April MHK - a post-event report

Since I was the one hosting the event, I will confine myself to the facts and leave all criticisms/ compliments to those less intimately concerned with the event.
To wit, that the following events did occur on Saturday, the 12th of April 2008:

1. Tharunya arrived at Brewhaha forty minutes ahead of schedule. She had meant to arrive only ten minutes ahead of time, but did not take into account the sparse traffic that might be expected at two in the afternoon on a weekend.
2. She called various people (Okay, she called four.) and discovered that some of them would arrive only at four, some thought the MHK was at four and some people's phones weren't even working. Hoorah!
   
3. She waited until five minutes to three, when she left the premises because she was politely reminded there was a limit to the amount of time one could spend in the establishment without ordering food.
4. Ujjwal arrived promptly at three and called Tharunya to find out where she was. Tharunya was properly impressed, but that did not prevent her from making a few unwanted remarks about his short story (i.e. gave away the plot, for e.g. to Sharmila).
5. The three members moved in and occupied a table right in view of the entrance. They were soon joined by (in approximate order of appearance) Annette, Ali, Poorna, Guru and Varun.
   
6. Orders were placed. In spite of advice to the contrary, Sharmila insisted on ordering the Inter-Galactic Gargle Blaster. Some amusement was derived from her facial expressions on tasting her drink. Some more amusement was derived from the facial expressions of those who were reading Ujjwal's story.
   
7. A slight diversion was caused when Ujjwal made disparaging remarks about women's ability to enter into feelings of love for inanimate objects, but he soon realized that he was both wrong and outnumbered.
   
8. The gang of eight moved to a corner of the café facing a large picture window. They were later glad to be there due to the excitement and screaming caused by unexplained acts of videotaping in the inner parts of BrewHaHa.
9. They were soon joined by Ananth, and once Kiran and Ravi arrived (at around 4.30 p.m.), the entire cast for the day's activities was present.
10. Games were played.
11. Some people left.
12. More games were played.
13. Everyone else left.

The Games:

We began with a mini-round of DC. The cards had names of South Indian movies (Languages covered - Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam) on them. Every movie name contained only four syllables, and the trick was to act out through phonetics only.

Once everyone had arrived, we moved into the Quiz. This consisted of four rounds of word games. The first two were crossword-clue rounds, and the others were anagrams and kangaroo words. We had five teams of two members each. Most teams managed to solve a number of puzzles, and a couple of teams got them all. :)
No wonder we're in Mensa, what?

We moved on next to the Pictionary. We split into two teams for this, and alternated the drawing of chits and the drawing of pictures. (notice: a pune, or a play on words.)
There were four ideas/ items on each card; all of them had one defining theme or connect. Here, the rules were to draw ONLY whatever was written on the card picked. Some amusement was caused when teams guessed the connect before all the items were drawn, and then spent time yelling random things at the person drawing. Poor Ali; poor beaver.
(Note--> Kiran was the one who said "beaver". The answer was "badger".)


After the Pictionary, we played Band Bluff, a game I invented purely for the purpose of the MHK. This was played as an individual game, with everyone just siting around and volunteering to pick a chit. The chits had names of bands (well known and otherwise) and the object of the game was to create a band-name-origin story for that band so that others could figure out who it was. My personal favourite (though nobody guessed the band) was the story for Chumbawumba that Ujjwal proposed. Honourable mentions for memorableness: Blind Faith, ABBA, Foreigner, Counting Crows, Talking Heads, AC/DC.
Near the end of this game, four Mensans decided they had to tear themselves away and move on either to work (Ujjwal and Sharmila) or to other venues (Varun and Guru).

We moved on then to the final prepared game for the evening, the Quotable Quotes. Here, the object of the game was to perform the quote from the famous movie that was given to you, and then have someone answer by quoting another line from the same movie. Since most people appeared to have missed seeing the movies, we modified the game to merely guessing which movie the quote was from. Slight diversion was caused when the movie was the Godfather, because, naturally, everyone wanted to show off a Brando imitation.

When we came to the end of the games, it was only around six, so we spent forty minutes or so playing pictionary with English movies. In that short span of time, Annette wowed us with tigers, dragons, and assorted weapons; Poorna stunned us all by revealing that she could draw a lifelike bust of Shakespeare and that she was related to him; Ananth proudly claimed his utter ignorance of all but the titles of the movies "because he learnt them for DC"; and Ali persisted in seeing scenes from Brokeback mountain in anything that anyone drew.
Notable mention: Ravi, with Flubber. :)

Eventually, we decided to all head home. We wished Ali luck for his year-odd stint in Phillipines, Kiran generously footed the MHK tab, and two jigsaw puzzles were handed over.

In all, a memorable day. Thanks to all who attended for being such great sports. I had a wonderful time.
:)

Ooh. Forgot to mention that I also received, on that day, my prize for winning the Photography Contest yay.

MHK Report: April 2008, BrewHaHa

It has been almost a week since the most recent MHK and its high time we gave a description of it to those who missed it and remind those who attended it of the fun-filled hours spent.

The last MHK was on April 12th and it was good fun! Tharunya deserves a lot of praise for having conducted things well.

It was probably 3.15 p.m. when I reached BrewHaHa. Tharunya, Annette, Ujjwal, Sharmila and Ali were already there. I was introduced to those I had not met before. Ujjwal then showed all of us his prize-winning story :) which was subjected to some amount of discussion and debate. After sometime, Gururaj and Varun joined us (I don't remember who came first). I was slightly disappointed (again) at Sugandhi's absence. Its just that I write to her quite often and I still haven't met her.

Meanwhile, Tharunya had arranged for a nice place in one corner of the shop for us to carry out the activities planned for the day. After sometime Ananth joined us. After some more time Kiran and Ravi joined us. Nobody came after that and in my opinion, nobody would have welcomed anybody who came after that considering the fact that Tharunya (and to an extent even we) were annoyed at the late comers!

We played a number of games and I can't name them since each game was new and different from the games we have already played or heard of. Hats off to Tharunya - it isn't simple to plan such events with so much care and great attention to every detail.

After sometime, a few members (Ujjwal, Sharmila, Varun, Gururaj) left the place. To be honest, we had even more fun after they left! It has got nothing to do with their absence though.

We continued playing Tharunya's games for sometime and then we played random pictionary (english movies) until all of us left the place (it was probably 7 p.m. when we left). I still remember the 'Daisy Duck' Ravi drew :).

This report would be incomplete if I didn't write about Annette. I met her for the first time that day. She is a wonderful person. She's a great listener and above all, she's a genius. You should have seen the things she drew! She can replace Neil Buchanan in Art Attack!

I have now come to the end of the report and I hope to see all of you in the next MHK!

Poorna.T.S.

MHK Report: Mar 2008 Panchavati

Imagine the innumerable tangents along which thoughts will fly when four hundred odd, high IQ individuals congregate. Just the mere thought of it fills me with a positive feeling. We strive to experience a fraction of that at our MHKs and we just get better each time.

The March MHK in that sense was quite a blast with a turnout of 15 full Ms and 6 guests. Now if one were to come up with reasons, apart from planetary alignments, this MHK was unique in the sense that it combined elements of, an insight into a serious hobby with fun and rejuvenation. And of course, how can I forget the meticulous planning by Roshin, who conducted the photography workshop. Before I move on, let me just encapsulate the story behind this MHK. It was a lot of insistence and zeal from Ananth that made me pester Roshin. And a final appeal from the secretary, Guru himself that made Roshin lunge forward.

It all began on the morning of 8th March, ’08 on the outskirts of Bangalore. Tucked away somewhere out there is a farmhouse, Panchavati. The five owner friends rent it out only to friends and relatives, so there are no formalities and it is a family atmosphere. Well, there we were, going to be amidst nature, all simply set right for a photography workshop. The planned time to begin was 10am, but as it turned out we were at the Banshankari bus stand buying watermelons and chatting. Asif and his wife had arrived well ahead of time and were sweltering in the sun when Roshin, me, Tharunya and Shaheen joined them. Anette with her family joined us and we headed to our destination. Finally around 11am, the theory session began, in all earnestness. Our ears and eyes glued to Roshin and mouths busy munching goodies. At certain points, the session got so interactive that a particular slide refused to move and make way for the next. However, somehow managing to wade through it all, we emerged an enlightened crowd, or so we think. If I forgot to mention, we did have a lunch break and were served with some sumptuous vegetarian delicacies.

The twilight hour was welcomed by amateur photographers setting foot to capture anything and everything that sparked the creative hormones hidden in them. At the back of their minds was the prize for the best photograph and the desire to win it. That resulted in some amazing photos and acrobatics by the photographers. But alas, we didn’t have the time to choose the winner and so it was decided to have the contest online. I am sure Kiran will be glad about that as he had to leave early and now that means he isn’t missing the fun part. In the meantime, some hot, boiled sweet potatoes and spicy savories added a new dimension to the energy and passion of all present there. This write up will be incomplete without the mention of three adorable stars, aged 3.5, 1.5 and 1.5, children of a German couple, who had us in splits with their cute antics and indeed, were every photographers’ delight.

Evening turned into night and we bade good bye to quite a few, but also welcomed one, Ali, who chose kick boxing over photography. We tried hard to tempt Sugandhi, Sharmila and a few others to stay back, nothing worked. So we reconciled to that fact and entertained ourselves with some Monty Python to begin with and a lot of carom thereafter. Around midnight, Varun and his friends had to take leave for mysterious reasons. So we just let them be. And it was almost 5:30am when the last few dozed off.

The sun brought with it a new day which was mostly spent lazing around, tossing a few balls and humming to guitars. Ravi joined us a second time after having gone back the previous night to give company to his dog. There were a passionate few, Tharunya in particular, who spent hours solving two jigsaw puzzles of five hundred pieces in the morning and the grand finish was celebrated with tea and more photographs. To add to the celebration, we were told that this event would be partly sponsored by Mensa. And then, when we were just about to wind up, someone come up with a great idea for the next MHK. Well, that will be revealed in due course.

MHK Report: Feb 2008 BrewHaHa

A bunch of us met for MHK, Feb at BrewHaHa, Koramangala on February 10th, 2008. Ananth, Tharunya, Arjun (a guest with Tharunya), Rathi and Roshin were there at 4 PM, and Guru and myself were there by 4.20 PM.

Tharunya had some events prepared, but because of the low attendance of the event, we decided to hold on to the events for a later date, when we have more members in attendance. Meanwhile, we decided to take advantage of the games at BrewHaHa and start some games. We were also joined by a newcomer to the meetings, Poorna. We had a fun-filled session of Trivial Pursuit (a game of quiz and luck, mostly luck), which was a closely matched game, finally won by Roshin and Arjun. We were also joined by Amar in the midst of the game.

While the ambience at BrewHaHa was great, Ms did not find the food and drinks to be as inspiring. However, we do plan to keep our minds open towards BrewHaHa as a future meeting location.

The only disappointment of the evening was the low attendance, due to which we were not able to hold the events that Tharunya had so meticulously prepared.

Hope to see lots more people at next month's event, details of which will be sent out shortly.

Thanks,
Ujjwal