Record!!!!

I just couldn't not write about this. That has been the fate of quite a few things in my life, but I just have to pour out my heart's contents into this one. Yes! We have a world record now.. and that too an official one.. Never meant to start out with this in mind and towards the end the result was beautiful.. and I mean it. Life is and was BEAUTIFUL.

So, it started out with this mail that someone from office had floated across quite sometime back and was about some puzzle thing. Within a few mins registrations were closed. I was the one who turned out to be slow you see and so I couldn't crib. Anyway, then came another mail after more than a month and this time I did not wait for a sec and replied. Yes! I was in the team...finally.
Tragedy struck. Next day, I was hospitalized for the next 12 days with the typhoid bacteria running in my blood stream. Now that's a separate story altogether and should not, in any case, eat the lime light here.

Once out of the hospital, I was not allowed to exert at all and hence could not travel all the way to office for the practice sessions and I, at one point in time, actually thought that I may not be in the final team. But these guys were pretty accommodating. (I guess they don't even know that I was unwell..)

So, that's about the background of the entire thing -how I got the opportunity and stuff. My first engagement with the entire team was the "Practice session" wherein I was, for the first time in my life, puzzling over a puzzle with 3k pieces. That was a real learning experience. We were 17 ppl present and decided to work on 2 puzzles simultaneously. I was a part of the 5-member group solving the 3k puzzle. It was a working day when this marathon began and by the time I reached, the animals section seemed pretty much complete. So, I took up the hot-air balloons. Aaahh.. they were beautiful. And btw, there were 4 penguins in the animal section. They looked sooo cute...

The entire 3k team worked for 13 hours flat and that too non-stop and finished the task assigned. The 3k baby looked pretty and this was 1/8th the final one. We understood the difficulty of LIFE. But hopes were not deterred. Instead we waited eagerly for the challenge. Oh and the highlight of the entire night was the amazing playlist that somehow always played the song "Tala Tum"... <> and how all of us would practically start shouting as soon as it started.

For Namrata and I, Saturday morning spelt more work - on the office front. Without sleeping, we carried on with Monza and Jyoti and somehow managed to pull through..

And now I am feeling sleepy so I'l write about the journey enroute LIFE in the next post..

Keep reading... :-)