Game Night

A few days after Christmas we got a crew of six together for some board games, lots of laughs, and general good times. The guilty parties included my girlfriend, mom, sister, friend-of-the-family-for-so-long-she-is-family Rose, former roommate Ken, and myself. Here we all are in a round of Toronto's pride: Beyond Balderdash.

Games

The classic dice game started the night, but with a twist shamelessly stolen from Ginger's family: instead of beginning with three chips, we bought in with three quarters. The winner took the pot of $6.00 as well as a Michigan Instant Lottery Ticket.

After a few rounds of LCR, we took up one of my favorite games of all time: Beyond Balderdash. Highlights included defining

• acronym LTAB as "Love Trumps All, Baby!"
• word tankle as everything from "a tank top for your ankle" to tinkle "... at a velocity greater than one can possibly imagine"

Results

When all was said and done, everyone had taken at least one lottery ticket and my sister walked off with 2012's Balderdash trophy.

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

Mascal Camping: SG Hill Meets Nature (part 2)

In the last post we took a look at getting to the remote and gorgeous part of India known as Mascal.

Team Race

What would a ThoughtWorks University outing be without some sort of team-based race? The 36 of us split into four teams: Black, Green, Orange, and White. We then partook in four different events for five minutes each.

1. Mine Sweeper

Our first event was the most challenging. A course was laid out with oars. Plastic pieces were in spread throughout the course. The object was to get through the course without touching anything. One other thing: we had to be blindfolded and spun around before beginning. One person would go at a time, with the rest of the team guiding. We had two attempts and zero successes.

2. The Spider Web

Our next game was also played at the only other camp I've attended: 6th grade camp. There are two poles with strings tied in criss-crossing patterns, leaving several holes open. Each member of the team must get from one side to the other without touching the strings, or going through the same opening twice. Our strategy was to have two heavyweights go through the bottom holes and send the lighter people through the top holes. One of our trainers, Felix, used his Kung-Fu skills. Demonstrated here after the completion of the games.

3. Austrailian Australian Car

I can't be sure why this is the called the Australian car, because our Australian driver let us know they've got real cars down under too. Five people from our team had to stand on the planks, hold the strings, and move together. The object was to walk as far as possible. It wasn't easy, but Team Green did quite well in my very biased opinion.

4. Inner Tube Walking

I couldn't manage to get a photo of this event -- oh how I wish these getaways had a photographer to capture all the moments. Our team had to huddle up and get as close as possible for a circumference measurement. The reason why wasn't clear, but we ended up the smallest with three lightweights on the shoulders of the three heavyweights. We then stretched an inner tube to accommodate all of us and started to walk up the hillside. The winner of this event was the team that walked the farthest.

We proudly took fourth place overall and headed to lunch. We were advised to eat a lot; there were big things in store for us.

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.

TWU Amazing Race (part 2)

In the last post we took a look at the beginning of the Amazing Race events.

The second event? Darts. Darts in the park. The kids from Chicago were assumed to be good at this, because it's an American game. Unfortunately darts to Americans isn't the same as cricket to Indians. We adjusted the rules slightly: If a dart hit the board, it was worth 5 points; if it somehow landed on the bullseye, it was 15 points.

Then began the mummification process. We took the tallest, and slenderest, member of our team and mummified him to the nth degree with toilet paper. It was quite funny to see the crowd of park-goers gathering at this point. By the end, our mummy couldn't see, though he did claim he could breathe.

The last phase was coming up when I spotted some graffiti. This graffiti wasn't in the style of Detroit or Chicago though. This property defacement was so different I needed a picture.

Finally it was time for the Amazing Race. We all started with one clue, 1.5 hours, and a beginning location. Our team's location was MG Road, which was covered in depth here. We ran there from the park, solving the clues between strides. Lucky for us a 25-year local of Bangalore was on our team.

The race involved tons of running. The first clue lead us to a restaurant where no one knew they were supposed to give us the next clue. We finally wrangled it out of them somehow and ran down the road to the next location. This continued for an hour, with local knowledge playing an incredibly important role.

Highlights

An extraordinarily cramped ride in an auto-rickshaw

Sprinting through a downpour -- monsoon season is not over

Flagging a driver down and hitchhiking in his car -- 6 of us in a compact