Jessica Renee Towicz: April fools gone wrong, disco rickshaw and a bed full of elephants

We certainly have had some fun on this assignment (but we have been working, I promise :) ). I mentioned in one of my Bhopal posts that I had a story to share and I am now going to make good on that promise.

The beautiful hotel we stayed at was once a palace that had been converted in recent times. What has remained though is the Muslim heritage it brings, so no alcohol is served at this venue. Enter in a group of CSCers who have spent a day exploring, in between bouncing around on a bumpy bus. Some of us went straight to bed whereas others decided to go to the closest thing that resembled a bar and we found ourselves at the business centre, ordering mocktails.

The hilarity began from the moment we tried to order a beverage from the phone in the business centre. Despite being assured that we could order drinks from the business centre when we were at reception deciding what to do, the person on the phone said it was not possible. Paul went back down to reception to place our order in person, only to return with the person serving us trailing behind.

Now this is definitely one of those stories that have the tag line 'It was so funny....oh...I suppose you had to be there'. But I am going to share it with you anyway, because...it was so funny (...you had to be there). Depending on your country, April Fools for majority of us in the Business Centre that night was celebrated on April 1. We realised this whilst sitting there as the clock struck past March 31 and into April Fools. We quickly established a team rule that if you left the business centre for what ever reason, the remaining people were not allowed to play a trick on you.

This led to the natural conclusion of all remaining in the business centre that we should play an April Fools joke on the rest of the group who by this stage, had gone to bed. Now united in a safe front, everything became funny. I can't even remember the suggestions that we initially came up with but they started out simple and naturally ended up outrageous. We eventually decided that every person not in on the April Fools joke was going to wake up in the morning and find a letter under their hotel room door, advising them that there was an issue with their passport and that they would be met by authorities later in the day.

To not incriminate ourselves too much, I will refrain from going into step by step detail of what we sourced, attempted, created, tried and completed that night but it included and was not limited to; considering what wording should be on the letter, what sort of official letter head could be on the paper, what sort of envelopes should be used, what time the letters should be distributed and a back up plan incase we all ended up in Bhopal jail. Because some of those people who were going to be the victim of our Aprils Fools joke are just too smart for their own good, we had to include a rogue letter which one of us on the 'joke' side would also receive to help facilitate the alarm and panic in such a way that it would allow us enough time to capture this on camera (and without the alarmed and panicked person getting too stressed). A semi-script was then developed on how this should take place the next morning when the letter reveal was scheduled.

This entire process of drafting and writing an appropriately terrifying letter that had enough 'clues' to make you think something wasn't quite right with it (this was our back up plan as to not go to jail) all the whilst maintaining as much integrity our contract writing skills could muster. Imagine 5 or 6 heads all leaning in together in front of a laptop screen, debating terminology and syntax until the perfect letter was complete. Some time was spent on trying to make the now perfect letter, appear on the official looking letterheads.

Again, certain steps were attempted to try and do this and all the technical skills in the room were not enough to make that printer work for us. We had the letter ready to go, the enevelopes had names written on them in 'hotel looking handwriting' and we were giddy on sugar from our mocktails. It has been about 2.5-3 hours by this stage.

I am about to make the last ditch effort to get these letters printed by calling reception and asking them to come to the business centre when I picked up the phone, only to have a dead signal in my ear. At some stage in the evening when we were scouring around the business centre looking for resources, we had bumped the table with the phone, which led to the cord being pulled out from the wall. We interpreted this as a sign from the Indian Gods that we should not go any further with our April Fools prank and alas, we all went sadly off to bed.

The next morning there was sort of a wistfulness in the air as we contemplated what 'could have been'. We eleceted to not tell the group of their 'near miss' until we had our CSC Social Event where we could show them a copy of the letter that they would have received.

Now that has been done, I've included a copy for you below:

Unfortunately Masashi (who is male, was going to be stirred that little bit more when we addressed him as 'Ms'. Another clue (for our back up plan) was keeping the correct date. Any thoughts on who has signed off the letter? Perhaps read it backwards for another clue?

So that is our April Fools story. This is what happens when you put a group of 'talented' people in a room together with mocktails and limited resources, the joke is on you.

In other fun news, we have had varying experiences with rickshaws around Indore. This one has been, by far my favourite:

Disco Rickshaw - Check it out!

My last story to share with you here is about Paul. Now Paul is one of those quiet achievers who may initially seem like the quiet one in the group but he is hilarious and often has you in stitches laughing. We have been very well looked after by the staff here at the hotel and quite often they will leave a towel in your room, that has been made in the shape of an animal. Swans, cobras, elephants have adorned our beds and it has been a running joke with Paul as he swears that his towel elephant is deliberately moved around on the bed to ensure it gets the right level of attention.

I came up with the idea that one day Paul should walk into his room, to find 30 elephants on his bed, on the floor, on the couch all looking at him accusingly, demanding his full attention. I laughed to myself about this for at least a week imagining his reaction but unfortunately my psychic ability was not developed enough to make this trick actually take place. So I shared my idea with Tyler and Anika who whole-heartedly approved. Minutes later, we find ourselves talking to the hotel manager about our plan who is more than happy to accommodate (slightly awkward pause though when he corrects us in saying that the elephant is actually a Ganesh, symbolic of an Indian God). We arrange for this towel stampede to take place the following day when all 12 of us are attending a press conference (which I will blog about soon). In the meantime, we track the progress of this ruse by adding an item to our daily agenda called 'Project Truncate Snuffy'- a result of including the words 'trunk' and 'snuffleupagus'.

The following day, we wait patiently throughout the press conference, follow Paul back to his hotel room close on his heels, making up stories as to why we were down his end of the hallway. We wait as he can't find his room key in his bag and then he finally opens the door. I then walk past his room, sneaking a furitive glance only to see an elephant-free room. With a small shake of the head, I indicate to Tyler and Anika that yet again, our trick has not gone plan.

We sulk in our break-out room for a few minutes whilst we try and figure out what went wrong. There was a 5 hour window for this to take place. After another conversation with hotel manager, Project Truncate Snuffy is back on the agenda.

Here is the result:

Our kind accomplice who set up the multiple elephants

And when Paul did walk into his room some hours later, he was surprised and came laughing into the breakout room, knowing full well who would be behind this amusement -> Tyler, Anika and me. Unfortunately I had gone off to bed to nap away a headache and missed the actual reaction, but check out the pictures of Paul and his bed full of elephants: