When it struck twelve and it was Brucira’s fourth anniversary in January, we were all stuck at our homes due to the pandemic. We connected over a call, had many fun messages in our Slack group but something felt missing – our favorite anniversary trips where the entire Brucira team leaves work behind, has fun, and spends hours and hours in the pool or coming up with crazy game ideas and sometimes even pranks.
We promised ourselves that once the situation gets a little stable, we’ll plan all of this.
And the day came soon!
Here’s a sneak peek into the fun we had during our trip to Pawna lake last weekend!
Starting our trip with an amazing view
Our Zoom cars were booked. Our bags were packed. And the best part – we all left “almost” on time (the key here being almost) and reached our resort in the afternoon. We had a scrumptious meal and when we reached the reception, surprise – we found out that the entire resort was booked just for us. No crowds, no interruptions, no waiting for meals – just a beautiful place with an amazing view and bag loads of tranquility.
The view was the cherry on the cake. The resort was surrounded by mountains, a lake, and fresh air, all that our entire team missed since the pandemic began and we were forced to stay indoors.
What did we do next? Take a dip in the pool, with juice glasses in our hands, the sunset enveloping us, and good ole’ jazz music drowning out all our stress and worries.
The fun-filled retro night
Our co-founder Siddhita wasn’t one to stay behind while we were making plans of what to do next. She planned a retro night and insisted we dress up in retro clothes.
With retro clothes, vintage filters, and cameras at the ready, we clicked hundreds of photos, danced on retro songs, and turned into fashion models by having our own crazy version of a ramp walk.
While some of us walked just like experienced models, the others danced to songs while walking down the ramp. The one thing common in all of this was – lots and lots of cheering from our Brucira team.
Spaces by Brutask
Our co-founder, Harsh, and developer Debashis called everyone to the swimming pool next and gave us an exciting glimpse to a new feature in Brutask – Spaces by Brutask.
It looks something like this:
Since most of us are stuck in our homes in the pandemic and many of us have shifted our operations to remote, we miss the organized layout of our offices. For example, meetings in the conference room, having some light conversation in the cafe, going to a focus room to work on an important project, and so on.
We bring this back to you with a beautiful layout where you can easily have a video conference with someone when you move both of your profiles to the conference room, or have some focus music play for you in the background when you move to the focus room, and so on.
In brief, Spaces by Brutask has combined the pros of remote work along with the pros of office to give you the best of both worlds.
Mini-trek to the beautiful Pawna Lake
On the 2nd day, we woke up a little early and decided to go for a mini-trek. It was an exciting activity for all of us and we went through rocky mountains, crossed a village, and reached the magnificent Pawna Lake.
We took in the beautiful scenery and with our resort caretaker’s help, we did a little bit of kayaking, or at least, tried to.
Upon returning back to the resort, we again jumped into the pool (we just couldn’t stay away from it) and played the “Find the Coin” game.
The evening was all set for clicking our pictures with our Brucira hoodies. We also make a great glam team. Don’t believe us? See the picture below.
Singing performance, horror stories, and a lot more..
The last night of our trip definitely hit the crazy mark.
After a very sane game of playing Dumb Charades and listening to our team members- Akshay and Gauri’s amazing collaboration performance of singing and keyboard playing, we went to the poolside area.
What we did next was meant for only brave-hearted people.
We shared horror stories for three long hours. With each story, the unmentioned caption was “Based on a true horror story.”
While we all thought we were brave-hearts, we ended up listening to the Hanuman Chalisa. To lighten the atmosphere, Sanni shared his love for documentaries around Gulshan Kumar, housing.com, and many more.
A twist to our original plan
The next morning, we were all set to return back to Mumbai. But we changed our plan. Our founders, being the amazing negotiators they are, did some magic and got our checkout time postponed till 6 in the evening.
Guess what we did next?
We jumped into the pool (yes, we just love pools) and had an amazing pool party.
An appreciating-end to our trip
In the end, we participated in a team bonding and culture exercise. We asked each other questions about the different teams and the kind of work we do at Brucira. While all of us had a fair idea, we got to delve deep and understand and respect each team member’s contribution to making Brucira a great organization.
Our co-founders also told everyone that “one thing” they liked and appreciated about each team member.
We ended our trip on a high note with smiles, respect, and appreciation for being a part of Brucira.
