Control + S

Over the past weekend we celebrated the 23rd birthday of a ThoughtWorker. A few interesting traditions came up in the process of having cake and waiting for pizza.

Little Kicks

The first shocked me, and I wasn't even there to witness it. It's apparently a tradition in India to kick the birthday boy once for every year he is old. With a bit of assistance, I later realized that we have traditions like this in the West as well; it's just more often 23 hugs than kicks.

Dumb Charades

While we waited for pizza, a game broke out -- Dumb Charades. In Dumb Charades, there are two teams who each take turns sending a member to the center to act out movie titles. The participants were kind enough to go with only English movies. This was my first time playing, but it seems to be quite the rage here.

My favorite turn had to be for "Save the Last Dance", whose title was acted out by a colleague named Kaushik. He mixed innovation and resourcefulness superbly, and was the reason why I had to post.

It should come as no surprise that people who spend at least 8 hours a day on computers know a few keyboard shortcuts. What may come as a surprise is the keyboard shortcuts we use in everyday life. For example, Kaushik was clearly miming two keys when acting out the first word of the title. The only trouble is we didn't know which two keys. The guesses were plentiful:

• "Control + C!"
• "Control + V!"
• "Control + Print Screen!"
• "Control + O!"
• "Control + A!"
• "Alt + Tab!"

Then we finally nailed it: Control + S for...save.

"New keyboard" by r3v || cls on Flickr

So today's post comes with a moral: always learn your keyboard shortcuts.

Note Dumb Charades is typically played with English and Hindi movies. The actor may or may not have the opportunity to let his team know via signal which language the movie is in.