Twisted soul: July 2007

Being a regular viewer of these reality TV shows, I always wonder what its like to be a contestant. Annie, our former helper, used to watch the Amazing Race and usually we would often imagine that we're among the,. Fortunately, for our team building, the main event was the Amazing Race. Last weekend, half of my project mates went to Genting View hotel for our annual team building event. This activity almost did not push through because our company has a strict policy when it comes to team bulding. A significant number of people had left our company which our management finally used as a reason for us to have team building in the first place; the human resource office finally granted us to have our team bulding event.

Last year, I was 1-hour late so I made sure this year that this won't happen. Gen and Zari made sure that I woke up early by calling me. I didn't eat my breakfast so that I could make it on the 7:00 AM "call time". There were 2 buses that brought us to Genting. Of course, 1 of them is a bus exclusively for the Filipinos since half of the population of CCMS who joined the team building are my fellow kababayans. Knowing how the Filipinos behave on a bus trip, it was a fun trip for all of us.

That morning, we arrived at the Genting View hotel when most of us had an empty stomach. Jega, the facilitator, had a series of icebreakers which in my opinion are not that effective.. because what we need was FOOD!!! Anyway, our first activity was to form teams for the entire team building activity. There were 6 teams composed of 6-7 people. My teammates (Chih Kok, Foo, Mazlan, Nurol, Kristin and Homer) decided to call ourselves DIE HARD 7 (from Bruce Willis' latest movie). Good thing that Homer is an artist which helped a lot when we made our banner.

Anyway, here are the activities that consisted our team building:

1. Amazing Race. This is the highlight of the team building. We were divided into teams and we need to perform several tasks to complete the race. Note that there will be no elimination.

For our first task, we need to form the castle of Atlantis. We were given a set of Lego blocks and build it based from the blueprint located at the middle of the pool. For our team, Mazlan swam to look for the blueprint and we were the 4th team to complete this task.

For the second task, we were asked to look for these objects: 7 human hair, 7 leaves, 7 stones with shapes (like a star, house, etc) and 7 kinds of mushrooms. It was funny because we had to search for these items in a place that is similar to Camp John Hay in Baguio. Also, some of my colleagues got lost while looking for these items.. fortunately, none in our team got lost!

Third task, we need to fill 3 500-ml bottles with water from the creek. The challenge here is that we were given a 1-ft tube (with 0.5 inch diameter) that we can fill in with water from the creek and that needs to be passed among the group members. It was one of the easiest task of the game and we managed to complete it within the 3 minute time frame.

The fourth and most challenging tasks is called the landmines. In this task, one member must cros the so-called landmines blindly; our foot should never step on the landmine and we had to rely on the instructions of our teammate on the other end of the maze. Believe me, it's really difficult because there are 7 teams shouting for the instructions and I can't really figure out who is my teammate. Unfortunately, I was not able to complete this task :(

The last task required us to use our brains. We were given a mathematical problem. Fortunately, Chih Kok figured out the solution easily and our team was the first one who completed that task.

And that concludes our Amazing Race.. after that, we ate our lunch :)

2. Survivor. Okay, the next activity is actually called Escape from Alcatraz. In this task, we were given an incomplete blueprint of the prison. We need to complete the whole prison map. The complete map is found at the other side of the hall but we need to rely on our good memory to complete this task because we can't use a camera or a pen and paper to complete the map. Before the start of the game, the facilitator said that there are two roles for this game: the saboteur and the non saboteur and everyone of us were given a piece of paper to determine if we're a saboteur or not. I got a paper that indicated that I am not a saboteur.

However, due to my poor memory, I committed a lot of mistakes which caused my teammates to suspect as a saboteur. Once accused by two team members, we needed to undergo a trial. There were 8 of us who were suspected of being a saboteur were given a few minutes to "defend" ourselves.

This scene reminded me of the tribal counsel in Survivor, where each team can pick the person to be eliminated based on whose the biggest threat to the team. After we gave our respective speeches, it was revealed that there was no saboteur at all.

3. Big Brother. All of us stayed in a villa with 3 rooms (similar to the rest house in Tagaytay). Each room has 2 people in it. The original plan was for me to stay with a fellow Filipino colleague but at the last minute, she swapped with a Malay colleague so I ended up as the only Filipino in our house. My fellow housemates were all Malaysians - 2 Chinese, 1 Malay and 1 Indian. I didn't this setup at all since I only planned to sleep that night. I had a chit chat with them for a few minutes before I went to bed.

The next morning, I was still lazy to wake up and take a bath. One of my housemates noticed this and asked me if I always take a bath. I found this question to be weird but it is more of a cultural thing. Anyway, this question paved the way to clarify some of my misconceptions which I would rather not say. Anyway, I managed to "survive" in that house which is a good experience.. it was my first time to stay in a house where I am the only foreigner.

4. The Apprentice. For our task for the second day, it was referred as East Indies Company. In this activity, we were divided into 6 countries - Philippines (my team), Singapore, India, Indochina, Indonesia and Borneo. Each countries were given with commodities such as timbre, silver, rice, and rubber. We need to do a barter trade among the countries and the period of the whole game is for 6 months. Each month, the profit of each country were computed. The winners will be determined based from 2 criteria: the highest profit and the trust given by the other countries which was decided based from the rating provided by the other countries. It was a very tiring but fun activity. We became the country with the second highest profit. Unfortunately, we were the 2nd lowest country when it comes to trust.

After this activity, we ate our lunch and the winners of the Amazing Race contest were announced. Fortunately, our team won!!! Woohoo!!!

I really enjoyed this team building activity. The location was nice and the activities were fun. =) I had a blast!!!

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