CIC Discover India 2020

Thanks to everyone who attended our first event of the year, CIC Karaoke Night. It was super fun and we look forward to doing it again in the future. It is time now to unveil our second event of the year, our annual trivia game event, CIC Discover India.

For people familiar with this event, it is a super fun, intimate event with teams battling each other in their knowledge of all things India. There is so much we know about India and so much that we dont. This is the time when we face off and figure out who knows better and come out learning more in the process.

It is a great opportunity for new folks in the community to make friends and bond over 3 hours of craziness. To learn more about the event, look at past years posts or talk to someone who participated. You can sign up as a team or as an individual and we will do match making at the venue.

Event Date: Sunday, March 22, 2020
Event Time: 2:00 - 5:00pm
Venue: Vineland Library, San Jose,CA
Participation Fee: $10/ team (please bring exact change, guests attend free)

Sign up here.

CIC Discover India 2018 - The Rules of the game

It is almost here. We are just over 24 hours from the fourth annual Discover India presented by Vimana. Before we get to the rules and all that, let me remind everyone about the event.

Date and Time: Sunday, 2 pm at Cambrian Library (please remember to set your clocks for Daylight Savings tomorrow)

Venue: Cambrian Park Library, 1780 Hillsdale Ave, San Jose, CA

Duration: 3 to 3.5 hours based on how quickly we go through the rounds.

Entry Fee: $5 per team. Can be paid in cash at the venue or as a check to Cambrian Indian Community (cash preferred)

Snacks: There will be small snacks (and chai) for purchase. Please bring change.

FAQs on Rules and Logistics:

What time should I be there?

You need to be there at 1.45 pm. We will start getting people split into teams and seated immediately. If you arrive after 1.45, it is likely you will end up in whatever team with openings. The plan is to START the event at 2 pm. The later we start, the fewer the rounds we can run. 

I signed up as an individual (or as part of a partial team). Who will be my teammates?

We will sort all of you into teams at 1.45pm tomorrow. So please arrive on time. While it won’t be truly random, I am thinking of keeping things interesting by doing an on-the-spot pairing exercise. 

Will there be a break during the event?

Yes, we will take a 15-minute break around 3.30 or so. There will be chai and some small snacks for purchase. Please bring change. 

Can I bring my kids?

There is limited space at the library community room, specifically for kids to run around. If your kids can bring a book or activity to do and hang out among adults, it will be perfectly fine. 

---

So about those questions…..

How many rounds will we have?

There will be 6-8 rounds of movies based trivia depending on how fast we roll. We will finish no later than 5:30 pm. Earlier if possible.

Will all questions be focused on Bollywood movies?

No. The questions are designed to cover the broader Indian spectrum. That being said, some rounds are more Bollywood centric than others. Three of the rounds will give teams a chance to pick from a selection of Hindi, Tamil or Telugu movies. So you can play to strengths in those rounds.

Should I be a movie buff to do well? Will the questions be from the black and white era?

You don’t need to be a movie buff but it will help if are someone who occasionally watches (or used to watch) Hindi/Tamil/Telugu movies. If I were to plot a Bell curve, the healthy center of the distribution will be movies from 1985-2005 which coincides with the time many of us used to watch a lot of movies.

Will the questions be hard?

For folks who have attended earlier edition of Discover India, this year will be the easiest by every metric. My goal with this event is to ensure that over 85% of questions are answered by participants. This year will be no different. I expect the hit rate to be higher than 90% this time around.

Are there only direct question type rounds?

No. There will be dumb charades and Pictionary in addition to audio and visual rounds. The event is designed to keep you on your toes.

Should I prepare?

Not sure how you can prepare. If you want to look at my earlier responses and do some prep, you can but it will not make a huge difference one way or the other.

Are there prizes?

In the first year, I offered gift card prizes. There was overwhelming feedback that participants preferred no prizes. So keeping with that, we will not have prizes but you do get valuable bragging rights until next year's event which is a bigger deal than any prize I can give. 

Parting thoughts?

Be prepared to meet new people, hang out with old friends and have a lot of fun in a very intimate setting. It gets crazy in a good way. Discover India is one of our smallest events designed to have people crammed into a room and feed off each other’s energies. 

CIC Discover India Quiz 2016

Wish you all a wonderful 2016. Hope the year has been treating you well till date. As always, CIC is busy trying to put together an interesting slate of events for you to participate, meet new people, and most of all, have fun. To that effect, we are happy to announce our very first event of 2016, the second annual CIC Discover India. The first ever Discover India Quiz was held in 2015 and the response was very enthusiastic. Participants seemed to enjoy the event as much as I, the quizmaster had in putting the event together. So, it made sense to continue the tradition and organize one for 2016. 

The community has a lot of new faces and this is an event designed to bring new people together and get them to meet some of the folks who have lived in the community for a long time. As many participants from last year would attest, this is the ideal icebreaker event. You can partner up with someone you know or use the opportunity to meet someone new. By the time the event comes to a close, rest assured, you would have made a lot of new friends. 

---

Name of the Event: Discover India Quiz 2016

When: 2 pm - 5 pm, Sunday,February 21st, 2016.

Where: Vineland Public Library, 1450 Blossom Hill Road, San Jose, CA 95118

Sign up: Click here to fill the form.

Early Sign up deadline: Jan 31 (comes with some perks)

Late Sign up deadline: Feb 11

Walk ins: Only if we are short of teams. Strongly urge people to sign up early.

For F.A.Qs on signups and teams, see below.

---

What is Discover India?

Discover India is our very own quiz and trivia event. This is an opportunity for all the smart folks of Cambrian to match their wits against one another. Worry not, this is not a hardcore quiz. No prior preparation is required. It is a trivia event and has something for everyone. I wrote an FAQ for the event for last year and much of the spirit of it holds true. You can read that here. If you are unsure if this is an event for you, reach out to me and I will connect you with one of last year’s participants. You can talk to them and make your decision. There will be a lot more information I will provides we get closer to the event with regards to rounds, points, etc.

Last year, we had prizes and the wonderful community strongly urged me to do away with them because they wanted to just have fun. So to that effect, based on feedback from last year, there will be no competitive prizes.

There will be rounds of jeopardy style questions, a few rounds of audio and video questions from movies and stuff, dedicated cricket and sports rounds, 20 questions, dumb charades and more. Most importantly, all questions will be about India or Indians. So it will be an awesome opportunity to learn more about your country. I can assure you that you will walk away learning something new about India. 

This is a team event. Each team will be composed of 3-5 adult members and up to 2 child members (9 or above). If you cant form a team in advance, worry not. We will get you into a team at the venue. The key is to sign up in advance. Families can participate together as teams or join hands with friends. We'll provide a detailed FAQ about the rounds and specifics, a week before the event. 

How is Discover India 2016 different from the one last year?

This is one question I wanted to address for those who participated or heard about the event from last year. 

• This year’s event will be a little shorter in duration (I will have more questions than time permits as always but we will try to finish quicker).
• We will have significantly better video systems (this).
• We will have much better audio (the CIC has its own Ion Block Rocker that can easily fill a room with good sound)
• Audience Prizes !
• Interactive rounds. I am trying to take the best from last year and do more of it. I am also trying a lot of cool new ideas this year that will hopefully excite participants.
• Questions do not test your trivia skills. Questions are designed to make you connect the dots and work together as a team. 
• Designed to bring families, friends and newcomers together. It is our best icebreaker event. Make the most of it.

What is this early sign up you are talking about?

To incentivize people to sign up early (and help me prepare appropriately), there will be some bonus perks. These perks will only be revealed after the Early signup deadline passes. Suffice to say, it will give these teams a slight edge going into the event. Is that reason enough? 

Do I have to prepare?

No, no, and no. Just sign up, meet new and old friends and have a lot of fun. 

---

If you want to warm up here are some audio quizzes I(Prabhu) did a while back. 

Links:

Hindi Movie Dialogues Quiz

Republic Day Patriotic Quiz

Indian TV ads Quiz - Part 1, Part 2

Trivia: The image on the blog post link and on the top of this page is my rough rendering of the Thanjavur Brihadeeswarar temple which turned 1000 in 2010. No kidding! Know more about your country. Sign up for Discover India today. You lose nothing but you gain a lot.

---

When the CIC came together to rediscover India.

Wow.

What a fun day! I am just blown away by the fabulous response from this community, nay family for the Discover India 2015 event. It was a sheer joy to see everyone huddle together and come up with answers for everything I could throw at them. The camaraderie was remarkable. And that alone was worth the effort. Before I go on and on, a whole lot of thanks are in order. 

- To BB Travel Experts and Bomi Patel for being a wonderful sponsor of the event. We hope to work with BBTES for future events and also work with them on our travel needs.

- To the brain trust at CIC for guiding me through this event. For all the time I am spotted at CIC events, this was my first real shot at organizing one for the community. And I learnt a lot along the way. To that I am thankful to Latha, Sonal, Krithika, Anjana, Sachin, and Manish. So much more to learn from you before Diwali.

- To Rosy Singh for helping out with the snacks and for helping teams with answers when they needed them. Thank you so much. Look forward to seeing you participate next year.

- To Praneetha for taking fantastic pictures that tell the whole story. The images captured not just the event but the emotion- the rapt attentiveness to the question, the bonhomie, the joys, the disappointments, the works. Loved the pictures.

- To Chandana for rushing home and bringing the all important speaker. I promise the sound will be better managed next time. maybe with a better laptop and much better recording.

- To Venki, Shriram and many more who helped me get the place set up in the first place before the event.

- To Amit N, Amit D, Latha, Santhosh, Venkata, and Eshwari for helping clean up the hall afterwards. 

- To Team Panditji who bore not just the best name but took the effort to dress up for the occasion. My Nehru cap off to you.

- To Sanketh for keeping score during the game. You kept everyone honest. Good job.

- To my wonderful wife and son who gave me the time to work on this by taking on everything I was supposed to be doing instead of this. And for helping me manage the event. 

- And to all of you participants and audience. Young and old, you rock. It was not a short event. It was 4 hours long. And you stayed enthusiastic all that time. It was so much fun putting questions together and then seeing them get knocked out of the park. 

- My congrats to not just the winners but every one of you who participated and made this an event to remember. For some of you it took a lot to overcome your hesitation and jump in. And that was so awesome.

The CIC has a lot more planned for the rest of the year. Dive in, organize and participate. It is a whole lot of fun.

Until the next trivia event, keep guessing.

Announcing our first event for 2015: Discover India 2015 sponsored by BB Travel Experts

We are excited to announce the very first event of this year, Discover India 2015, sponsored by the wonderful folks at BB Travel Experts. There is a lot to talk about this event. In this post, we will go over the broad outline of the event and describe what it is all about. We will communicate the specifics, rules and such, a week before the event.  For now, we request that you please add the event to your calendar. There is a calendar invite setup in the Upcoming Events page. Here is the participant signup sheet. 

---

Name of the Event: Discover India 2015

When: 1 pm - 5 pm, Sunday, March 8th, 2015.

Where: Vineland Public Library, 1450 Blossom Hill Road, San Jose, CA 95118

Sign up: Click here to sign up

---

What is Discover India?

Discover India is our very own quiz and trivia event. This is the first of what we hope will become an annual affair. This is an opportunity for all the smart folks of Cambrian to match their wits against one another. Worry not, this is not a hardcore quiz. It is a trivia event and has something for everyone. There will be prizes for the winning team and runner up. Sign up here. 

There will be rounds of jeopardy style questions, a few rounds of audio and video questions from movies and stuff, dedicated cricket question rounds in keeping with the World Cup, pictionary, 20 questions, dumb charades and more. Most importantly, all questions will be about India or Indians. So it will be an awesome opportunity to learn more about your country. I can assure you that you will walk away learning something new about India. 

This is a team event. Each team will be composed of 3-5 members. Anyone who is interested can be part of a team. If you cant form a team in advance, worry not. We will get you into a team at the venue. Families can participate together as teams or join hands with friends. We'll provide a detailed FAQ about the mechanics of the event a week before the event. 

If you want to warm up here are some audio quizzes I(Prabhu) did recently. 

Links:

Hindi Movie Dialogues Quiz

Republic Day Patriotic Quiz

Indian TV ads Quiz - Part 1, Part 2

---

Who is our generous sponsor for the event?

We are excited to announce that BB Travel Experts (BBTES) will be the exclusive sponsor for the event. BB Travel Experts is a full service travel agency offering airline, cruise, train, rental car and hotel reservations. Often times we have friends and family traveling on vacations within and outside the US. BB Travel Experts offer a full suite of services to support all your needs. You can reach them in the following ways:

Website: http://www.bbtes.com

Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/bbtes

Phone: 408-264-4395 / 408-390-0750