It indeed is puzzling!!!

To begin with, 18 jigsaw enthusiasts of Adobe had managed to make way into the Limca Book of Records last year by solving the largest puzzle in the world (comprising 24k pieces) in the fastest clock time. I was a part of the team and was fortunate to be part of another record in itself (I say this because am not sure if our work shall be put in any record book this time) - assembling a 25K puzzle.
Now, I would put the former as more challenging than the latter for a handful of reasons, namely:
1. We were working on 6000 pieces at a time in the former.
2. We were working 24X7.
3. And we were only 18 (not that 18 isn't a large number)
Anyhow. As the blog progresses, probably some of my opinions may be reversed, but that's fine by me. :-)

Day One: The day starts with a long traffic jam right outside my house and the root of the entire delay is a ridiculously positioned bus that broke down at an angle of 45deg at the U-turn. You just had to be there to be laughing your *** off while getting totally irritated. Anyhow, Adi sir and I reached the venue at somewhere around 10.45ish and thankfully Royce and his daughter had not arrived by then.
(FYI: Royce is the guy who made the world's largest puzzle - LIFE)

So, we're given awesome tees to wear through-out the event. We've already made a lot of fun about the same and so, I am a little reluctant to write anything about it. I do, however, have samples to show you:





















Only God knows what we are cleaning!!! :-)

Btw, we have a walk-in buffet there as well where we obviously are to eat.. :-)

Coming to puzzle solving point:-

In order to determine the strategy to be used while solving the entire puzzle, we decided that each person solves a section of 90 pieces by him/herself and then depending on the time taken, we could either:
- Proceed in the same manner
OR
- mix the contents of "n" number of cells. (spoken like a true engineer/IT person)

Now, let me tell you, I thouroughly enjoyed solving the 180 pieces thing that was given to me. It felt awesome. And the best part was that I remembered solving these sections when we solved LIFE and when we were solving the puzzle online. Some pics of the section during the section solving session:






































And obviously, that's me with some of the blocks that we solved.

I don't have all the pics of the day with me right now so, you'd have to make do with these few only. I'd update this space with more pics as soon as I get them.

So, moving forward. This strategy turned out to be awesome. Within an hour we were done with 40 of the 200 cells that need to be completed. And so change of plans.

We now mixed the pieces of the different cells and then started working, This increased the difficulty level for the simple reason that we now had to work with edges of not one block but with edges of each of the individual cells. But, we lived upto the challenge and completed the section without any problem. I don't really want to delve into the details of the jigsaw strategy and solving and so am just touching upon those as a mere formality. Don't worry if you don't understand whatever I am saying - you could probably walk in to Select City Walk and I could show you the beauty.

Some more pics of the entire day's ordeal:























































I would be working in office for most part of Saturday and so, won't have details about day two. Shall try to be there and will update about the day. :-)

Daddy's roads..

A perfect and logical explanation for all the traffic jams in India.. ;-)

"Phone-y"...Am sure that rings a bell..

I'm real EVIL..

Beware of my Evil Plan!!

Objective is simple: Soul Accumulation.

The motive is a little bit more complex: Love (Yes, it works)

Stage One - To begin my plan, I must first blackmail a news reporter. This will cause the world to swallow nervously, stunned by me. Who is this criminal mastermind? Where did she come from? And why does she look so good in classic black?

Stage Two - Next, steal new york. This will all be done from a medieval castle, a mysterious place of unrivaled dark glory. Upon seeing this, the world will faint, as countless hordes of classic thugs hasten to do my every bidding.

Stage Three - Finally, I must reveal to the world my thermonuclear missiles, bringing about the apocalypse. My name shall become synonymous with fear, and no man will ever again dare cross me. Everyone will bow before my supreme might, and the world will have no choice but to elect me dictator for life.

Don't worry.. I haven't gone crazy. This was a by-product of a random site I was browsing through and decided to publish the results.

Just in case you wanna check it out, here's the link - http://www.darksites.com/evilplan.php.

The Sleeping Beauty - Ballet..

I had the tickets. I was overly excited. I was having an awesome day. And it was the perfect end - The ballet performance. Yesterday, I was gaping wildly at the pretty-pretty fairy tale like costumes, vividly vibrant sets and humongously talented artists. I was at the IFBC's Sleeping BeautyBallet performance and loved every bit of the I-don't-remember-how-many-hours-spent day.

This was the third act - The Wedding of Princess Aurora and Prince Desire wherein the guests were fairy tale characters like Puss In Boots, Red Riding Hood, Princess Florine etc, who were paying their respects to the couple.
(The pics aren't too good as I clicked these from my cell phone where needless to say, the power of zoom ain't too good. Pardon me.. )
However, something is better than nothing and so to say, I have the perfect pics. In any case, the pic above shows all the couples that are present before the lovely royal couple - King Florestan and Queen Margarete, seated to the right.
The characters standing in the diagnol include The Bluebird and Princess Florine, in blue (obviously) followed by the precious jewels. The third couple standing in the diagnol is The Red Riding Hood with her Evil wolf, who are adjacent to the Cat couple (which I totally adored).

I loved the costumes which made the characters come out alive. Personally, Puss in boots and The White Cat were the cutest couple with the white cat making awesome hand movements to her furry ears imitating the "purr"fect meowwww. They played along really well (so to say..) :-)

However, apart from the finale of "Prince Desire and Princess Aurora", I especially loved the performance of the Blue bird and Princess Florine. Their performance was beautiful. And I have pics to prove it as well.


These guys were awesome on the stage and I was particularly swooned by the manner in which the Princess Florine performed. Was magical. Another pic to add..



As expected, the finale where the Prince Desire and Princess Aurora took the stage was purely white magic. Their steps were perfectly in sync. There were awesome lifts (everyone defied gravity as though it never existed) and there were the perfect transitions.
I guess I don't really need to say the obvious, but still, for record sake - I loved it.

PS. The next time there's an opportunity to see another of their acts, don't be surprised to find me in the audi.. :-)

A windy day yesterday...

As I sit in office, I somehow remember the famous Beatles song - "You've got to hide your love away".. and guess what! - the song was written as a reference to the Beatles manager who was homosexual.. eeps.. and I thought the song had a totally different connotation to it.. :-)

Anyway, I was out to describe my windy day experience of yesterday. Gosh! The wind was blowing at no less than 30 nautical miles per hour.. (sry for the exaggeration). I actually was unable to walk straight through out. Top it all, there were trees falling on the roads and tin roof-tops toppling next to where I was standing. The experience was mind boggling if not interesting.
Now, not only did the winds help in bringing some kind of relief from the heat but they also helped in getting a lot of dust particles all around. I literally had an outer layer of dust over me.

All in all.. a day I shall remember forever.. :-)

Tryst with Pictionary...

On a very lazy Saturday, when my best friend (lets call him Piyush..;-) ) and I have nothing better to do than drive 40 kms to a mall and then realize its too hot outside to be going crazy on roller-coaster rides and its much safer watching a trivial movie, we end the day on a crazier note - playing "pictionary" outside the mall entrance (well, not too crazy for some).
Now, as soon as the brilliant idea struck, we realized that there's no stationary and so, the entire ordeal of climbing the stairs of escalators (which by the grace of Murphy's laws were powered off on the side we had to climb!! conspiracy!!)
Anyhow, we managed to reach our faviorite book-place and after finicking over the post-its and pens (which I seem to have lost and since I break this news on my blog, I shall definitly be punished.. ) for 15 mins, finally managed to buy one pair.. One hurdle crossed!
I skip the entire escalator powered off - walking down path cos it doesn't really hurt climbing down stairs.. ;-)
Anyway, now the interesting part : The game in itself.. :-)
So, the first movie was for me... and it started with...
- Its a one letter movie and the first visual clue would depict only a part of it...



Me - A guy, man, ladka, aadmi ...
Piyush - Frantically waving his hand ... signaling me to stop all the blabbering... and with artful strokes of the pen, draws the next clue.. :P



Okay.. my chance to blabber away to glory again..

Me - Police, theif, gun, bullets, goli, kill, victim...
Piyush - Again the hand is waved frantically and the look that he displayed - "God! Cant this girl appreciate art!!"

Time for new clues...



Me - What is this supposed to mean!!
Piyush - Forget it!!!!

Now...time for the finale...



This one did it all..

Me- Hands up!.. Surrender.. SERENDIPITY!!!!
Piyush - Finally!!! :-)

We shall now on change the rules of the game... the game shall be timed and I shall be putting up the times as well.. especially cos Piyush has a chronograph.. (and I love pulling his leg abt it by calling it a chrome-powered battery watch.. and him getting all - girl u have no idea how cool a watch this is look/speech)
Now, in case any one else wants to play, lemme know... I need to practice...