Dear Diary,

7:00 AM Hit the snooze button on that nasty, shrill cellphone alarm.
7:15 AM Dragged myself out of bed. Showered, brushed and dressed with my eyes closed. I am talented that way.
7:45 AM Dragged my laptop and other office peripherals down to the breakfast table. Managed to stuff a toast,an omelette and my daily dose of 4 colourful pills down my throat.... all with my eyes still closed. I know, this is starting to sound unbelievable, but trust me on this.
8:00 AM Finally, the bright daylight outside forces my eyes open and I hop into my Santro to zip through the excitingly unpredictable Hyderabad traffic to get to work.
8:30 AM Sharukh and the Santro advertisements lie. Zip-driving does not depend on the car, but on the traffic. Thanks to my rahu-shani conspiring against me, all the rash motorcyclists, broken-down buses and the slowest autos were all in my way. Still got another thirty minutes to go.
9:05 AM Wohoo, made it to office without any scratches on my precious car. Good job, babe! Walked into this 9-6 training that I was nominated for - Creativity and Problem Solving, it is called. The trainer is late... Damn, the day I make it on time, the trainer is late...Grrr.
10:30 AM The trainer walks in. I want to be mad at him but he greets us with this sweet, genuine smile and complains about the traffic in Hyderabad and I immediately warm up to him. He is a middle-aged man who has served 22 years in the US Navy and now works with a Training and Development company.
11:30 AM After the initial discussion about the program and basic definitions of 'creativity' and 'innovation', we were asked to sit in a circle. We followed instructions. We were then, asked to extemporeaneously make an advertisement for a floor-cleaning detergent called clean n glow. The most unexpected people came out with the wittiest, funniest commercials ever. Fantastic experience. Gave us all a headrush.
1:00 PM Boring lunch at boring cafeteria.
2:00 PM Some more talk about techniques to enhance creativity at the workplace.
3:00 PM The trainer decides we look sleepy and says we have another activity to go. So I am all charged thinking it might be another commercial but to my surprise and somewhat confusion, the trainer pulls out an egg from his bag and hands it to me and says 'This is yours.' My team and I are staring at the egg for a minute or two till he proceeds to explain what we are to do with the egg. He explains that the activity is to throw the egg from the fourth floor of the office building on to the concrete ground below. We are ummm, dumbstruck. He then passes on four balloons, a couple of plastic straws, thread, tape and newspaper and says you have an hour.
3:30 PM The team is still arguing among itself to decide whose contraption idea would be best to save our precious egg from the impact of the fall. Finally, one guy who stopped arguing and starting building his contraption won as we were running out of time on this one.
4:00 PM It was ready. Our contraption. There was a newspaper parachute attached to straws that held a huge balloon which had another balloon in it that in turn had our precious egg. A few more balloons were added under the "egg" balloon for cushioning effect. This was all the on-the-spot engineering that we could manage.
4:15 PM The fateful moment arrived. All the teams were ready to face their destiny. One egg out of five broke. It wasn't ours and we were ecstatic. It made me think, if it is possible to throw an egg from the fourth floor of a building and not let it break ( in four possible ways), there is hope in the world for so much...
5:00 PM All the teams flushed with energy and passion, came back into the room, ready to get done with this training. The last activity for the day was to 'save your balloon'. Every person was given one balloon and one toothpick and the aim of the game was to 'save your balloon'. The trainer uttered the words and everyone started running to others and bursting their balloons. This insanity continued till there was no one with an intact balloon. The trainer then said, "the objective was to save your balloon, not puncture other's balloons." Everyone just looks at each other. I guess we are instinctively trying to step on others to reach our goals.
6:00 PM I went over to my desk, wrote a script for a movie we are making for a women's conference and then left office to battle the traffic again.

Whew, what a long day, but boy was it fun.