October 05, 2006

Google Wordmasters Challenge 2006

This time on my visit back home to Mumbai, I extended my stay by another week to participate in the Google Wordmasters Challenge - in response to an ad in the Times of India.

The ad challenged "word nerds" to register for an event to be held in Mumbai on October 1st and only 300 participants were to be accomodated.

Let's skip the yada-yada and get to the point - or the venue directly!

National College Bandra. Registrations done, I walked into a semi-packed auditorium with Google logos dancing about and curious participants sharpening their tools and discussing about them. We're given a sheet of paper which has 2 sets of 20 words each. Pick one set of words and use all of them in an essay more than 150 but less than 200 words. Fun no? :)

My set of words contained:

disagreement, insight, rethink, nerves, professional, adjust, viewpoint, democratic, motive, goodness, adamant, boss, meditation, accept, anger management, Einstein, differences, control, hurt, humane

Hmmm.... not bad I think. Spent 10 minutes of the given hour just trying to make sense and somehow trying to connect these words into a story. Another 10 minutes went in drafts and the last 40 mins. in the final entry, rechecking for typos... er... spelling mistakes and a word count.

Here's my final draft, although my entry varied a trifle bit with last minute changes...

"As far as I can remember, my colleague Einstein was always in disgreement with me and the rest of the team. Moreover, he was in complete denial of the fact that he was in fact, a control freak and an authoritarian in professional life.

He would act as if he was the boss in the team! But knowing him closely as a person, I knew his motive was not actually to cause hurt as he was as humane as they got. But we had real differences of opinion and viewpoints - and him being adamant about his, in most cases did not help. It only got on our nerves.

We were certainly willing to adjust and compromise once in a while. But what was really needed was a more democratic approach to his work. Then perhaps, he needed some anger management or meditation to gain insight into the goodness within him and how he could best apply this to his professional life."

9 comments:

Chaitu.. said...

Hii, greatt work :)... that in 1 hour!! so diddja get selected?? and by the way did you not say that you were supposed to write an "Essay"??

prach said...

thanx bro :) btw just went thru ur google wordmasters challenge entry...smart work in an hour:)

Nam said...

Hey Kaushal...Seems like you used all of those 20 words and then some!

Good work! Interesting stuff.

Unknown said...

hi! i participated in the google contest too. was proud of my effort till now, that is, till i saw your work. cool! concise and tight, just as it ought to be! was hoping to be one of the winners, but doesnt seem to be much of a chance now! anyway, all the best to u!

Exotic Gringo said...

@ Chaitu, prachi, namitha - thanks a bunch! no clue how the others did and results should be out next week so excited about the verdict :)

Chaitu, yupp it was to be an essay. some wrote poems and what not - it wasn't much of a hard-n-fast rule as such. my guess is they were trying to test how you can creatively associate words into something logical (they need the wordmasters to do something similar - and keep it concise).

@Aparna - thanks a bunch! and hey, dont judge yourself or me too early - i haven't seen ur essay but i'm sure u did fab. i enjoyed the contest. as long as u did too, winning is part-talent but also part luck! its humans judging after all :) to each her/his own! all the best to u too

Aynat said...

Gr8 Bloggin.. read a few of ur blog entries.. intrsting n informative..

Sridhar Pabbisetty said...

Hi Kaushal,
Fabulous write up. Wish u good luck for the results and i have a gut feeling u must stand a very good chance to win the prize :).

Have a nice time in bangalore and keep up the good blogging

Sridhar

Mellowdrama said...

Hey, damn good! Rashmi would be impressed, btw what was the end objective of this exercise, do I take it you are working with Google in Hyd nw:)oo

Exotic Gringo said...

@ Tanya - Thanks :) Appreciate it

@ Sridhar - Thanks a bunch sir - I did have a great time in Bangalore as always!

@ Rama - Thanks! Haha I dunno if she's read this yet.

Yes, I did get a job offer from Google Hyderabad for an AdWords role - turned it down. Didn't seem interesting enough.

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