A complete and utter thrashing

As some of you may know, I made UCD's varsity team for College Bowl, a sort of team Jeopardy. As part of the varsity squad, I was on UCD's 'B' squad at the Cardinal Classic, a Quiz Bowl invitational (The 'A' squad was represented by UCD's All-Star squad, who'll represent the school at College Bowl regionals).

First time I'd ever been to Stanford, or Palo Alto, for that matter. Palo Alto is apparently the third-most expensive place to live in the United States, and I definitely believe. The campus was gorgeous. It was somewhat surreal having the whole Columbia tragedy as a sort of somber backdrop to the whole event.

The other schools present were Berkeley, Cal Tech, UCLA, USC, Pomona, Fresno State and, believe it or not, Texas A&M. Oddly enough, Stanford wasn't competing in the tournament. Berkeley fielded 4 teams (all of which were in the top five), and Pomona hosted two. Funniest thing: almost everyone else seemed nerdier than we were, and we're about the nerdiest UCD has to offer. I have never seen so many smart-looking people together in one place in my life. Many of the seemed like they'd smart at the touch of sunlight.

So it's maybe not surprising that we received a complete and utter beat down, nerd-style. Both of our victories came against Pomona's team. Worst thrashing we were on the wrong end of: 500-20. Yup.

During lunch break, we briefly swung by Stanford's gorgeous chapel. Here's a detail of part of the front (Note: 127Kb, but worth it). Unfortunately, I accidentally saved over my only picture of the entire front of the cathedral a few minutes ago. We ate at a burger joint in downtown Palo Alto. Ridiculous prices: I shelled out $8.74 for a cheeseburger and a milkshake. Here's my teammate Ruwan gawking at his receipt. The meal was good, but those were definitely not $5 burgers.

After returning to Stanford for yet another lesson in humility, we headed back to Davis. The 'B' team was 2-10. The 'A' team was 4-8, but won a prize for being the best team without any graduate students on the roster.

Note to self:
Things I need to learn for next year's tournament

1. Everything

The car that I was in ended up dropping off a team member at the house of a close friend of his, a former sound engineer who is now a Coptic priest. We were treated to a delicious Mediterranean dinner, followed by a demonstration of his awesome home entertainment system at full blast.

All in all, a varied and interesting day.