BI Team Xmas party (15th December 2010)

10 more days till Christmas!

Around 4.30pm today, everyone stopped work and gathered in the office kitchen area for drinks and nibbles as part of the team Xmas celebrations. There were about 20 of us who stayed back after work which was an awesome turn out – that’s half my team! As we stuffed ourselves with Subway sandwiches, Nando’s grilled chicken tenderloins and chips and our choice of beverage from the selection available (wine, beer, juice and fizzy drinks), coordinators Rachel and Rick split up the group into 4 teams for the Xmas team quiz. I was in Team Prancer (the team names were all Santa’s reindeers) with colleagues Peter Jones, Jesse and Sean. Teams were given a sheet of questions and 15 minutes to answer the questions in their own groups. “No Googling!!” warned the coordinators. Oh bugger :P With beers in hand, we found ourselves an empty meeting room and worked through the questions together. Most questions were of dates and events that had happened in NZ or in the sports world (obviously Rick’s questions) while others were from gossip magazines (Rachel!). I’m not able to answer most the questions since I didn’t grow up in NZ or read gossip mags!

“Time’s up!” Rick called out and everyone gathered back in the kitchen where our manager Chris read out the questions and the nominated representative of each group called out their answers. A point was awarded for the correct answer and each team could pick one question for a double score – my team picked the question “How many seasons are there in Outrageous Fortune?”. I was sure the answer was 6 since I’ve just bought the final season DVD! “6 is the correct answer!” said Chris. SCORE!!

It was interesting to see that each team only had a female – just shows how big the male to female ratio in the BI team! And from the answers, we know who’s been reading gossip mags before bed…hehe…

Round 2 of the quiz was slightly different, this time a point deducted for incorrect answers with one opportunity to pass on the series of questions compiled by Chris. My team was the last in Round 1 – not sure we can turn the tables around in Round 2 when quizmaster Greg is in the current winning team…

At the end of the quiz, scores were tallied and it was Team Dasher that had the highest score (surprisingly NOT Greg’s team) – congrats! Around 6.30pm, everyone pitched in to help clear up the mess we’ve made in the office, then walked over to The Lanes on Wakefield St for bowling. Chris had booked The Loft (VIP upstairs lounge) so we had our own private area with 4 bowling lanes and a dedicated bar/waiting staff serving our drinks booked out for the hour. A selection of gourmet platters were served as we bowled (unlimited bowling) and drinks were on a bar tab (yes, all company paid for). Awesome!

It was such a laugh bowling with my colleagues and watching how each of us had our own bowling techniques – some rolled the ball with both hands, some just dropped the ball on the lane (ouch!) and others tried the pro bowler style but only ever got the ball into the gutter. Personally, I thought I did quite alright and even scored a few spares :) At one point, we were competing for the slowest bowl (based on the speed of the ball) – it was a cracker watching the ball spin oh-so-slowly down the lane. Photos taken this evening here.