Reviews, Reflections, Recollections

Just a blog filled with my usual irreverent observations about life and all that.

Name:
Location: Singapore, Singapore

enjoys reading and is perpetually trying to find space for all of the books he owns in his room. He also enjoys films, and in particular, going to the cinema. Although a self-confessed trivia buff, reports that he is an insufferable know-it-all are completely unfounded. He enjoys a nice glass of tipple now and then, be it a pint of beer, a glass of wine or a single malt whisky.

Tuesday, June 14, 2005

Live To Quiz Another Day

Monday marked the big day - our appereance on University Challenge, something that I was looking forward to with equal amounts of excitement and trepidation. It was definitely with a great deal of excitement that I travelled down to Manchester with the team, catching the 7.30pm train out of Oxford, and things certainly seemed to be going well, with the train actually arriving early, certainly an unexpected occurence given the vagaries of British rail. Even more pleasing was our hotel rooms on arrival - though the Metro Travel Inn was one of those enormous mass hotels with long corridors of identical looking rooms identified only by the three digits on their doors, the inside proved very spacious indeed, with full bathroom facilities, and a double bed and couch. We went over to Justin's room for awhile and went through some quiz questions before retiring. I decided that the facilities were took good to pass up, so I took a really long luxurious soak in the bathtub - probably the first time in more than a year that I have had the chance to soak in a bathtub.

The next day we had an English Breakfast in the hotel, something that I always find nice and probably one aspect of English cuisine I find rather endearing. Pity then the fact that I am not often awake early enough to have nice English breakfasts in College! After that it was off to the studios, where we were met by the wonderfully friendly staff members at Grenada and proceeded for the usual hair and make up. We found out that we were facing the London Business School team, which were made up of 4 people reading for MBAs and whose average age was 30+, something quite daunting considering the fact that we were all (mere) undergraduates. The London team also seemed to have a pretty wide range in terms of background, with their captain an actual practicing medical doctor, and another member of their team having done a BA at Harvard and MA at Columbia. Still, on University Challenge one can never really tell.

The people at the studios did really help to settle our nerves what with being so friendly, but it was still an incredible electric thrill when we entered the studios. It was a mixture of pure adrenaline, excitement and some fear when we found ourselves seated in those black chairs, in that famous set that I had seen so often on television - only this time of course it was my name in front below that of Trinity College - Oxford. But it truly hit when the famous theme music came on and Paxman made his introductions.

It was definitely a very close fought match. We forged into an early lead, but London were never really that far behind. Later on in the middle section, they got a series of starters where we were perhaps a bit slow to answer, and it was a see-saw battle all the way. I got the first picture bonus, as well as a question on Picasso and Justin got a superbly quick buzz on "rambutan" with me just a fraction of a second behind (go Singapore knowledge!) and we were only 20 or 30 points behind when Paxman announced that there was 4 minutes to go. Unfortunately, there were 3 starters of medicine/biology which the London captain had for lunch, and they pulled ahead to take it 170 to 130.

The match was actually far far more exciting than we had realized. Teams who lost in the first round still had a chance of qualifying for the playoffs as a highest scoring losing team with the top 4 highest scoring losers (out of 14 matches played) qualifying for the playoff. What we realized afterwards was that we needed to score 135 or above to be sure of a spot, and that 130 was just enough - putting us into a three way tie for the final two qualifying spots - and that we had actually assured ourselves of a trip back by the narrowest of margins. We did make a couple of mistakes during the match, but then we got very lucky with a couple of guesses as well - one guess of a bonus on Astronomical Units comes straight to mind - and that guess could well have garnered the 5 points that we had needed.

A very special mention must be made of all of our supporters who came down specially to watch us, even going so far as to catch a early morning train to make it to Manchester in time. It was wonderful to see that they had even made signs such as "Go Trinity!" and more interestingly "Trinity Blows Goats" (you can ask me about this one if you want the inside story) and the encouragement that they gave definitely helped us a great deal.

So, all in all, a fantastic experience, a real thrill and a dream fulfilled. And despite a defeat, we live to quiz another day.

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