From LUMS to Nascon

This post chronicles the brave few who battled (and conquered) sloth, stupidity, bandits, disorganization, and cold. Not being one for words, I will use pictures (taken with my trusty K800i) to do most of the talking. As much as I like the phrase "our trip began in earnest", I don't quite think it fit the mood too precisely. To be honest, it was more like this: 

Quite fascinating how mature IEEE people are. Oh, to clarify; a little background: Nascon is a yearly event held at FAST University in Islamabad and has all sorts of exciting things like free style / break dance competitions, X-games with BMX bike tricks and stunt skate-boarding, wet-tshirt competitions and 18-hour marathon raves. Honestly though, it's a CounterStrike and Speed Programming tournament, with a few other geeky competitions no one would be interested in thrown in (but the university is actually called FAST, honest. They kept saying it with a straight face). But it has cash prizes and promised a vacation for the weekend, and so here I am blogging about having participated in it. Cash prizes never hurt anyone. So, getting back to the point, two vans went with two student organizations cooperating to organize the trip; the intrepid LCGA (LUMS Computer Gaming Association) and the LUMS chapter of IEEE (incidentally headed by the famous Mr. Yahya Cheema, who previously appeared on this blog in a comment by whipaz on this previous post. If you're bored enough to read that post, you should know that I actually DID get a decent grade in Linear Algebra. Many years from now scientists will ooh and aah in wonder at my theory linking John Williams and Jurassic Park to Linear Algebra). Also, incidentally, I don't think anyone in LUMS knows exactly why the LCGA is an "association", or to put it better, what it is an association of, including the people heading it.

And so we set off, all eager, bubbling with excitement and youthful enthusiasm, discussing strategies and tactics of how best to deliver the definitive blow to our opponents that would turn the tide in our favour - us, the hard-working under-appreciated underdogs of the CS world. In actuality we looked like this:

At this point I should explain that CS players do usually have rather colourful nicknames.

That symbol of youthful vigor and passion on the left is none other than the famous "Lucy", member of our underdog CS team that happens to have won the last ten or so tournaments it has taken part in. Ok maybe I exaggerated the underdog bit. The only words spoken between the entire CS team for the duration of the trip were the random mutterings about "bubbles" by Lucy (don't look at me, I have no idea what he was talking about, but by the sound of it, it was quite, um... strategic) and the sporadic shrugs of agreement (if there is such a thing) by our beloved captain Jaydee (who I'm sure could hear Lucy loud and clear over the high-bass ear-phones of his W800i walkman/phone).

That powers that be decided that since going by road wasn't punishment enough, we would be going not through the beautiful, scenic, smooth Motorway, but through the God-forsaken, bandit-infested G.T Road, because some bozo said it costs less in fuel to go from there. Apart from the money gained from fuel being spent on the thirty odd toll booths we passed through, the ride was extremely uncomfortable, bumpy, and dull, but it did make for an interesting bit on the return stretch; more on that later.

And so we drove... 

 

 

...and we drove some more...

Until finally we made a short pitstop where Teejay (who, once the dust settled, was part of the team that emerged 2nd in Speed Programming) is shown in this picture explaining how he's so happy they give free Mountain Dew refills at this wonderful, the-jewel-in-the-crown-of-hygienic-places-of-the-earth rest stop:

They said the smell was due to a fault in the refilling machine.

A little while later, to make matters more fun, our van's tyre burst.

…Twice.

The first time it happened we stopped, the driver looked at it, got back in, and then drove on for another 6 km or so before tyre completely came apart. I think he was trying for the Nobel prize. Brilliant man, that. It took us a while while they changed the trouble making tyre with a spare. We weren't exactly stopped in the middle of nowhere, so everyone piled out and explored the area. We found a "Sports Complex" that consisted of 2 swings and 1 slide and lots of mud, and this sign board proclaiming the unending “frandship” of one organization for the school.

Eventually we made it to Islamabad and FAST. Thanks to some brilliant organization skills on the part of Nascon, we were told the Speed Programming and CS would clash and we’d have to reschedule everything, or give up one of the two. Eventually by the end of the second day, LCGA’s team had won CS, and IEEE won nothing (nothing significant anyway :P … and by significant I mean first-prize), but I won’t emphasize that point too much since they were gracious enough to delay the bus leaving without us CS folks even though our final lasted 2 hours longer than it should have. We arrived back at LUMS two days after we left at five in the morning after a four hour bus ride – which I don’t remember at all since I fell asleep going over the first river and only woke up when we were passing Gaddafi stadium in the heart of Lahore. The IEEE folks were nice enough to give us some ice cream and other goodies (for their non-1^st placed teams, I presume) in Rawalpindi. Apparently the bus driver had taken full advantage of G.T road by going over 130 km/h (something not possible on the Motorway because of the strict enforcement of speed limits) which allowed us to reach Lahore in record time.

All in all, it was a wee bit too much khwari for the little money we won, especially since it was split five ways (CS is played 5 vs. 5). After breezing through the pool matches, I felt I played pretty good* (especially considering we were on inbuilt graphic card PCs which chugged out a shaky 50 fps and below 20 fps during gunfights) in the semis, and then played HORRIBLY in the finals (my PC died on me), but somehow the boys brought their game up to compensate and we won the final in straight maps (train 16–14, inferno 16–6). I’m trying to get my hands on a PC with enough RAM and HDD space to make a frag video of the replays that were recorded to show exactly all the sneakiness that was dealt out in that semi.

I’ll post the group photo we took whenever I get it from whoever's camera it was taken with. See ya’all at Procom.

 

* For those interested in one classic round in de_train, we were playing CT-side, buy round when the T’s had started playing a slow probing game which was proving to be quite devastating to our itchy, easily bored, explorative defence. In keeping with trend, I decide to head from the outside bombsite to T-mid (where the T’s come out from in an outside-rush. Incidentally my official position was to guard the INSIDE site), walking slowly, quietly all the way. I peak the corner to T spawn, turn around, and simultaneously see a poor unsuspecting T camping far away at alley and hear footsteps coming from the staircase/doorway at T spawn. They never knew what hit ‘em. The T at alley died with a skillfully guided triple burst headshot from my M4, a split second after which 3 T’s came charging down the staircase – completely innocent and unsuspecting (“we’re in T frikkin spawn, what the hell could happen to us here?”). One of them didn’t even have his gun out. I turned 180 and made quick work of all 3 before the last remaining T was ruthlessly hunted down and disposed of by 5 CTs that converged on him somewhere above drop ladder. Fun fun.