Team day at Resotel

16 Sep 2011/Team building event/Parkfield Resotel/Chintamani road -> That was the calendar event from Sumana. When the day started with the perfect weather conditions (typical of Bangalore rainy season) this sounded like another normal day of team building, but as this has ended it has just left behind a small hangover created with a day of fun. This was a recipe cooked with a whacky idea to add the adventure spice (not sure whom to give the credit, but at this point of time will award it to Sumana), tanginess of nice ideas behind events (Thomas and his team takes credit), sweetness of participation and garnished with some high energy. Seemed like each one of us were loving every moment, thus the day flowed with activity and fun – Perhaps we are already a team well built!

My outlook woke up with one large calendar event for the whole day with only fun in the agenda. Its usual for me to wake up early on such days purely attributed to adrenalin. Got into car and called up Vinod to check if the bus will be, as usual an hour late, But had not expected this to be a wake-up call. Seemed like the bus had left on time, which means there would be a bunch of people who missed it. KR-Puram bridge jam gave me my daily dosage of caffeine, without which life ain’t normal at all. Imagine how boring it will be to start your day, if you are not able to yell at a few people, some head banging on the steering wheel and seeing a few irritant faces when jumping lanes. One of those days when I felt some of my taxes have been put to good use by the government when I drove out of KR Puram into the renovated 6 lane highway. It was a pleasant drive to the resort amidst farms on Chintamani road which are slowly getting gobbled up by the real estate. Resort had a nice green spacious look with lot of trees and lawns, housed a decent pool, nice cricket field, separate badminton, tennis, volleyball courts. Breakfast at the pool side ‘gazebo’ was mostly uneventful with exception of a few extra calorie Vadas making space between the idlis and bread.

We had to take the bus to reach the rappelling point 25 kms from resort. We were already one hour behind the schedule owing to the delays of waiting for people and pushing people into the bus. Sumana in her soft tone was able to push the guys who wanted to spend all day in the cricket field. The engine on the bus was last oiled when the crude oil was at 40 $/barrel and this was evident when I could barely hear Manish in the seat behind me. We signed off a declaration from Thomas that we are responsible for all our crazy actions. Sumana, again in her soft tone tried to kick off antakshari, when I realized I had to lend her my voice support. The front team competed against the raucous rear team of Chaitanya bringing in the Tollywood rowdy tunes. By the time we reached our destination ‘Himalayas on NH4’, Vinay had sent down a string of romantic numbers.

The rocky mountains seemed very innocuous as Thomas guided us to the 40ft rock that we would rappel down. 3 basic instructions: 1. Keep legs apart 2.Knee locked 3. Easy chair position. A few dos and donts with some trivia “Rappelling is mainly used to bring down an injured mountaineer to the base camp very quickly”. First few to get down were the brave Chaitanya, Binnu, Divya, doing the bold act of a titanic pose with arms spread amidst loud cheering. Sangeeta had the privilege to slide down the whole length of rope. Thomas showed his persuading skills with Uma helping her to conquer the fear factor. As I went up the rock, the swift breeze made me believe that this rock was really 40 ft high. The only jitters was when I was tethered to harness and the guide told me to walk down the rock backwards. Until I hit the vertical drop and saw only rock in front of me, I did not trust that the rope was really holding me. Highlight was that each one of us rappelled down amidst loud cheering. Thomas had set up an archery range, with each one getting two shots -> basically made up for the empty space in his marketing brochure. A reduced 30 minute trek between the rocks scared off the snakes and spoilt their fiesta plan.

On the way back we realized that our buses do have a live backup mechanism for rear tire punctures. We barely stopped for punctures, but drove back on 5 tires, a burst tire and a split tube providing the drum effects to the orchestra. Lunch back at ‘gazebo’ did not provide any surprise ‘great hot food’, the rotis could have been better used as rappelling ropes.

Thomas managed to pull us aside to diffuse the bomb. Each team of 7 people had to carry a tennis ball on a ring by holding the ends of the 8 threads connected to the ring, from one pipe to another. 5 Pipes were used to place the balls and all the 5 teams were constrained within a 30 ft circle. The fun part was when other team members got entangled in your thread while they move their ball. Srini(Yarra)-Manish team were the first smart ones to balance the ball on the ring and thus the rest of the teams allowed them achieve their target in the spirit of team work.

Thomas next flew us to the Caribbean with 3 small islands – one each for the dumb, blind and lame. Two of the islands were supposed to explode and all the team members to move to safe island in 30 minutes. One can cross the ocean only by placing his feet on the wooden tile floater. The game started with declaring the dumb island as the safe one, all the 5 wooden floaters placed around the blind island. Lame people came up with smart plan to first build a bridge to go to blind island. So they guided the blind to gather the tiles and Santosh did the neat job of building a ‘straight’ bridge which clarified that he was peeping in the gap between his eyes. Lames quickly hopped over on the tile bridge to reach the blind island. Nishi provided entertainment with her fall into ocean. The lame now built the next bridge to safe dumb island and saved themselves leaving behind the blind. Chaitanya->the dumb guy did a smart act of guiding each of the blind on the tile bridge hand holding (sometimes even leg holding) them. We celebrated on safe island with tea and bonda after Thomas quoted that we broke the record by saving ourselves in 20 minutes

Thomas enticed us with another quick game with marbles and pipes. Goal was to transport as many marbles to the finish point in 10 minutes using laterally split pipes. Each member had a pipe of about 2ft long and was not supposed to move when marble is in his pipe, but can only guide the marble to the next team member. Sounded easy until we started off the trials, struggled to pass correctly the marble to next member and by the time we got things working it was halfway through. Aided by able guidance of trio Manish-Gangesh-Divya our team managed another record of 4 marbles, thus putting to shade the effort of Mrunalini’s team of zero marbles

Now the normal phenomenon of team outings happened -> the team broke up into segments, but it was 5pm as against the usual 10am. Some Girls preferred to stroll the resort, water crazy dived into the pool, water phobics grabbed racquets/balls and the lazy took the pool side benches. I joined the water crazy for a game of water polo, was an intense game and sensed that both teams wanted to win. It was a crazy 30 minute fiasco with maradona chaitanya, dancing samil, bully prakash, splash allergic Akhand, strategist manish, front wingers Pavan and santosh, the cheerful audience of Hari and ashish helping with ball boy stuff and I was supporting my team with my loud cheers, slogans and celebrations.

By the time the sky turned orange, the only thing we were looking forward to, was getting into an horizontal position and some place to nurse our outstretched muscles. Energy levels went down much faster than spirit. Adrenalin stayed much longer, the only apt way I could contain it was by scribbling this down in an attempt to rekindle my interest in writing.