A fest is a time to let go of all unnecessary pressure and enjoy unconditionally. Oculus, SPIT’s techno-cultural fest helped bring this much-needed change, filled with various fun events to keep participants engaged and help them forget the monotonous life that every engineering student lives.
Virtual Stock Market
Both the days of Oculus saw wonderful events being organized, one of them being the Virtual Stock Market : Oculus’ flagship fun event. VSM, an event which aims at simulating the real world stock market. The event saw avid participation from business enthusiasts and had two different sessions held on both days of the fest. An app was created specially for the event and participants bought and sold shares based on hypothetical scenarios created by the organizers. The event was a massive success with participants thoroughly enjoying the event while competing to be the ultimate winners, who won prizes worth 75k. Hrishikesh Lokhande bagged first place on the first day while Utkarsh Jain won the next day, both winning cash prizes worth 25k.
IPL Auction
The IPL is a cultural phenomenon in our country and students got a chance to experience what a pre-bankruptcy Vijay Mallaya had the opportunity to do; buy and sell the best cricketers of the world. The IPL auction saw teams of 4 each represent the various teams in a real time auction where the winning teams of the preliminary round would advance to the final rounds and the team with the highest number of points in the end would be declared the winner. The event saw cut throat competition from cricket enthusiasts gunning to create the ultimate team and even saw a tie between three teams in the final round wherein the team with the highest balance amount was declared the winner. In the end, the team with members : Swapnil Mandavilli, Abhinav Pallyil, Siddharth Mohanty and Pratham Solanki emerged as the winner.
Fandom Quiz
Many pop culture enthusiasts were delighted as they had the chance to compete in Oculus’ own Fandom Quiz which gave participants the opportunity to prove their knowledge about various TV Series, Superhero Universes as well as sports and other fan favourite topics.
Hogathon
Most people say French is the language of love, but in all honesty, food wins the way to anyone’s heart. Hogathon was the perfect event for food lovers to indulge in delicacies and fill themselves up to the brim. The first round saw contestants devour a pizza in pairs of two and the winner of this round proceeded to the next stage. Here, they had to prove reaffirm their foodie identity by eating a bowl of noodles, but wait up there’s a catch. They had to do this without the use of their hands and the winners proceeded to the final much-anticipated pani puri round. The winner ate 24 pani purists in a mere minute with the first and second runners up trailing not far behind at 20 and 17 pan puris respectively.
Footpool
A delightful combo of mass favorites football and pool led to quite an exciting event named ‘Footpool’. A framework similar to that of a pool table was arranged on ground with footballs substituting the billiards balls and players kicking the cue (foot)ball to make the shot, with the player securing the maximum points winning the round. As no prior knowledge regarding pool or football was required, the event saw enthusiastic participation from many and gathered quite an audience near the setup.
“It was very important to be flexible and make sure the event was participant-friendly. This strategy did work in our favour and we saw a lot of on-the-spot registrations and people participating multiple times, making our event a success”, said Chirayu Betkekar, Head of team FootPool.
Paintball
In the same arena one of the most engaging event, Paintball was also being conducted. Quite a popular sport these days, this event saw major participation from the fest-attendees. In this PUBG and COD era the zest among the participants to enjoy a real-life shooting sport was extremely evident on the paintball field. With teams of four competing, each player was seen as energetic as other to colour the opposite team the most and claim victory!
Lan Gaming
While these outdoor events became an instant hit amongst the crowd, the LAN Gaming, arranged with the motto of ‘playing extreme’ for all the gaming geeks, attracted many gamers providing them with a great platform to prove their skills. While Paintball provided a chance to unleash the inner gamer to many, this event with traditional gaming sets didn’t lose its charm at all. With a few of the most popular games like FIFA 20 Tournament, PUBG, Call Of Duty and Counter Strike: Global Offensive, exciting vouchers and cash prizes being offered to the victorious competitors, this event allured many. Just like last year the room was enhanced into a gaming arena with the bean bags and dimmed light whilst the atmosphere buzzed with emotion and energy.
All in all the above mentioned fun events truly were a vital spark to the spectacular fest that Oculus 2020 was.
Report by Saikrishna Muralidharan and Garima Gupta
Photography by Sumit Kulkarni, Gaurav Parulekar, Vaibhavi Chincholikar, Jahnvi Shah and Shreya Jain