Last Friday and Saturday was my department's Team Building... It was the most fun organised event that I've ever went to... Well, probably cause the budget is so much higher than those previous events... After some introduction, ice breakers, stress management lectures and lunch, we finally went on to the highlight of the day, the high element challenges...
Due to the rain, we couldn't start as early as we wanted to; so more boring games were played... Then finally we couldn't stand to wait anymore and went on in spite of the rain... My team's first station was some simple obstacles, walking across logs, etc., racing against other teams for the shortest time possible... This kinds of warms us up for the following challenges...
Our leader was out from this point on as he was busy making calls, and I'm not gonna let that spoil my fun... We discussed amongst ourselves and decided on our next challenge... This next challenge were two ropes suspended one and a half storeys high in the air - one rope is for you to traverse on, and the other is for you to hold on to... Seems easy, from the ground at least... Before this, I've always thought that I was afraid of heights; seeing the challenge in front of me, I didn't want to chicken out in front of the people that I'm gonna work with for a long time... Of course, that doesn't mean I have to be the first to conquer it as well... I stepped back and allowed others to take on it first... The first person who succeed showed quite an amount of fear when up there... Then I coaxed the fittest looking guy in our team to go next, saying that he would be the fastest in our team to conquer it... This way, I would be ok for me to perform worse than him... Heh heh... Well, I guess that guy is really afraid of heights, he really hesitated a lot when he was on the ropes... Rather than saying he was the fastest, he might well be the slowest in our team... Seeing his performance gave me confidence, shouldn't be too difficult to do better than him... Climbing the pole, traversing the rope, and descending took around 1 minute; not enough time for me to even think about the fear... But my legs were trembling when I got down though...
The next challenge is the most difficult of all - 1 solitary pole, 4 storeys high, with a bar at the top that requires you to jump a short distance to grab on to... The task? Climb the pole and grab the bar... The simplest but the most challenging task...
The Leap of Confidence
With only 20cm diameter at the top of a solitary pole without any support, there's already not enough space to stand on and the shaking pole doesn't help either... The scoring for this challenge is 10 points for an attempt to jump, and another 10 points for grabbing the bar... As only the first 2 person's attempt would be taken into account, I didn't want to be responsible for dragging the team down... Then again, I was afraid the others can't really complete the task after seeing their performance in the previous challenge... Oh well, its team building after all, gotta trust them right? The first person took a very long time to ascend the pole and even longer to stand on it... He did managed to grab the bar though; the second person succeeded as well and managed to do one chin up... Then, the empires told us that we do not have enough time for another person to go up!!! What the hell?!? I'll cry if I didn't managed to do this one!!! All the others I don't care, this is the ultimate test of my own fear... After pleading and promising that I'll be fast, he finally agreed to let me go... I managed to climb up effortlessly in less than 30 seconds, doing it fast was all I could think of... until I reached the top... Seeing the small little space I'm supposed to stand on, I can't seem to think of a way to do it... My brain wasn't really working and all I could do was to keep trying different ways... First my right leg, then right knee, then left knee, then both, then ... ... Finally, I decided to do the most unstable way of all, to try with my left foot which was lower than my right... Doing so would raise my center of gravity the most, thus making it the most difficult to balance way... I managed to stand up and make the jump; being the one that forced the previous person to do the chin up, I had to do one myself (I could had done more, but let's not be TOO cocky yar?)...
After these challenges, I realised that my fear of heights was not the height itself, its the insecurity that I fear... I knew I wouldn't die even if I fall, and that gave me the courage necessary to conquer all those challenges... At least that's my mental state; up there where everything else was shaking, I couldn't really tell how much my legs were trembling until I touched ground...
After this was to check in to our wonderful hotel... It is a very nice hotel, very clean, comfortable and all... Except my name wasn't on the list... -_-" Had to wait until everyone else got their rooms then they managed to find one for me...
After shower was dinner and more games at The Mind Cafe... The game was so-so, but the food was great!!! At the end of it, our scores were tallied which would determine the starting line up for the Amazing Race the next day... There were 9 teams and our team was in the 5th place with 4100 points... The first team had 7000+ points which was seemingly impossible to catch up to...
After dinner and games, we were free for the night... Since we couldn't think of anything fun to do, we decided to stay in our rooms and share ghost stories... My ghost stories would have been scary if not for someone who kept interrupting; it turned out more hilarious than scary... But the highlight of the night wasn't my ghost stories at all, it was my colleague's performance of "The Zz monster is coming"...
Will upload the videos and pictures as soon as I get them... Day 2 shall be continued on another post...
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