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."
