Straw

One of the team-building activities last weekend was to build something entirely made of straw (and masking tape). It could be anything according to the trainor. Much to our detriment, our group was not exactly the creative bunch. We were 8 men who had more calories and fats compared to brain-cells. We were like a herd of cows grazing in the grass, obviously enjoying the beach view nearby.

I could read the sentiments in the group. We're engineers for crap's sake! Creating something without a template of some sort is not exactly our cup of iced-lemon-tea! Who invented this game anyway? Borrrring.

We only had 15-minutes to do it so time was of the essence. I opened the plastic bag containing the straws, bunched up around 20 with one hand and started thinking. Actually I was just holding the straws and daydreaming. Just random thoughts really: my new mp3-player, what food will be served for lunch, can we go pedal-rowing instead, if a tsunami hits us right now will our caffeine-loaded trainor be washed up, etc. Funny thing was when I looked around, my groupmates were also daydreaming. Our minds must've gone pedal-rowing at the beach. Yeah I can see that now: 8 cows pedal-rowing. A rare sight that can turn out to be a tourist-attraction for the resort.

Suddenly, one guy blurted out, "Hey that bunch of straws your holding looks like the Petronas Towers! We can make the Petronas Towers!"

"Borrring" was the obvious reaction of some while the rest of us were indifferent, seemingly awaiting for 12-noon a.k.a. lunchtime to commence. My initial thought was to say, "You wanna see the Petronas Towers shoved to the back of your head?"

Of course I didn't. To cut the long story short, we finished the task with a rather "believable" version of the real thing, complete with the M-company HQ at the side.

Yup. A herd of cows did that. I guess a group of 10 year olds can do better.