As a part of my internship, I am required to participate in various events organized for all the interns. Leaving aside the serious events, some of the fun events include going for a Yankees game, bowling, watching a Broadway show, trip to an adventure park, etc. etc.
. The scavenger hunt in Manhattan was one such event.
In this hunt, all the interns were divided into 10 groups, each group consisting of 4-6 members and each group had to find and solve clues and at the same time also take pictures of team members in different situations that were given to us. Some situations were really funny like "Doing something funny to a stranger", "Performing with a street performer", "The entire team looking lost", "Cooking in the kitchen of some restaurant", "Wearing the clothes of a mannequin" and many more. Then, we had to name our team and one rule of the scavenger hunt was that all the team members had to always be together throughout the hunt.
So our team, "The Manhattan Hunters", started our hunt trying to figure out the first clue. For this, we were given a locked baton that contained a paper chit. To unlock the lock to this baton, we had to go to Bryant Park in midtown Manhattan and find the date of birth of a statue that would contain the number combination of this lock. Of course, this information was also provided in the form of a puzzle. So, taking a few snaps on the way, we headed to Bryant Park. There were some 2-3 statues in the park. But, we quickly managed to find the correct one and finally unlocked the baton. The chit inside said that we had to build a sculpture out of junk stuff that we could pick from anywhere, such that the sculpture reflected the mission of our company and as a proof that we built it we had to take a lot of pictures of the sculpture. Since we were running out of time, we made some random sculpture and then made our way to the Grand Central where one of the members of the organizing committee was waiting for us with the next clue.
It was so difficult to find this fellow from the crowd at Grand Central, but we tracked him down and took the clue sheet from him. This task required us to find answers (all numbers) to 3 questions related to the Grand Central and then sum up the answers to get the extension to which we were supposed to call to get the next clue. The clock was ticking and so we decided that rather than roaming around the Grand Central looking for answers, might as well ask the helpdesk. As they say "All is fair in love and war". He he he!! So with the help of the helpdesk we found out the required answers, calculated the extension and called it to get the next clue. This time too we were routed to the same person to collect the next sheet.
The next sheet also had a format similar to the previous one. 3 questions related to the dates of objects located between the 42nd and 47th street. It was already 5.15 pm, just 45 minutes left for the hunt to end and we had no clue as to how many more clues were left. But, as in day to day work, Google came to the rescue here too :-D. One of my team members and I started calling our friends for the answers. After calling a few friends, I managed to reach Kartik who had access to the internet at that time. My other team member had already found one answer and Kartik managed to find one more. So we were left with one more answer to calculate the extension. We quickly rushed to the place where the object was, found the date and calculated the extension.
This time we were told to go to a close by toy store and look out for another member who would give us the next clue. By the time we found this girl it was already 5.45 pm and we had 4 blocks to walk to reach our destination. So we quickly took the next sheet from the girl. This time we were supposed to take photos of our team with some toys from the shop that reflected universal appeal, diversity, excellent marketing, etc. We managed to take some snaps here and then rushed out towards our destination. Thankfully, this was our last clue and we had completed the hunt
. We finally reached our destination with a minute to spare, submitted all our sheets and camera and heaved a sigh of relief. All 10 teams had made it in time.
So while our scores were being calculated, a slideshow of all the photos taken by all the teams was shown to us. Some photos were absolutely hilarious!! Finally it was time for results. Though we had managed to complete the hunt, we had not taken sufficient photos for which too there were some points. And, so, our team didn't even expect to be in the top 5. But it looked like there were some teams who had not even completed scavenger hunt. In fact, there was this one team that thought that after solving the first 2 clues the hunt was over and they were happily sitting in McDonalds
. So coming back to the results, we come 4th. Overall, it was a great experience wherein I got to do a few crazy things that I normally wouldn't do like dancing with a street performer at Grand Central and that too in formal clothes
. It was one mad afternoon!!!! Looking forward to the next event that is going to be the Broadway show
.
. We had become so obsessed with photos that the day our project got over we had an exclusive photo session that lasted for more than an hour. Mannnnn…..How I miss those awesome days. Here is a tribute to all my photo crazy friends from Persistent…Enjoy!!! 
