Sparring

Yesterday I was showing my colleague some Halloween products off Martha Stewart’s website where she had some interesting looking paper bags with interesting designs on it. What you need to do is to fill the base with sand and place a tealight candle inside so that the designs will glow.



My colleague then suggested we should do the same on one of our products which is a glass covered tealight. Instantly my creative juices kicked in and I got excited, wanting to explore the possibilities of this idea. All she said was, “So what happens when someone orders it? We can’t deliver it the next day!”.

It made me long for the good ol’ days, when I was in a team of people with the same wavelength, humour and positive attitude to build each other’s ideas up instead of shooting it down. Yeah, this was the same team that named our meeting rooms Rivendell and pasted CSI warnings on the bosses doors. It dawned upon me that perhaps this is the reason why I found my old job so enjoyable. Now that they’ve all left, the magic and synergy is also gone. We would get so excited when an idea hit us. Some examples of what we’ve done:

We built a nativity scene using some wizard figurines (as Joseph and the wise men), a soft toy donkey (Bulls Eye), a Power Puff keychain (as Mother Mary).

At the height of Star Wars, we clothed our koala and sheep clip-ons in a painstaking and elaborate Darth Vader outfit made of paper, complete with lightsabers. Princess Leia was easy, since the sheep had the round shaped horns.

Yeah, life was fun, work was made to be fun. We learnt together, got excited about the new things we were learning like wines, Chinese Tea, Winnie-the-Pooh, Lord of the Rings (of course). We sharpened our minds and ideas against each other and encouraged each other to delve into the subject beyond what was required of us at work.

Here’s my appreciation to a great team. Cheers!