Young minds and yet Great thinkers - IDF Quiz 2014; FAIPS wins the trophy fifth time in a row

IIK Staff Reporter; Photo: Gafoor Moodady Monday, November 17, 2014

The atmosphere in the Kuwait medical Association (KMA) auditorium was that of fun, excitement and thrill as the curtains for IDF -2014 quiz opened and began its prelims to select the best six teams as finalists out of the total fifteen registered teams representing

various Indian schools in Kuwait as follows

1 Indian Community School (Senior) 1.Tara Tommy Varghese (XII), 2. Ahmed Abubakr (XII)

2 Indian Learners Own Academy 1. Maha Khot (X), 2. Vishnu Vardhan Reddy (X)

3 Salmiya Indian Model School 1. Janet Menon(X), 2. Gwynete D'silva (X)

4 Gulf Indian School 1. Eshita Bansal (X), 2. Aleena Mary Santhosh (X)

5 India International School 1. Bharath Prasanth (X), 2. Leonard Abraham Cheriyan (X)

6 Indian Central School 1. Naureen Nawaz (XI), 2. Sonal Yadav (XI)

7 United Indian School 1. Esra Haroon (XII), 2. Emad Uddin Khan Haroon (XI)

8 Indian Community School, Khaitan 1. Mohammed Basil Habib (X)., 2. Riya Mercy Jacob ( X)

9 Indian English Academy School (Don Bosco) 1. Elrich Joshua Miranda (X), 2. Shinayd Miriam Thomas (XI)

10 Indian Educational School (Bhavans) 1. Mitoshi Nandi (XI), 2. Arunima M Nair (XII)

11 Carmel School, Kuwait 1. Debi Mariam Teddy ( XII), 2. Mercy Jochebed Diviaraj Antony(XII)

12 Indian Public School 1. Salman Khan ( XII), 2. Mohammed Yousuf (XII)

13 Integrated Indian School 1 Mariam Jalil (XII) , 2. Sandy Jose (XI)

14 Jabriya Indian School 1. Najva Rajabzadeh - Class XI, 2. Yousef Ibrahim - Class XI

15 Fahaheel Al Watanieh Indian Pvt School (FAIPS) 1. Ameena Bushra Shafiq ( XII) , 2. Mituna Gopalakrishnan (XII)

The audience most of whom were children, meanwhile were given a taste of what is to come in the next two hours by engaging them with a rally of questions in audience round posed by Dr. Ajay and Dr. Lata.

A total of thirty questions were asked to test the exposure general public had with the medical field. To say the least the performance by members of audience was truly remarkable. A part of the credit to the spread of this kind of knowledge goes to Indian Doctor’s Forum (IDF), Kuwait which has conducted many public awareness sessions through its cherished history of a decade. The results of the prelims in fact showed this awareness, as there was tie in the prelims and an extended time for prelims was given to bring out the competitive six finalists teams.

The moment of declaring the six finalists came and the Vice president of IDF formally opened the final session by first introducing the already famous IDF and its various social oriented activities which brought in the idea of having a health quiz among school children and hence began the success story of annual event of IDF Health Quiz about five years back. He said it is one of the most keenly awaited annual events of IDF by the general public. It has resulted in encouraging many children taking up medicine as their career ably supported by their respective parents. He then called upon both the quiz masters Dr. Sebastian and Dr. AnanthapriyaVaidya. After a brief tete-a- tete between themselves and with the audience the quiz masters called upon the six finalists to the dais amongst thunderous ovation from the audience.

The finalists ‘team names were picked up from the Greek alphabets to prep up the scientific temper during the session.

FAIPS got the a; Carmel school ß; Indian Community School ?; GIS d; UIS ? & Bhavans ?.

They were briefly interviewed by the quiz masters and it was heartening to note that role models for most of the student contestants were their respective parents which was warmly greeted by the audience. The interesting part was most of them had also various fields in medicine as their career options and each of the contestant had a goal in mind towards social causes ranging from environment protection to eradicating economic inequality.

The quiz session was kick started by Dr. Sebastian quoting the famous quote of Thomas Jefferson, The harder you work the luckier you get”

The quiz session had eight rounds each with a different set of rules and as the sessions progressed the excitement among both contestants and audience increased.

Round 1 was a prep up session with 10 points for the team the question is directed to and 5 points for the team the question passed to. The questions were of a nature that hit the headlines sometime or the other ranging from Ebola fever to symbols used usually in

medical field. UIS was a clear leader at the end of the first round answering most of the questions.

Round 2 proceeded on similar rules bit with a factor of difficulty raised since the questions were based on some the history of medicine like microscope discoverer profession to some little known facts about leeches. But the contestants showed immense power of brain work by answering most of the questions and the results at the end of round two was that teams ?, ? & ? were joint toppers with other teams coming close.

Round 3 was a buzzer round – first buzzer hit the team gets chance to answer the question with 20 points for correct answer and -10 points for a negative answer and the question is not passed to other teams. The theme of the round was to understand the link between two pictures shown on the screen, like picture of law of partial pressure of gases and a picture representing color blindness are connected by Dalton because the law was propounded by Dalton and color blind was described by Dalton who himself was color blind. The round was truly exciting and brain teasers were posed. At the end of the round 3, team a emerged as a clear winner.

Round 4 was christened as super-size me round where each team is given the choice for opting either 20 points or 10 points. With 20 points opted the team gets all 20 points for correct answer and -5 points if the answer is incorrect. The option of 10 points is awarded 10 points for correct answer and no negative points for incorrect answer. All teams for 10 points to play safe and in the last question the team ? opted for 20 points quite bravely but unfortunately lost 5 points on that question for an incorrect answer. The question to identify the person who stopped Ebola from spreading in Nigeria and in turn also died a heroic death. The person was Dr. Ameyo Stella Adadevoh and when the answer was given out by the quiz masters, the audience gave resounding ovation of appreciation to the great departed soul.

Round 5 was a variety of sorts with each team getting a chance to write the answer within five seconds. If the answer is correct by only one team then that team gets 25 points and with more teams getting the right answer 5points each will be deducted. For one of the questions all the teams got the right answer and hence no points were awarded to any team. At the end of round 5 the swaying continued and the first place was notched up by a and ? with ß coming to a close second.

Round 6 was a video round with question being asked after the complete video is shown. The interesting feature of this round was that the videos shown were apparently obvious in nature but the question asked was a complete stunner. A video showing a movie clip of Hrithik Roshan was presented and a team was very eager to get the answer before the video was completed and ended up giving wrong answer. The question was what type of neurosurgery he underwent recently and not on his famous six fingers he has on his right hand. The end of this round took team a right on to the top with ? coming a close second and ß on third place.

Round 7 was more complicated than other rounds where the directed team was asked a question and other teams are asked to bid for more points. The points were calculated based on the right answer and the maximum bid points. The question looked simple but the answer expected wa