Paddles of Fury

Note This post is inspired by Richard's latest post.

Since TWU began, we've been playing some serious ping-pong here at the office. In youth, I played pretty often. In the past few years I've hardly picked up a paddle. The good news is that classic, sought-after suburb-of-Detroit form is back; most of the time my arms can't even be seen clearly.

I have been quite lucky in my ventures so far, utilizing the net as almost a third player. Often times opponents will seek to adjust the magical wonder out of said net.

We're pretty lucky here -- both offices in Bangalore feature foosball, ping-pong, and a few instruments. Our Diamond District office also has a snooker table, which I recently learned is different than pool.

Did You Notice? One can easily guess the date of the picture by the state of the beard

TWU Amazing Race (part 1)

On Sunday, August 15th, the graduates of the previous ThoughtWorks University scheduled a day in the city. It was incredibly generous of them to take the time to prepare events and guide us throughout the day.

We started the day in Bangalore's Shiva Temple. It was an interesting escape inside the city, with mountains created in the temple that attempted to take visitors to another place. The relentless growth was obvious though, as billboards and building corners peaked above the faux mountain tops. Shiva, the god of destruction, was present. "Interesting," I thought, as I cut my arm on the way in as I felt my peace of mind destroyed in thinking of the looming implications.

From the temple it was on to a park. We had breakfast and arranged ourselves into teams. Just as you'd expect from a group of 20-somethings, the team names we had to choose from were the Naked Warriors and Flying Dragons. Solving the tough problems as I often do, we compromised on my hybrid suggestion and competed as the Flying Naked Warrior Dragons.

The first competition was multi-faceted. Each team member had to complete the sequence:

1. Jump rope to the potato sack
2. Get in the potato sack and hop to a line in the ground
3. Tell the next member of your team to start step 1
4. Run back with the sack to the middle of the course
5. Grab the jump rope and return it to the start

The cycle gets repeated until you've run out, at which point the clock stops and your team's time is recorded.

Remember those street dogs? A tame one was present for all of this event.