On Saturday 29 March, my company, Barclays Capital, arranged an Amazing-Race-style race called the 3R Race, focusing on three internal key “R” messages. It was hold in East Coast Park from 9AM to 1PM, where almost 500 people attended. There are a total of two wings, wing A and wing B, of seven stations each, a total of 32 teams, 10 people each, making a total 320 participants. My team called The Humpty’s Dumpty’s started off to a great start, trying to complete each challenges in record time.
A beautiful sunny morning in East Coast park
We started with “Einstein” puzzle, you know, the one, where they gave you some clues, you need to know which nationality lives in which house, drinks what beverage, and own which kind of pet. Next up was to test our body flexibility, we were given ropes that can barely pass our body head to toe, and we need to move the rope from one person to another holding hand. This is one challenge where a lot of people realise how much fat they need to shed, haha… !! The next station proves to be even more challenging, with our team needed to match a list of 16 countries against languages, flag, and population !! Languages and flag matching are already very challenging, having to guess how many people lives in each of those countries makes live much more difficult.
We managed to pass the next challenge thanks in no small part to Google search. The were 10 pictures, and some description of “iconic” buildings in Singapore and we were supposed to guess what they are. Mind you, “iconic” doesn’t mean Esplanade or Singapore Flyer, but it’s more like the Cathedral of Good Shepherd, the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple, Sri Mariamman Temple, or Yusof bin Ishak for the face in S$10,000 bill. As we were allowed to use any kind of help, human or electronic, some people went around East Coast park to get some answers. Most of us whipped out our phones and Blackberrys, busy hitting Google search. We managed to get 9/10 right within the stipulated 10 minutes, a very good effort indeed from the team.
Some games we didn’t do well were like Chinese whispers. The message “Foster open communication and active listening” from the first person has became distorted to “First, active communication, then active listening” by the time it reached the tenth person. We only managed a pathetic two points in that game.
Chinese whispers game
Right at the end, our AP COO even managed to perform a pantomime, performing the song “Watch the Lamb” from Ray Boltz, depicting a third-person view of Jesus walk from Jerusalem to Golgotha to be crucified for mankind sins.
For some reason, Youtube doesn’t allow embedding of this video.You need to click on Youtube logo to watch.
The final part of the event was of course the announcement of the winner. Guess what, out of 32 teams participating, The Humpty’s Dumpty’s WON!!! Our team collected a total 74 points, eight points clear of the runner up, Barang Barang, who collected 66 points. No one million dollars prize as in Amazing Race, so a gold medal was at least what we deserved for winning a race.
The Humpty’s Dumpty’s, the 3R Race champion !!!
Overall, everyone had great fun, and many of us posed for photos afterwards.
You can see how happy I am.
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