The diverse Life

Offsite to meet the Heroes?

Nah, our annual offsite was not a visit to the Heroes set, like the lucky bunch who gave us Google Reader. And I thought I was already quite close when I saw some of the Heroes cast here! Our offsite this year was a milder version of the Amazing Race, without the “strange things you have to eat” stations… oh wait, we did.

One of our things-to-eat was a strange concoction of leaves, some hardened gum, and a white paste. It’s a race, so we didn’t try to find out what all three things were and just made the “dessert” and chewed on it. The hardened gum turned to a red goo after plenty of chewing. The taste? Hmmm… You just have to taste it yourself.

Anyway, solving the puzzles under the sun, asking strangers for directions, avoiding the other teams… all in all, the day spent wasn’t that bad. It might be a tough call between choosing that from working. The puzzles weren’t too well thought of - and at the end of the day, the day’s activity was strung together to show the company’s values, which was a bit stretched. No mention of how to marry theory with practice.

How would you like your offsite to be? A day of fun? A day of challenge? A day of relaxing? I guess it comes back down to what is the purpose of the offsite?

An offsite involving different departments and people you have not come in contact with will have quite a different purpose from an offsite for a small team of 6. I don’t believe the BIG offsites actually work. In fact, it’s only at the end of the race that we actually bonded more. After a few glasses of wine, we knew more about each other than during the entire race! And there were less than 10 of us left.

Small somehow works better than Big.

I’m not a celebrity who has to do my rounds, show my presence, make the small talk. I’m just someone trying to get to know others better so that we can get along better when work crosses our paths. In some small way, I just want to be the small Hero to the person where our paths happen to meet, not a Hero to everyone under the sun.

You might say - at least there was some effort to bring everyone together. Would your rather have this opportunity? Would you rather have a choice? A vote to what constitutes a better offsite? A vote even to not have an offsite at all? Incidentally, such voting wasn’t allowed for ours. But i shoudn’t be asking questions, should I? After my rant on questions… and my rant on the word “should“… I’ll shut up now.

© 2008 shang lee . com.