanica : Thistle3) Instrument which was banned during the US-Spanish war of 1898: telephone4) Two princely states used to issue currencies : J & K and ....? : Hyderabad5) 2040 is a movie by ? :De bono6) RC's surrogate product while advertising is ? : Golf accessories7) Air Deccan, who designed the logo? RK Laxman8) Indian company which introduced 8-hour work days back in the 1920s? Tata Steel
visuals: 1) Damodaran2) Ad for Apple3) Ralph Lauren4) VIP suitcases
Some Finals Q:
- most famous policeman in NZ? Shane bond;2) Ethiopia outsources this to India? something to do with agriculture.3) Fat finger dialling4) clip of you have got mail and the brand5) clip of salaam namaste and the brand. 6) chip and pin technology in banking 7) indian dynasty who had motifs behind the coins 8) some indian company which ties up with the AP govt to promote family planning: Hindustan Latex