LAHORE – The Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) Olympiad 2011 continued with full swing on Thursday, as delegates geared up for the semifinals of the event. A high level of enthusiasm, creativity and team spirit was seen at all the events which had their entertaining moments as well. The screening of the music videos started of with some technical difficulties, but once they were resolved it was a smooth sailing. Only one group of participants was present, the rest being host team members and participants from other competitions.
Six of the music videos were video montages of places and people in Pakistan while two followed the lives of various morally degenerate characters who all met a gruesome ending. It seemed that patriotism and morality were the main issues that the participants were concerned with this year. The Click Flick and Photo Essay Workshop, conducted by professional photographer Dody, aimed to teach delegates how to take good photographs. In the workshop, various photography techniques were discussed and different types of photographs were shown. Dody did not only show his photographs, but astounding photographs taken by amateur students with basic cameras, which served to increase the morale of the delegates.
The participants in the Mind Quest Competition had to exercise quite a few brain cells to answer the challenging questions. Some of the wild guesses made the audience roar with laughter at their ingenuity. There were six rounds in total and the participants were ready as ever, holding the buzzers tight. The teams that qualified for the finals were Aitchison College, PPS and UET Taxila.
The declamations event was one of the most well organised events. The English declamations kicked off on a competitive note as every team wanted to bag a space at the finals. A delegate from LMDC was noteworthy in the competition. Wit, rhetoric and oratory skills were brilliantly employed by the participants.
The judges included Yasir Rizwan, Saad Salman and Haneya Ali. In the end, they were highly impressed by the performance of the delegates and the teams from Aitchison College and LGS branches stood out. The final round of Declamations (Urdu) started at 3 pm in A-14. Six teams had qualified for this round with each team comprising 2 speakers. Round 2 of chess started off promisingly as the participants came on time and looked more eager to play with only 2 walkouts.
The participants were divided into three pools A, B and C. Out of 18, 12 made it to the second round and each had to play 4 matches. Six participants will qualify for the final round, which is to be held tomorrow, on the basis of the highest points that they can score in the second round. So far, a member of pool c had scored the highest with 3 wins and 1 draw. If you thought that the Olympiad was all about debating or media related events, then the Math Enigma will prove you wrong. The competition consists of four rounds with no elimination until the second round.
After each round, the teams are given points and the team with the highest cumulative points is the winner. In the third round, teams consisting of two delegates were given four sets of questions (interestingly enough the question were chosen by teams for other teams) and given half an hour to solve. Four teams would progress from this round and go to the final buzzer round where they will have one to two minutes to answer the questions. A high level of imagination and creativity was displayed at the Thematic Art event. The most popular theme was Moonlight, however, the work on Possession by LGS Defence stood out.
Vampires, was also one well executed theme. The tent had comfy bean bags to create the perfect ambiance to bring out the artists’ inner mojo. On a topic “This house believes that those with plastic surgery should have it disclosed before having children”, Sheema Baloch of Pearl Institute argued that today if we allow the government to enter into our dressing rooms, tomorrow it will also enter into our kitchen, a roar of laughter was observed among the audience. On the other hand LGS team member, Murtaza was also prepared for the counter argument; he said that not telling about the plastic surgery can lead to deteriorating relationships.
