2012

Here where I work, we’re totally into the Olympics. Since it’s an international community and an international workplace, we try to generally avoid conflict because of cultures and cultural influences and find ways to bridge these differences. When the olympics comes around, however, things change. The Olympics are a huge source of nationalism (via sporting events), team work, and joy as we can all celebrate the Gold, Silver, and Bronze medals with others of a particular nationality. All around the building, we constantly hear – Sure, my guy lost, but yours won – what a stunning finish/great match.. etc.!

In Honor of the Olympics, the events committee here at work has decided to challenge us on a floor by floor basis – to support charities, to decorate, and to show our cultural diversity while celebrating how well we can work together. On my floor, we have many varied nationalities – including French, Spanish, Portugese, Dutch, American, Irish, Italian, German, Polish, Indian, Canadian, Brazillian – and this is just the ones I know about!

The idea was were supposed to choose 1 color, but the floor decided to go for "ALL" the colors. I made paper chains for all the desks (I was up until 1:30 am) – and there were Olympic balloons for the end caps. There were also olympic balloon rings; and flags representing the countries of all our team mates on the floor.

We managed to get sports equipment & pictures of nearly every sport up on our columns, and then people participated in desk chair rowing, desk basketball, desk badminton, mini-football, and stick horse racing at the time of “judging”.