Lucky Murari's Blog

How I won an Ideapad Netbook?

For the outsider Masses, a small Legend for start

• APOGEE - A technical festival organized by the students of BITS-Pilani . APOGEE 2009 was held in the dates between 23rd-27th March 2009.
• IBM Web 2.0 Quiz - A quiz organized in APOGEE 2009 by IBM.The quiz consisted of an initial round of online test based shortlisting, then a 30 question multiple choice Web 2.0 related quiz followed by a presentation of case study.

So with that small legend , I will come to the point. As many of you( are there many?) might know, I won the IBM Web 2.0 quiz in this APOGEE. The event was held for the first time on campus and I became a lucky winner of it. And the more exciting part of it is that the prize I got was a sexy, ultra-thin Lenovo Ideapad S10. It is a netbook with all the beautiful qualities of a normal Laptop. For people who would like to know more about the Netbook consult this Ideapad S10 review.( I thought of writing a review myself, but again backed to stay on the topic).

So a small story:

I participated in different events in APOGEE 2006 and APOGEE 2008.And both the previous times I won second prize in one each of competitions. APOGEE 2006 it was in MathXtreme, a mathematics a,b,c,d (I mean MCQ) online test (prize money Rs.200) and APOGEE 2008 it was in Byte for Thought, a computers related quiz (prize money 1200) .APOGEE 2007, I did not participate due to other commitments I had.

And before beginning of this APOGEE, I was in a total bankruptcy situation. Every BITSian will be in this situation one or the other time, but ths is the first time I was in so bad need of money. On a lighter note, I was longing to go to redy and have a shikanji(lemonade) of Rs.5 and I did not have money for that . So someone enlightened me saying that everytime you participated in APOGEE you won prize money. Why not this time? Yeah, that sure is very inspiring though the fact is I was actually twice lucky. So I thought- "Yo man, lemme particpate in these events and make a lot of money". So there went I, craving badly for some pocket money.

I actually went to the finals in an event called Science Quiz( a group event) , where we were shown the path to the hell with their "easy" questions. We successfully showed people that luck too makes you reach finals of some quizzes.Then the next event I had some chance was called Who Dunn It?(again a group event) - where we had to solve several rounds logical questional at faster pace. We lost it in a tie breaker and weren't able to reach finals.

Then, some of my friends ( Kaka, Arvi etc) who saw the IBM quiz promo in some event, have felt I stood a strong chance and informed me about it. So there went I and the rest is all the normal saga of "How I won an Ideapad Netbook?"

But what is there in this short story?
Actually, if I would have reached finals of Who Dunn It, I wouldn't have participated in IBM quiz, as they were both scheduled at same time. And the prize of Who Dunn It, even if we would have won would be around maximum of 3000INR shared among we 3 individuals( remember it was a group event). So me failing at Who Dunn It, laid red carpet for my Ideapad. So the usual quote

A failure doesn't mean a loss. It is actually a great gain in the disguise of a loss to make you remain alerted.

A small thing that is bothering me is that I still can't get my shikanji at redy due to the unavailability of Hard Cash :( Is there someone who wants to trade a netbook with a redy shikanji?