Ceremony

We've covered bits and pieces of the closing days of TWU XVIII with Ending on a High Note and Graduates. The only piece we didn't really cover was the ceremony.

After a brief slideshow put together by the trainers Felix and Elian, we announced diplomas. The first several graduates gave a speech upon receipt. Hilariously, the speech-giving ended by request. Now that's an agile, adaptable team!

Elian was my coach and presented me with my diploma.

Out of nowhere, there were chants for dancing. I knew it'd be much less fun without the other half of the award-winning team.

Six and a half weeks later, SG Hill is a graduate of the University and has 160 hours of project experience.

The next project begins Monday in sunny Los Angeles, California.

Note In an effort for cleaner posts, picture attributions popup when holding your mouse over the pictures. The first three were taken by Sumeet.

Dance Night at the Orphanage

ThoughtWorks is pretty active with an orphanage in Bangalore. We arranged to visit said orphanage on this Tuesday after work. It took about an hour to get there in traffic with seats so small I wished I was shorter.

The children were each presented with two things that brought amazing smiles to their faces. The first item was a toothbrush; the second was candy. I thought it a beautiful gesture of yin and yang. Clothes were also delivered -- but instead of a fashion show, we were delighted with singing and dancing (including a particularly genuine rendition of If You're Happy and You Know It).

One of the highlights for me was this young lady asking me if I would dance with her. As you might expect, we cut quite a rug together.

Roughly 1.5 hours into our visit, an impromptu dance-off broke out between Mahadev and...me. We're talking complete with surrounding circle and clapping. It was exciting, to say the least. Luckily we can relive the magic here. Cheers to Chirdeep for the camerawork.

Quality not good enough? No worries -- see it in High-Definition at the following links!

• High-Definition YouTube Version
• High-Definition Vimeo Version
• 11 more photos of the orphanage trip in my Flickr account