{"id":362,"date":"2003-08-18T15:55:00","date_gmt":"2003-08-18T15:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/2003\/08\/to-chennai-and-back\/"},"modified":"2003-08-18T15:55:00","modified_gmt":"2003-08-18T15:55:00","slug":"to-chennai-and-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/2003\/08\/to-chennai-and-back\/","title":{"rendered":"To Chennai and Back."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Question: Which Organisation&#8217;s headquarters are located at 12 Grimmauld Place?<br \/>\nAnswer: The Order of The Phoenix.<\/p>\n<p>Question: What do you call a self-proclaimed Potter-fan and Quizzer who has no clue about the answer to the above question?<br \/>\nAnswer: A Moron of the First Order?<\/p>\n<p>Close, but not quite.<\/p>\n<p>Anyways, didn&#8217;t make it. The cut-off in the prelims was 21, and we made 20, which was the same thing that happened in the Odyssey quiz last January, so things are constant, and it&#8217;s ok, I don&#8217;t mind. <\/p>\n<p>The good things:<br \/>\n1) Four of us had gone together. Three of us were a team, the fourth guy, Bhargava was supposed to meet Anil and Dhaaji there. Well, Anil got late and Dhaaji being Dhaaji was M.I.A. Leaving Bhargava to search for a team. he found one, and made it to the finals, and won the Third Prize. Cool, eh?<\/p>\n<p>2) Aaaah. The Quiz. Brilliant questions in the finals. Really interesting, no obscure fundae and no chestnuts either. A healthy mixture. ( Or maybe I say so because I knew most of the answers. No, really.)<\/p>\n<p>3) Landmark. The bookshops. &#8220;Ooooooooooh&#8221; and &#8220;Aaaaaaaaaah&#8221; are some of the words that come to mind. Man, the comics collection was <i>amazing<\/i>!!! I found 15 Spawn comics !!! Spawn comics!!! Wheee! Old Spiderman comics, the McFarlane\/Larsen ones. Some X-Force, X-Men, Youngblood issues &#8211; dating back to those times when free Trading cards and double gatefold covers were &#8220;hot&#8221; items. <\/p>\n<p>To think, once upon a time, I lusted after those stuff like crazy. Never thought I would get them in India. Especially Spawn. Once I paid a friend 800 rupees to get me 5 copies through his uncle in the States. And now I got 15 issues, including issue#2, 12, 16, 21-30 for twenty rupees each. Am I lucky or what?<\/p>\n<p>Also got the <i>O Brother Where Art Thou<\/i> OST cd in the same place. And a rarity ( IMHO) called <i>Music For an Arabian Night<\/i> by Ron Goodwin and his Orchestra. This was one of the earliest examples of &#8220;world music&#8221; I had heard once upon a time, as a kid, on my uncle&#8217;s Gramaphone player, and later, borrowed the cassette from some friend. I remember being awestruck by the music then, it seemed so Oriental, so ethnic and mysterious. Right now, the same appeal isn&#8217;t there, but some of the tunes had stuck in my head, and it was nice reliving them, in a way.<\/p>\n<p>4) Bought two ARR cds <i>Keezhaku Cheemaiyile\/Karuthamma<\/i> and <i>Vandicholai Chinrasu<\/i>. The <i>Aaraaro<\/i> song from Karuthamma was included in the first cd. Thus, my ARR collection edges closer to completion.<\/p>\n<p>The Bad stuff:<br \/>\n1) Chennai was <i>hot<\/i>! And I got the runs and a headache and a bad cold immediately after I reached that place. Aargh! Thank God the Music Academy had a nice, clean Men&#8217;s Room&#8230;.<br \/>\n<font size=\"-2\">Er, I am pretty sure I didn&#8217;t screw up the quiz because of that.<\/font><br \/>\nSomebody suggested it might be dehydration. Oh! <i>This<\/i> is what dehydration is all about, eh?<\/p>\n<p>2) Didn&#8217;t meet <a href=\"http:\/\/rulinian.livejournal.com\/\" class=\"lj-user\">rulinian<\/a> or <a href=\"http:\/\/madhuri567.livejournal.com\/\" class=\"lj-user\">madhuri567<\/a>. Crowded hall and upset tummy were two contributing factors. <\/p>\n<p>3) Times like this, I feel like I <i>must <\/i> apply for a credit card. The number of Trade Paperbacks I saw in Landmark was just <i>awesome<\/i>!!! They had everything from <i>The Dark Knight Returns<\/i> to all the <i>Elseworlds<\/i> Graphic novels and even hard to find books like James O&#8217;Barr&#8217;s <i>The Crow<\/i> ( the original black and white series), and I ran out of money. Aargh! There was a cool Crime Fiction section in Landmark which had <i>all<\/i> the Vachss titles. I was floored, really.<\/p>\n<p>All in all, a good trip. Had loads of fun. Couple of more trips to Chennai are definitely on my agenda. I need to buy that luscious <i>Green Arrow:Quiver<\/i> hardcover I saw. And a couple of hundred more TPBS. :-P<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Question: Which Organisation&#8217;s headquarters are located at 12 Grimmauld Place? Answer: The Order of The Phoenix. Question: What do you call a self-proclaimed Potter-fan and Quizzer who has no clue about the answer to the above question? Answer: A Moron of the First Order? Close, but not quite. Anyways, didn&#8217;t make it. The cut-off in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=362"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}