What Ho! Ah! To live with a What Ho on my lips and a Gentleman's Gentleman… {sigh}… Such is life…

ATG & ATI Outing – Feb 5, 2010

We of the EBS ATG & ATI teams had a day long outing at Leonia Resort in Secunderabad on Friday 5, 2010. It was a fun filled day and we all had a ton of fun. Arrangements for the event started just 2 days before but we managed to get everything in place. Sarat, Satya, Pandurang, Rekha, Malvika, Dhivyapriya, and many others helped organize things.

Our day started at the Oracle office in Madhapur. Two buses were to pick us up and take us to Leonia. Pandurang had ordered breakfast for all of us and picked it up early that morning – Idly and Vara. We started at about 8.30 am from Campus, arriving at Leonia at about 10.15 am.

The day started with a short welcome speech by Malvika followed by a hilarious session of “passing the pulse” conceptualized by Deepthi, our HR Representative.

After that we headed out to the playing fields – the cricket pitch, the volley ball courts, table tennis, carom and badminton. We had earlier divided all the people into 4 groups – Agni (Fire), Prithvi (Earth), Jal (Water) & Vayu (Air). Each team had a Captain & a Manager. I am still not clear what the Manager’s role was but I am not surprised by that The Captains & Managers were charged with the task of allocating their “people” (Not Resources!) to the various activities, making sure there was no duplication. Each sport and activity had points to be won – points that would add up and lead to the Big Trophy!

I played a bit of Tennis I say played but I am afraid that is rather a boast. I tried hard to hit the ball and make it go where I wanted it to but most of the time it refused to do so. Sigh. Playing Tennis on the Wii is not the same as using a real racket on a real Tennis court. Well I tried Tennis after 20 years. Yes. That’s why I was so pathetic. Yes! Then I played Volleyball with the Jal team and managed to hit the ball out of the court enough times to cost us the match

After these rather strenuous “play” I headed back to the hall booked for us and cleaned up a bit. Lunch was ready by now and people started trickling in. Lunch was a good affair, the food tasty and well prepared. At least I liked it.

Post lunch we had the Tug Of War which Agni won. That is not surprising as their combined body mass was greater than the mass of all the other three teams put together!

With the Tug of War lost to those mastodons we made our way back to the hall to rest bruised back muscles.

After that our organizers had a series of contests which I missed because Deepthi had me glued to my laptop putting together a slide show of the photographs taken that day. That lady has exacting standards! Phew! She made me slog! I haven’t worked so hard for a long time! Anyway, it was finally done and she let me go.

By this time the Agni group was looking rather smug, having won most of the events – there should be a law against people grinning from ear to ear when they have trounced everybody else and won the big trophy!

Prizes were given away by Veshaal, Krishna & Ivo.

After that half the group headed fro the swimming pool while the rest of us took one of the buses back to the Oracle office and home.

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Video put together with photographs taken by Prasad, Manohar & Vardhan