OBL @ WindFlower , Mysore

4^th August 2011

Day 1 : The morning smile on everybody’s face indicated that the day was special. The team was going on OBL. Clock quickly ticked 12:30PM & the team hogged on a early lunch to jump on the bus. Started late by almost an hour to reach mysore without a break by 5pm. The bus journey was fun filled, new joinees introduced themselves in different formats mentioned by other team members. Followed by Jumb Cherads!!! This is where the team introduced the OBL punch line – “HIIIISSSSSSS!!!”

We dumped our luggage in our respective rooms & quickly assembled for that day’s activities. The surprise each activity had, started off from the very white dots that were painted on our face. The surprise was very well kept up till the last activity. We also earned Rs1000 from the children bank. On winning every activity we earned money. Saved all for the last day!

Guess what, the dots on our faces indicated the togetherness of the team. Message was clearly “WE ARE A TEAM, CL!!!!”

Day 2 :

          Endless choices for Breakfast lined up for us @ 7:30AM. Trainers from Shristi were to conduct the activities for this day. Balaji & his team of four took over @ 9AM.

 A chain of activities followed one another. For every activity, 2 or 3 small teams were made & made sure that team members were shuffled to get a chance to work with every other in the team.

Untangling from a loop : The team criss-crossed itself holding hands & the task was to untangle to form a circle. Couple of strategies were tried, with few clues from the trainers, our team managed to celebrate its first success!!!

Spider Web : A web tied to the trunk of two trees with different size of holes. Task was to send to the other end every person in the team through any one of the web hole in which he/she fits in without disturbing the web. Doing so, the team restarts the whole task. Our team could easily send couple of us to the other end, while we struggled with few. Other team rejoiced to complete the task & sip over a cup of tea/coffee & snack. The task was analyzed later by both the teams to be as simple as identifying which one you managed to tunnel through & the rest of the team will help you in executing the same.

The next activity was to hold the rope in circle & all of us bend outwards & still manage to keep your balance & the rope intact circle.

Followed this was to put an object as far as you can from a boundary line. One person would bend down with the object to be dropped, the rest will help him balance while he is bent. A fair trial of 3 rounds to each of the three teams to break the record by the other team.

Time for lunch!! Followed this was an amazing game on OBSERVATION! The whole team struggled to observe their 3D “sign” language could be coz of the heavy lunch that settled in the stomach.  This is my personal fav J The activities post lunch only conveyed “TO THINK OUT OF BOX”

Next was two balance some 14nails on a single nail mounted on the wooden board. You can say it’s a great learning doing this. We did with a record best. Coach congratulated us for this.

Mine Bomber came next, simple one to check your memory to remember the right path to reach India from Pakistan without stepping on the Hidden Mine.

A mat on which all the team is standing has to be flipped with all the team still on it. Again strategies flew around to finally achieve it. The person standing in one corner wonder what is happening on the other end. The whole team juggled holding on to each other tightly to get the task done.

Time for Sheep to grace. Blindfolded sheeps follow the shepherd’s instruction to reach the destination. Teams of two, one being sheep the other shepherd, both were allowed to prepare their signals for every movement. All shepherds gathered together to call out for his/her scattered sheep. “kur-kur-sha-thra-pra,bha,ma,ku,kyuu,meow,bow…. All varitites were here”. Sheeps managed to reach its destination after efforts to locate its master’s signals or peeping through the blind fold or even remove it & walk back. But the learning was – not all had prepared signals for all possible movements & signals to stop were missing in most cases. Fun apart, this was a very good learning!

Last one for the day was little fun. One member from the team is given a role to play. When he is enacting, the rest in the team will understand the situation & fit themselves into the scene within 15sec. We enacted roles like a dead body, bar-dancer, god, ramp walk, house-keeping etc. The rest of the team should later explain what roles they played in the scene.

After bidding bye to the trainers, the group played a 6 over cricket match. People who still managed to keep their energy levels played basket ball & swimming.

Dinner used to filled with lots of chit-chat. We dispersed for the day to assemble the next day morning by 7:30AM. Yet another day for the organizers to keep our spirits high by their activities.

The activity to waken up those who were lazing was the table tapping with your hands locked with your partner’s hand. Single tap counties in the same direction, double tap changes the route. Prompting is out. This brought back all energy for the day.

We played one of the funniest game. Every member is given a chit with a animal name on it. “DOG”, “CAT”, “GOAT” & “HEN” were in the list. Blind folded players will have to make sounds of the animal & join their herd. It was funny when people inspite of being blind were doing actions along with sounds. Ha ha!!!!

Time to bring out the child in you. “HEAD GEAR” to crown youself.  Pretty queens & kings ruled with their crowns On for sometime to disperse for check out from our rooms.

Souvenirs collected were auctioned with the plastic money we were given with. Few investment companies poped up to help people like me ;) At the end we all carried a memory with us. Quick & early lunch the team started their journey back to Bangalore. Me & Bhavya as always were happy to go home for rest of the weekend.

Great lot of fun, lots of learning & explored team mates – the purpose of OBL complete served its purpose giving each of us fresh & sweet memories spent with the team!!!

Night Trek to Skandagiri

 A quick plan to Skandagiri last weekend. Four of us in suhas’s car & rest four in Pavan’s. The fun filed journey covered lots of stories in bits & pieces. 8 of us reached Suhas house in chikkaballapur . We packed our stomach with “ghar ka kaana” & slept to wake up early by 2:30AM. As always I was the last one to get ready. We reached the place around 4AM. We had 3 torches, others had to manage with their mobile light. Guys had been there in the past with bitter experiences of parking & guides. We decided not to take any guides.

This was my first ever night trek. To add to the darkness, it was a new moon day. Walking amidst the tall plants and slippery rocks were thrilling. Trek was not a difficult one but it charmed me for being a night expedition. Missing the right track twice, managed to reach on top by 5:50AM with very few pit stops to catch the view of fog & thick clouds. On top, it was extremely cold & windy. All of us except Pavan shivered to continuous blow of wind. Hands numbed, ears were blocked. No hopes of the fog clearing to let us have a glimpse of the Sun 

Somewhere while busy climbing down the hill, I saw the beautiful view from Skandagiri.

 My idea of CLEAN KARNATAKA was already put into action initiated by ROHIT. We collected few plastic bottle & glasses thrown around, 4 gunny bags got easily filled by the time we covered just 20% of the hill. Few instances here made us realize why is our country is so dirty esp when it comes to tourist spots. Few guys from the other group did their bit by picking up few plastic bags thrown in their way. Others expressed their happiness for our good work & few other were surprised as to why we were doing anything like rack picking. Now that’s what I call a DIVERSITY in thinking ;) so naturally there has to be UNITY in DIVERSITY!!!!        They throw we collect… but till when 

                Few people who saw us taking the waste in our vehicle said, throw it somewhere here, why would you carry it all the way back to some place. Now Rohit was pissed out. Naturally! Now the challenge we had was to dispose this waste collected. This topic can be debated for years – WASTE DISPOSAL!!! We finally ended up dumping them in a Muncipality dustbin near the chikkabalpur market.

 

By 10, we were relishing a spicy breakfast along with my fav JAMOON!!!! Big Thanks to Suhas’s family, I have no words for their hospitality. It was just so homely.  We started back to blore around 12 noon. I took a tight nap in the car. Reached home by 3PM.

Fun Part :

 

 I will always find one such companion whereever I go. So nicely it PARKED itself next to us. 

     @Abhi : The dailogue is again, not from Delhi Belly... Ha Ha!!!!