Oodles of fun @ IBM

Just rushed back to a meeting with the client after a fun@work programme for this year, and as he is talking about an application I need not be bothered about, I thought of penning down the evening events. Needless to say, fun@work was indeed fun. Today's events were 'Voice of IBM - a singing competition', 'Dance your way', Quiz and a DJ.

After Aarthi's song(zara zara behekta hein), which was well sung, I dont think we heard any bearable music until Sree went on stage. There was this lady singing to her own 'thaala' and 'raaga' while the karaoke was going elsewhere with the crowd clapping madly, not encouraging but praying to God for Mercy and for asking him to ask her to stop! And there was this guy who was dancing in his own African manner(kaatala-bhaavam). And sorry, there were other songs in between about which I have no comments - Absolutely. Sree was the 7th on stage, and started off on a wrong pitch, but intelligently and cleverly brought it back to track. Even without the karaoke, it was well presented, and well accepted by the audience. And after this song came a dance by a lady who was soon joined by Akshay Kumar of our team, Rohit ;) He was in full josh as he swung around her and then to a side, and was really surprised to see her leave moments later. Boy, the look of surprise on his face is just beyond words - like, 'how can a girl ever stop dancing with me?' ;)

There were other performances by both IBMers and a few kiddies after which there was the finals of the Quiz competition. The quiz kind of proved that most software engineers never read newspapers(some are worse than me, if people who who really know me can believe it!). And hey, I got a pack of Kitkat goodies for answering a question correctly in 'IBM' round - what are the values which IBM stands for? (For the sake of IBMers who do not know the answer, and others who are interested in knowing about it, the answer is Dedication to every client's success, Innovation that matters-for us and the world, and, Trust and Personal responsibility in all relationships). But then, the whole fun part in the quiz were the answers from the crowd, which were just, well, plain stupid nonsensical stuff :)

After this came the prize giving ceremony where we found out that Aarthi came second and Sree was first. And the person who was the most astonished about the first prize was Sree herself who was until then asking everyone how badly did she perform. But then, she was indeed glad and even more so on seeing the big box of Ferrero Rocher that came to her as a gift (secretly, I was probably happier about it ;) After that came the DJ, where everyone slowly got into the dance-mode and got onto the floor. I was more of a silent smiling onlooker with my sore back restraining me from going anywhere near the stage. But then, how many times in life do you get to sit in a chair right in the center of people dancing and at that again, with a box of chocolates in hand? I guess that explains what I did during that part of the evening. But then watching Rohan doing the cheerleaders dance would have cheered anyone up!

And as we slowly walked back to the work floor, taking snaps along the way, we all had a smile playing on our lips, and that makes up for the few hours of work we missed(which we will most definitely have to put in later, read, now)!!!