.......a journey called life: ...a weekend to remember

...a weekend to remember

May 20, 2007

I woke up this evening and the first thing which came to my mind was my backache. I felt as if I had a beautiful dream and I was kinda surprised that the pain carried through in the real life. What kind of dream gives you a backache and still is beautiful?....As I sat on my bed tryng to recall what exactly was the dream all about, I started recollecting it....

.......In the dream.....

...NUS Business School club representatives and council members have taken a day off from their busy schedules and arranged to meet at National Community Leadership Institute (NACLI). It is an overnight stay where several brainstorming sessions are planned for and the next morning is reserved for the teambuilding exercise under the guidance of a trainer. We all met at NACLI at around 6:30 PM on Saturday and checked into our rooms where we exchanged quick words with other people and then came to the meeting room. The brainstorming session, which touched up on various topics related to NUS Business School, started around 7:30 PM and we covered quite some ground before we split for dinner at around 9 PM.

We again came back and this time it was even better. Ideas were coming from all corners of the room and we were really getting somewhere. Time flew by....minutes of meeting were running through pages and before anyone could realize, it was 1 AM! We breathed with satisfaction and I could see so many "fountainheads" in the room. Considering that people had to wake up early in the morning, everyone decided to split for fetching some sleep. We (7 of us), however, continued the intellectual discussion back in our rooms and finally made a call to sleep at 3:30 AM!

People were in the Dining Hall for breakfast at around 9 AM and our day was started! Everyone was looking forward to what trainer had in her mind. We finally started our session at 10 AM and the first game to be played was a kind of race where there are two wooden plank on which we put our legs and hold the ropes attached with the planks. 12 of us were lined up on the plank in line and we had to walk together (remember an inverted centipede..with so many legs pointing up...each of us grabbing two legs and putting our feet on the body)..We had some real fun and we took 24 minutes to go back and forth in a basketball court! Later, when the trainer was debriefing us with what we did right and wrong, she told us about the NACLI record of some 2 minutes 28 seconds. The team got energized and decided to do it one more time. With some discussions, we went for it and completed it in 4 minutes 2o seconds. That is 81.94% drop in timing...amazing, isn't it? In the interest of time, we didn't make further attempts and moved on to the next game....

Then, we played "take-a-shot" where we had to shoot maximum number of basketball in the ring in 3 minutes (team of 5...2 shooters and 3 retrievers)...We had a nice perspiring time and at the end of it, people were sweating like pigs (do pigs sweat?..If not, replace pig with someone who does)...everyone had loads of fun...especially when the balls collided in the air or 2 retrievers throwing the ball to the same shooter at the same time :-)

Then, came the last one which was THE most complex thing and required hell lot of teamwork...They had a maze of small 9"X9" plates scattered in the ground and we, as a team, had to reach the number 30..starting at 1, going in order ....As you move to the next plate, the next person has to keep his/her foot on the plate. Basically, at no point, the plates should be empty and there were couple dozen more rules to make it as complex as possible. The contact should always be there with the previous and the next person. At one point, the entire chain was curled and people were moving in 3 D, giving way on the top of each other...It was a SALSA, in slow motion with 12 dancers making all kind of tricks. Whenever someone did a mistake, the game had to be repeated! Since the lunch was after this session, people had extra incentive to do this one right. After couple of resets, we finally did it in 25 minutes (?). It sounds a lot but you have to be there to know what I am talking about. She told that the last time someone finished this was in 40 minutes. So, you see, we had a record there :-)

All this while, I was holding on to the beautiful water bottle we were given at the beginning of the whole exercise. I picked up a black one and after every round of each game, I would run and look for my bottle for a gulp of water to revitalize me. We also had a bandana to wrap it up in our head and look like a real pro sportsman (cover from sun, actually)...

Then, we had a long debrief where we discussed various facets of teamwork and leadership and how we exhibited it in these games, It was a good link and I saw that the trainer knew what exactly she is asking us to do..It was not just for fun... It was a well designed game, if you will...

We then went for lunch and had a nice and warm conversation (with some legpulling going around :-) )....Then, we repacked our stuff and came back home with fond memories of NACLI and the overnight camp....I crashed on the bed as soon as I came home...

...........Out of dream............

I feel so good even though my back is hurting...I feel thirsty and go to my kitchen to get some water and there I see a black water bottle with NACLI written on it......