I strolled towards the sports complex in the silent breezy night, unexcited of whats in store...
The entrance to the sports arena, separated a world of silent ordinariness and a world of once in a life time experience(s)....
As I entered the basketball arena, i found students from almost every country in the Asia-PAcific Region.
I walked up excitedly to the guy nearest to me, a Pakistani and we got introduced to each other. The next hour saw some 30+ such incidents and finally, after a 30 min chat with Mr.Martin from Netherlands about the working of IEEE R-8, everyone headed towards the canteen for dinner. Thats when I met Srinivas, a lively lad from Banglore and we sat beside each other with M.Martin right there in front of us. Martin was entertaining us with some anecdotes at his workplace, when a group of girls from Kerala took up the remaining seats in out table, ~did I say I was glad about that ;) ~ .
After an ordinary dinner, assembled at the lush lawn in front of the auditorium. We were asked to form two circles and the outer circle went around the static inner circle till the music stops, when they have to introduce themselves to the people in front of them at that instant. Thats when i met Ali Mansoor Shami from Pakistan and little did i know that this friendship will last (and grow) throughout the programme . After four such rounds, we settled down, with our minds clouded with dozens of names - Po,Lee,Chiang,Ameer,Sandeep,Christy,Fleur,Srijesh...~ Wonder how some tamilian will call the Chinese guy Po ! ~
All the student imports were then asked to introduce themselves to everyone and also do a performance.
Am confused why certain people look at Pakistanis in a bad perspective, all i can say to them is their voices about Paks are just a piece of complicated absolute pure shit. The pakistan group, which turned out to be the most entertaining group at the event, sang some popular hindi songs ; A Newzealander performed haka, the tribal dance of their National Rugby team ; Four Australians sang some of their yesteryear rock songs ; Three Japanese exhibited some martial arts ; Seven Chinese students voiced some songs ; A lone wolf from Thailand was made to sing a song ; Students from Delhi,Bangladesh section (about 28 ) danced and sung some HIndi hits ; then, it was our turn- madras section to sing, and so we did after an intro ; and the team with the strongest number 67, the Kerala section, danced to songs from four languages, with everyone's mood upbeat, the dance slowly gained pace and finally everyone there were dancing, or atleast trying to.
A humdinger of a day, capped by the dance towards the end... After a near midnight walk with my new friends, I headed back to my room, with a big smile... So IEEE can after all be so much fun !
After the breakfast at 9, the President of IEEE, MR.Terman adressed the gathering, followed by other topnotch officials in the IEEE organisation. After a mundane lunch, we headed back to the auditorium, for an integration activity, which turned out to be a quiz event, with Muthu from third year taking up the role of quiz master. It was a compilation of really interesting questions, which had us all hooked to it.After the celebrating the birthdayof Jennene, an IEEE spokesperson with a large cake, a dance fest was performed by the ssnites and the multinational crowd loved every bit of the onstage proceedings, which ranged from Bharatanatyam to Folk to Western... Following dinner, about 120 of the 230+ delegates ( i mean students) assembled at the auditorium for a series of informal events like Juiced, different kinds of proposals and arm-wrestling face offs. And then was the best event in this whole program - a free for all dance, where the organizers left open the dancefloor( the stage) to everyone... With some initial hesitancy like most others, I joined the 100+ lot on the stage, as we waltzed around, slamming against each other, performing unorthodox steps, with some stints of group dancing to all the popular peppy hindi songs. Unforgettable - its not everyday that you get to dance with a 100+ lot from 10+ countries ! We headed back to our rooms, unwilling...
The next day promised even more fun as we were having lunch and looking forward to the much awaited group activities. Arun, Sonia,Jason, Rizwaan, Jitendran, Hiro, William and me were pooled into the same team. Prashanth, a classmate of mine joined later. After a name-telling game, we were asked to build a miniature structure of Tajmahal with ten newspapers. With some initial dilemma over choosing different ideas proposed within the team, we finally decided on one and started erecting our tajmahal, * for ;) * . Our construction was selected the best by the judge, thanks to our specifications that went into placing sirens over a mini police jeep !
The next event proved to be an interesting one, a modified form of Ship Wreck. With the given ten minutes for discussion over, we had to send someone from our team to tell the crowd why they are going to push a particular person off the ship and justify their decision. Hiro volunteered to do this and on stage, he said we are going to push George Bush off the ship, and when queried, he just said..." because he is george bush ! *also some stuff censored* " . Though our group dint do well in the justification part, we were praised to be the team which had most of the fun from these events !! Cheers 'Zeitgeist', our team name ~ wonder what it means :D ~
We had a great dinner, and I played a prank with tamil language on Arun ( a keralite), a prank well planned and well executed. We were almost coaxed into the auditorium for the multic-national cultural program, after offering some resistance while having a photo session. . My college's music troop, which has been dominating college culturals in chennai ( or so was i told), did some feet-tapping songs. Songs, dances from all the sections, with the Newzealander's performance of Haka stealing the limelight. He even invited people to join him in the dance on stage. And many other teams who later came on followed suit. Chinese danced to a mesmerizing piece of music, Australian played a song with guitar, Taiwanese read out some poem, Keralites, boasting the largest number, did a series of songs and dances, Delhi section was the most boorish, as they played some old skit, Hyderabadis were the last on stage dancing for the song Chal chalre Hyderabadi. Clock read 12.20, two hours past the schedule !
With yet another ordinary breakfast, followed by Student branch presentations, the gift-exchanging time finally started. I got to exchange my elephant crystal statue for a mini phantomish mask from a Taiwanese guy. After hoggin at the lunch buffet, people exchanged their contact details and took an array of photos, as cameras clicked away snaps of moments that will never be forgetten by anybody there... Even the word IEEE, brings a big smile on you :-)
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