Microsoft Interns' Event #1

Friday of last week, sixty or so managers were sitting about and wondering why their respective interns weren't answering their phones or email. Or possibly it was just me that forgot to mention it...

I realise it's a bit odd for me to blog something over a week after it happened, but in my defence, I was waiting for people to send me pictures, which they've never done.

Anyhow, the event was one of those team-building things, for which we get a budget set aside (well spent, I hasten to add) and this quarter's entertainment was brought to us by a scavenger hunt around London. Great way to see the place for those that haven't been there before - and I've never actually gone as a tourist, so I saw a bunch of Cool Stuff I never bothered to go find before - and had a lot of fun.

We were split into groups in the morning, and everyone designed their own t-shirt, with the caveat that it must say 'Microsoft' on the front, using felt-tip pens. Being team 'C', I suggested that we call ourselves Team Carlsberg (for reasons I hope you can work out fairly quickly) which probably led to some confusion about which company actually employed/sponsored us.

Then it was off out to get photos of a list of utterly random things, and collect a lot of other bits - most of which involved simply walking up to strangers and asking odd things of them. I've been on this kind of thing before - but it's never worked this well in the past, probably helps that (nearly) all the interns at Microsoft are very confident folks.

Here's a couple of my favourite tasks:

Find a 1971 penny
Easy, and we got it in pristine condition too - although, it did cost us £3, which seemed a bit extortionate for a penny. You might think that last sentence the thoughts of an uncultured fool unaware of the antiquities trade - but the gent in the shop who sold us the penny seemed shocked that we'd want to buy one, explaining that it was 'just the same as the current penny'. Interesting.

Get someone to take a photo of the whole team doing tai-chi in a tranquil location
Various poses from The Karate Kid and a bemused office worker on her lunch were the order of the day for this one.

Get your photo taken with a policeman
We thought we'd go one better and get our photo taken with a policeman we saw holding quite a hefty gun. It wasn't till he said "I'm kind of busy right now" that we realised he was in the middle of arresting someone...

Get your photo taken with a famous celebrity
One group managed to hunt down Ricky Gervais (who recorded the following video for Microsoft interns), but all our blagging efforts were fruitlessly concentrated on the major radio stations, and we failed here :(

Get a free drink, and document it
One video phone, one bit of smooth talking - easy.

Take a photo of a team-member doing sit-ups on public transport
I think instructor led exercises on the tube every morning could really take off...

Get one of the male members of your team a free makeover
Can anyone guess who that was?

Collect money from four different countries
We thought it was be a bit cheap to simply get four types of Euro, and a bit expensive to get the currency from a bureau de change, so simply resorted to stopping tourists. In retrospect, our opening gambit of 'have you got any currency' probably wasn't the best, and explains the scared looks on some faces as they hurried away.

Take a photo of the team in the palm of another team member's hand
Thought this one came out very well...

One final bit of awesomeness during the day was the pizza chef in Harrods, singing opera as he baked - legend.

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The evening's entertainment occured at The Gardening Club - a very chic venue where the interns' events' budget (I love grammar) was spent wisely on...drinks. Even the prize for the scavenger hunt was alcohol - got to love students.

Those who weren't drinking wine were drinking cocktails, and those who weren't drinking cocktails were at the bar waiting to be served. The lack of natural light in the underground club turned everyone quite primal, and when we stumbled out at around 9.30pm (it had been a long day), no-one could quite believe it was still fairly light. The nightlife in Covent Gardens by the way, is amazing, even out on the street.

I don't recall too much here, but I'm sure it was great fun - looking forward to the next one :)