Expert Game & Pen and Thread game

Today, I couldn't attend to the lectures because I was sick. So I went home and missed one amazing day at PPD 😔

But I heard so many interesting stories from my colleagues. Let me tell you what I have heard from them.

Expert Game

Initially they have done this game called "Expert Game". The class was grouped into 5 teams with 6
members each. Three members were selected from each team and they were asked to talk about their expert areas. Later they were asked to combine all the three ideas together and present a business idea. Some teams have managed to express a business idea very easily while for other teams it has become little bit harder.

One team has joined Mathematics, Vehicles and Design to start a Robot car business, which I have to admit is a pretty cool idea! 😊

From that game, they have learnt

• To use their creativity to make a new product.
• Working together as a team to ultimately achieve a one common objective
• Each one has their own different expertise, but we can make a great product at the end if we manage to use each one's skills and abilities.

Pen & Thread game

Here, they were divided again into 3 groups, 9 members each. They were given a 30cm long thread, a pen and a paper.

Then they were asked to write the word "Viper" using the thread and the pen, but they were not allowed to touch the pen!

One team has tied the thread to the pen at two points, top and bottom. In each point, there were four threads to four directions. Four members were asked to hold the threads in order to keep the pen vertically, and somehow they have managed to write down the word successfully. 😃

From this game, they have learnt

• How to work as a team
• Listen to everyone's ideas and choose the best one out of them
• Obey the team leader's orders
• Respect to each one's ideas

That was the end of another amazing day at PPD, and I missed all the fun they had, but your health is more important! Sometimes in life, you have to choose what's best for you, even though it can be pretty hard to choose. 

The Missing Piece

Sometimes missing pieces do more than just complete the puzzle...
They would do more than just filling an empty space...
They may teach you one of the most valuable lessons in your life...

I'm gonna tell you about an interesting activity we did today at the PPD lecture. It's called "Barter Puzzle".
We were grouped into four teams and given a picture, which we were asked to cut into 76 small pieces!
Then each group was given a bag filled with 76 pieces of a different picture from another group, and asked to complete the puzzle.

But there was a catch! We didn't have all the pieces of our picture with us. Few pieces were there with other groups and we had few pieces of them.

Anyways, so we started to complete the jigsaw puzzle. At the beginning it was totally a mess!
Then one by one we started to figure out the pieces. First it was a watermelon, then came a pineapple, and oh! there were some papayas too 😉

But let me tell you, it wasn't as easy as it sounds. At the beginning they were just meaningless pieces with some weird shapes...
But then one set of team members figured out there's a watermelon and started working on that. Then another set of people started working on pineapples.
Little by little we started to add a meaning to those once a meaningless set of pieces.

But there were missing parts that we had to get from other groups. That was the real challenge!
It didn't take much time for me to realize that bargaining with people is harder than I have initially imagined.
Some people were really fair. They agreed to give one piece of our puzzle in exchange to one piece of theirs.
But not everyone was fair. Some wanted us to give two pieces in exchange of just one! Some were asking us to get their pieces from some other groups, and then only they would give us our piece.

Anyways, with lots of bargaining we managed to get some of our pieces back, and we also managed to get few more pieces that belonged to other teams as well.

It happened like this...
In one of the teams, they had two pieces of ours but I had only one piece of them. I knew they would never give me those two pieces in exchange to one of theirs, no matter how nicely I ask.
So I torn the piece I had with myself into two and then at first I gave them just one piece and got one of ours in return. If I gave them two pieces at the same time, I was afraid they would find out that I have torn one piece into two. After some time, I went to them for the second time and produced the other piece and got one more piece of ours.

So, would you call me a Cheater?

Well, I'm not gonna justify my actions. But dear reader, in this world, not everything is roses and sunshine. People wouldn't always play fairly and nor would they let you take one step ahead of them. It's a competitive and quite a selfish world. So there may come situations where you have to use your brains and be tactful.

Let me quote you a line from the movie Suicide Squad.

"Their morals, their code, it's a bad joke. Dropped at the first sign of trouble.
They are only as good as the world allows them to be.
When the chips are down, these civilized people, they'll eat each other"

                                                                     ~ Joker

             














There was another such incident. This also happened when I went to bargain with another group. They had three pieces of us and I had three of them. When I asked for our pieces they just pointed out the pieces and asked to take them. They were so focused in making their own puzzle and no one paid any attention to me. So I took the three pieces and left only one of their piece keeping the rest of the two with myself.

So, would you call me a Cheater again?

Dear reader, when you get an opportunity thrown at yourself, get the maximum use of it, because such opportunities are rare and you won't get them everyday. And know this well, that you are not responsible for the carelessness of other people. So don't feel bad about yourself if you ever took advantage of their carelessness.
So play your cards right.

"Life is not always a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes, playing  a poor hand well"                       

                                                          ~ Jack London

At the end of the day, we managed to almost complete our puzzle, but there was just ONE piece missing! Anyways, we became the winning team at the end of the game, and all my team members were happy 😊

In my journey of finding the missing pieces, I learnt a lot. But with all these lessons, the last missing piece was in my mind quite a lot even when the lecture was over. I had two pieces of the team that had our last missing piece. I was ready to hand them over the two pieces in exchange of our last piece, but they refused.

Maybe I could have tried a bit harder,
maybe I could have used a different strategy,
maybe I could have helped them to find all their missing pieces and to complete their puzzle.
But would that have been enough for them?
Would I have got my last missing piece back then?