Shenanigans at the Office

This is a list of the pranks we've played on our co-workers at the office... in semi chronological order. I'm sure I'm forgetting a few... Remind me if I've missed anything.

1. Changing the auto-correct on Microsoft Outlook

Victim: Pragyan and the CJ

Perps: CJ then Shravan

One afternoon, Pragyan let his guard down and left his computer unlocked. CJ jumped at this opportunity, opened Pragyan's Outlook auto-correct function and changed words like "Pragyan", "Energy", "Prices", "The", "Power", "Thanks", his bosses names, etc to "NEPAL".

When Prag came back and started to write an email he was stunned to see that everything he was typing was changing to "NEPAL". Eventually he figured out what was done and painstakingly fixed the changes.

A week later, CJ left his computer unlocked and Shravan jumped in and changed his bosses name to Anant "Disaster" and Judah "Big Boi" and changed keywords like "Gas" to "Disaster". Unfortunately CJ didn't notice the changes in his haste and sent out an email that read "disaster prices are expected to stay flat in the future"... it was only a week later that he realized that he had sent this email out to everyone in the office!

It was then decided that perhaps this was too disastrous of a prank and auto correct pranks were abolished.

2. The Shravan-Pavlov Experiment

Victim: Shravan (intended)

Perp: CJ & Achal (as co-conspirator)

One of our less successful pranks. CJ wanted to try the Pavlov's dog experiment on Shravan. Everytime Achal's phone would ring, CJ would offer Shravan (who sat across his cubicle) a piece of candy, hoping that eventually, with conditioning Shravan would automatically ask for candy each time Achal's phone rang. Unfortunately, Shravan decided he didn't like candy anymore, so CJ switched to cheese puffs (who doesn't like cheese puffs). This went on for a couple of weeks, but with the lack of results, the experiment was prematurely abandoned and labeled a failure.

3. The Mouse in the Jello

Victim: Maity (but switched with Patrick to trap the perp.); later Isak and Pragyan

Perp: CJ

I came in to work one day and noticed that my mouse had been encased in jello... an old office classic. I had an inkling of who was responsible, but to flush out the perpetrator, I switched the encased mouse with Patrick's and pretended that the prank was played on him. CJ's surprise and later after a conniving interrogation over lunch at Amma's CJ implicated himself as the criminal.

It didn't end there. After the mouse was rescued from the jello, even tho

ugh it was wrapped in Saran Wrap, it was unusable since the jello had seeped in. After cleaning the mouse, it looked normal and we replaced Isak's mouse with this defunct mouse. Isak, of course, did what we expected and stole Pragyan's mouse. An hour later, in his frustration, Pragyan sends out an angry email to everyone demanding the return of his stolen mouse!

4. The Inverted Cup

Victim: almost everyone

Perp: almost everyone

Old school prank. Filling up a glass of water to the brim, covering it with a card, inverting it and sliding it over the desk leaves an inverted cup of water on your desk. Those unfamiliar with it had a few "accidents" at their desk. Eventually, people wizened up. The next phase was played on Ankit. Thirteen inverted cups were left on his desk, only three with water in them!

5. Windings on Excel

Victim: Achal

Perp: CJ

Once again, a computer was left unlocked and CJ jumped at the chance. He went into Achal's Excel and set up a small macro that converted everything he typed into windings. It was set to run automatically every time a new Excel sheet was opened. Achal was working from home the next day and he had no idea how to fix it. He didn't get much done that day and needless to say he wasn't pleased with CJ.

6. It Snowed Indoors

Victim: CJ

Perp: Maribeth and Achal (I think)

Again, old school. CJ's desk was essentially TPd!

7. The Overturned Desk

Victim: Achal

Perp: CJ

Another classic. Everything on Achal's desk was turned upside down. His computer, the maps on his wall, his desk, his name tag, everything.

8. Variations on a Theme (of the Overturned Desk)

Victim: Achal and Pragyan

Perp: CJ

This one took a bit of work. Achal and Pragyan's desks were completely switched. Everything was moved. It took them both a while to figure out that they were not sitting at their desks! The execution was quite brilliant!

9. The Taming of Ankit

Victim: Ankit

Perp: EVERYONE!

Probably the most well executed and definitely the longest con at the office.

While CJ was away on vacation, Ankit, who was new at the office and not yet initiated in our ways, innocently inquired why CJ had not been showing up to work. This was easy prey we thought, and our eyes gleamed at the prospect that lay before us. We told Ankit that CJ had gone for his wedding and his subsequent honeymoon and that he would be back at the end of the week. Like a well-oiled machine, everyone picked up on this thread. Emails started shooting back and forth. Reduced photographs of other people's (Nishit's) wedding photographs were passed off as CJ's (since all brown people look alike, Ankit didn't notice the difference). I think CJ's wife's name was Mina or such. We decided that we must buy a gift for the newly weds and we decided that we all would contribute $50 towards it. Achal agreed to be the point man on this and collect the cash and buy something nice for the couple. In the meantime, I messaged CJ, alerting him that for all intensive purposes he was now married to someone called Mina. The next day Ankit handed Achal a check for $50 which was quickly cashed.

At the end of the week, CJ returned and we all congratulated him within earshot. At the happy hour that week and CJ and I waited in line for food, Ankit walked up to CJ and wearing a jovial smile, congratulated him on his nuptials and wished him the best. CJ, of course, graciously accepted. That evening we sat around and thought on how we ought to end the prank. We went up to Ankit's desk and picked out his prized autographed book of music, wrapped it up and put it in a fancy box and waited. The next day, before lunch, we called Ankit over and asked him to give it to CJ since he was the youngest. With all of us as witnesses, Ankit, handed CJ the box. CJ opened and box and lo it was a book. Ankit exclaims, "dude I have the exact same book, except mine is autographed". CJ flips to the first few pages and says, "yeah dude, so is mine". Slowly it dawned upon Ankit that he had been played, because by this time no one could hold in their giggles...

I think we've destroyed Ankit's innocence. Never again will he trust.

10. The Hanging Effigy

Victim: Achal

Perp: CJ and Maity

A little on the darker side... CJ and I went to a thrift store next to Korean Deli and found this wonderful teddy bear and rocking chair set for $5. You never know when such things might come in handy, so we bought it, along with a candle holder for an extra 50 cents.
Back at the office, we had Dave, Achal's manager, call him away on the pretense of some work, and CJ and I got to work. We printed a photograph of Achal's face, taped it over the teddy's face, taped a small empty bottle of tequila to one hand and hung him from the rafters using the mouse cable with a suicide note left on the rocking chair and a candle burning (see pictures).
Achal returned to his desk, saw the shenanigans, stopped, said "I'll laugh at this later, right now I have work to do!"... [It wasn't actual work, Dave had just made up something so he would be away from his desk for us to set it up]. The bear was left behind as Achal's legacy at ICF.

11. The Other Keyboard

Victim: CJ

Perp: Shravan and Isak

(write-up coming up from Shravan)

12. The Thrashing of Pragyan (Variation on a Theme)

Victim: Pragyan

Perp: Achal and Shravan

Achal and Shravan completely thrashed Pragyan's desk, with keyboard, mouse, monitor, docking station taken apart, confetti and wrappers lying all over... it looked like a hobo's joint. It was just plain mean.

13. Not a Green Prank

Victim: Pragyan

Perp: Shravan (he claims it's not him)

Shravan took Pragyan's car keys and left his car on in the garage.

14. The Stapled Cups

Victim: Isak

Perp: CJ and Maity

A semi-failed prank. We took a host of cups (thirty odd) and stapled them together, placed them on Isak's desk and filled them up with water. Due to our shoddy stapling job Isak was able to tackle the problem easily but the idea was quite good.

15. The Blockade

Victim: Andrew

Perp: Patrick and Maity

We surrounded Andrew's desk with a wall of used coffee cups. I think Andrew came in, saw what was done and went home as he was want to do.

16. Nepal vs. India - The Ambush

Victim: Pragyan

Perp: Achal, Shravan, CJ, Maity (video by Isak)

17. The Voice in the Computer

Victim: Jesse

Perp: CJ, Achal, Maity

This one was never going to work, but it was a lot of fun making.
Stage 1: Borrow Achal's Blackberry and record me screaming "You, you there at the computer, help me! Get me out of here! Call 911!"
Stage 2: Set that as the ring-tone on Achal's phone.
Stage 3: Place the phone inside the common Bloomberg machine.
Stage 4: Wait.
Jesse walked into the office and sat at the Bloomberg machine and started working in earnest. Then CJ and called Achal's phone and Jesse was so surprised! First he thought that we had run a program in the computer. Then he thought it was a clip. For the longest time he couldn't figure out what was going on. The rest of us pretended that we couldn't hear anything!
It was great!

18. The Old Switcheroo
Victim: Patrick and Ankit
Perp: Laura and CJ
Changed the automatic language option on Patrick's computer to German and Ankit's iPod to Mandarin.

19. "Hi, I'm Mark"
Victim: Mark
Perp: Mainly Achal
Posters of MPurser were left all over the office.


20. Sleight of Hand/Bait and Switch
Vicitm: Mainly Pragyan
Perp: Achal and CJ
I'm not sure what this one was about... Anybody remember what was done?


21. One Cup to Spill Them All
Victim: Shravan
Perp: CJ (?)
A stack of paper cups with water in one of them were left on Shravan's desk.

22. Tape the Speaker, Hide the Earpiece
Victim: Shravan
Perp: CJ
CJ taped over the mouth piece on Shravan's phone and people on the other line couldn't hear what he was saying.

23. Taping of the Phone (Redux)
Victim: Isak
Perp: CJ
CJ quite meticulously taped up Isak's phone with tape.  I'm sure Isak's retribution is not far away.









24. The Gift of CJ
Victim: CJ
Perp: Isak

While CJ was away on vacation with his family in their exclusive Hamptons chalet.  Isak used CJ's gift paper (Disney's "Little Mermaid" - his favorite) and wrapped his computer, telephone, chair and other objects on his desk.  Quite the novelty.  The note on the right is a reference to the prank that Isak and Shravan played on CJ earlier in the year (see:  11. "The Other Keyboard").


25. Farewell Wrap
Victim: Trevor
Perps: Maribeth (with Nicole as cohort)
Serane wrap around Tevor's Scion.   See photographic evidence!

The Office

Over the course of the last three years, the junior staff at the office have maintained a healthy level of insanity at the work place.  Besides the pranks, there have been several instances of un-professional behavior.  In no particular order, I present to you an ever growing list of workplace idiocy.  I'm sure I've missed a few... fill me in.

1. The 100 Cheesburger Poker Night

Five people.  Simple concept.

We drove to a McDonald's drive-thru after work.  Ordered, 5 Coke Zeros, 1 medium fries, and 100 $1 cheeseburgers.  After the recovery from the initial shock, the franchise gave us two huge boxes of 50 burgers (Later, upon counting, we realized that they had given us 106 burgers instead).  We took our burgers, went back to a conference room at the office.  Took out a deck of cards and played poker, using the burgers as chips.  After an arduous duel, I emerged victorious, winning a grand total of 83 burgers, the rest were eaten or given away.  Originally we had planned to give away the burgers to homeless people, but we got lazy and instead filled the kitchen fridge with them.  The next day we put up a notice saying FREE FRESH BURGERS.

2. Chair Racing
First instituted as a late night boredom reliever during the dark days of October 2010, for a while this became a dominant act for bragging rights to set fastest lap-times around the cubicles.  The leader board was kept on JK's desk as a reminder of who's top dog.  Over time, with JK's move to a different desk, the sport disappeared in to obscurity.

3. Russian Roulette
An aftermath of the "Assassination of Pragyan" prank.  Suddenly, Nerf guns. One of them the Maverick, a revolver type Nerf reminiscent of the Mel Gibson Western character.  Russian Roulette with Nerf Guns, simple enough idea, tons of fun.

4. The Rube Goldberg Machine
A testimony to the great times in Office 208.  An idea that led to one of the most fun things I've done since graduating college.  Props to Gilmartin.  


5. The GSE Index and the Great Crash

6. The Big Lebowski

7. Crotch-Crotch Ball

8. Fish Here, Fish Now

9. Vs. ICF06344

10. Ka-Me-Ha-Me-Haaaa

11. Halloween

12. Fogo De Chou

13. RPS Tourney

14. Baseket and Kricket

15. The Two Towers

16. Conquer Club

17. The Paper Throw League

18. The NC Fan Club

19. The Capacity Price is Right!

20. Improv Night

21. Vidz-Ball

aMAD Films Presents:

Amit and I made a sequence of short movies with a math theme for fun. Here's a first look. Enjoy. If you want to watch it in high quality, you need to go to the youtube site. You can do that by just clicking on the "youtube" sign on the video. In youtube you can choose the "view in high quality" option.

Smashing M&Ms


The Mathematical Father


Professor Gone Wild

Dodging .45 Caps in NYC, Part Deux

Unlike Lucas' much awaited Star Wars III, hopefully this second and final installment of "New York Minute" won't be sorely disappointing and riddled with corny dialogues.

When we last met our unassuming hero, he was caught in a crossfire of .45 caps at the basement of NYC's hell-hole - the Port Authority Bus Station...

a short recap to bring you back to the scene:

4 am: A massive caucasian male, standing roughly at around 6ft with dirty salt and pepper dreadlocks and a overworn moss green trenchcoat walks into the cafe. No one except for a few people take notice of him or the 9mm pistol he's holding in his right hand. Almost in a whisper he says "I'm so fucking pissed off, I'm going to shoot every one of you mother fuckers overhere". No one really responds. Needless to say, I was shit scared - I didn't really want to die in a cafeteria in a shady NYC bus station, there had to be a better way. With most eyes on him now, this maniac marches upto an old chinese (he could be Korean or Japanese or Thai, I couldn't really tell) guy who was eating a hotdog, picked him by the collar and askedhim "how much money you got huh, how much money you got?"

...END RECAP

The poor Asian gentleman was too scared to react and kept staring at Mr. Dreadlocks. Dreadlocks says, "so you dont have any money huh? I'll show you what money is." and saying so he opens the tote bag he was carrying and starts taking out wads of ten dollar bills (well they looked like $10 bills anyway) and starts placing them on the table. "See, this is what you call money, asshole" He then pushes the Asian gentleman back into his seat, slumps into the closest chair and starts crying. In between sobs he bawls out "What the fuck am I doing here? I'm supposed to in fucking Florida, what the fuck am I doing in NYC surrounded by you assholes!" In the mean time the transit guards have come back and try to appease this dude. For some reason, as if on cue, some dude's 2-in-1 starts playing that oldie Rick Springfield song "Jessie's Girl".

The cops start sweet talking Dreadlocks (interestingly the radio starts playing "Wake me up before you go go"!). The cops tell him "Sir, just take it easy, throw the gun away, stay calm, we'll put u on a bus to florida pronto, just don't do anything rash and all..." Dreadlocks, fortunately decides to acquisce and slides his gun across the table, and the moment he does that, these two cops come in and beat the crap out of the dude with their night sticks...all to the tune of "wake me up before u go go"! It was a pretty insane scene. then they (the cops) take the gun and the money, put it back into the tote bag and took Dreadlocks away...that's the last I got to see these guys.

Then after a while, after all th excitement and adrenalin has subsided, I order some breakfast and try to get back to my book, when this fairly old gentleman, in a gaudy yellowing jacket and and brown sunglasses came and sat opposite me at my table and started dinking my coffee. I noticed that the entire left side of this guys face was burnt and scarred. Before I could react, the man spoke first.

"So you think New York is a dangerous place, huh?" Slightly taken aback, I manage a shrug. "Obviously, you've never been to New Jersey" he continued. "You see these scars on my face? I didn't have these last weekend. I had just come out from a bar last friday night after enjoying a good evening of drinking and I was walking back home when these two muggers cam from behind, stabbed me in the back and threw acid on my face before making off with my wallet." (insert appropriate face of shock) "but these muggers, these muggers I can deal with, the real bastards are the ones who work in government hospitals. When I woke up, i was in this hospital and a couple of days later when they were ready to discharge me, i got my clothes and all back, and guess what, they'd cleaned out my little waist pouch which had all my credit cards and some cash...gone...all empty. but the worst part was, wait, check this..." (he opens the bag he was carrying and takes out a tweed jacket and holds it up and it's been cut quite neatly in two) "...they cut my brand new tweed jacket in half! So i go to the doctor and ask him, why the fuck did he cut my jacket in half? and he says that when i came in i was bleeding profusely and that they had to get the jacket off so he cut it. and i tell him, well if u can't fucking take three buttons off, you shouldn't call yourself a fucking doctor in the first place!" and saying so he picks up what was left of my coffee and bids me good morning and goes off...

I won't describe my reaction. I just quickly finished breakfast and spent the next hour till my bus cam in, in the toilet, trying to get some sleep and generally being safe. Well needless to say I came back to college "shaken but not stirred" and in my unshaven and unclean condition went directly to work (I was still an hour late, but my employeer decided not to dock my pay after she heard my story...)

I know there weren't any lightsabers or starfighters but I'm still working on creating my own brand of merchandise and licensed characters that i can market...

Dodging .45 Caps in NYC, Part 1

Well the semester has seen a fair amount of snow storms, sloth and other vices that go with extreme cold. Apart from a remarkable night in New York City, the details of which I have stated below, and a rather arbitrary weekend at Tufts University at Boston, the semester has been pretty straight forward, actually not that straight-forward, but not as crazy as Stephanian times.

On the first day (a saturday) of Spring Break, dad called and told me that one of his friends would be flying to San Francisco via New York and that I should meet this gentleman at JFK on Thursday night. come Wednesday I'm all set to go to the city, when my dad calls in the evening and informs me that the above mentioned gentleman would now be flying in on the following Sunday instead.

Saturday night I find out that there is a certain chap on campus who was going to be driving down to NYC on Sunday morning. Naturally I decided to hitch a ridewith him. This guy tells me that we'll leave at 11 am on Sunday. I was fine with that since the before mentioned gentleman's flight was supposed to come in at 5:30 and NYC is only about 4 hours away from college.

Sunday: (I'll do the rest in an itenary format tospeed things up, this keyboard sucks!)
As asked, I show up at my ride's room at 11, only to be told that it was in fact his brother who would becoming in from Yale to pick us up and drive us to the city and that his brother was not here yet.

12 pm: his brother turns up in a spanking new fuel guzzling Nissan SUV and we set off and I promtly fall asleep in the back seat.

2 pm: I wake up and look around and notice a rather large board saying "Welcome to Whitestown, Pennsylvania". I panic. "Dude, aren't we going to the city?" I inquire. "Yeah we are but my parents just called and they want me to return the SUV to them, so we'll take my truck from home and then go to the city." my friend replies.

3 pm: I am cramped in the tiny utility seat in the back of a Chevy Truck and we're headed towards NYC. They smoke a joint en route.

6 pm: We reach the outskirts of NYC in a a place called Beacon and my friend stops the truck outside the railway station and tells me to take the train from here to the city since he was not going to drive any further since he was going to go to a friend's place here.

7:30 pm: the freaking train takes an hour and a half to reach grnd central. I get onto a bus for JFK

8:00 pm: I'm in JFK. Obviously the fore mentioned gentleman is no longer waiting for me. I call dad and find out which hotel he's staying in and go there. I've never met this guy before in my life, but it turns out that he was pretty chilled and all. He gave me some money dad had sent and my plane tickets to fly back home. He asks me if I wanted to spend the night here or go back to college. Since I was working the next day, I decided to go back and took the West bound subway to the bus station at Port Authority.

9:45 pm; I reach Port Authority in time to miss the last bus to Utica by 15 minutes. The next bus is at 7 in the morning. I have from 10pm at night till 6 in the morning to kill. I decide to go to Broadway.

I'm at Broadway, outside a theatre playing "The Lion King". They're sold out. Fortunately or unfortunately, I find a shady dude scalping ticketsfor the show close-by. I pay an exorbitant amount towatch the show, which was awesome (the show that is, not the exorbitant amount)!

1 am: I wander into the Laughter House to watch comedian Kathie Lee perform. She's terrible...house-wife humour. I walk out an hour later. I wonder why I stayed so long.

2am: the only kind of people on NYC at this time were drunks, black chain gangs and 24 hour chinese food delivery people. I decide to head back to the bus station.

3 am: I'm sitting at the cafeteria downstairs of the bus station, trying to read "Brighter Than a Thousand Suns" when I and some other people in the cafe realize that the woman sitting next to me was trying to commit suicide. This lady was a diabetic in her late 50s or early 60s I would guess and her preferred method of dying was tearing open sugar sachets and pouring the contents into her mouth. How did we find out? Well, we noticed that there was a rather unusually large heap of empty sugar satchets on her table, maybe about forty or fifty and when one of the cafe staff guys tried to ask her what she was upto, something flipped in her head and she started cursing, flailing her arms about and screaming "let me fucking die the way I want to, what the fuck is your problem?" Finally the transit guards showed up and managed to take her away.

3:30 am: The earlier events well behind us, the cafe is back into it's lethargic late night mode. there are a few homeless drunks sleeping on the floor, or Hispanic labourers with their families curiously looking at the shoes on display at one of the closed shops. Things were pretty quiet.

4 am: A massive caucasian male, standing roughly at around 6ft with dirty salt and pepper dreadlocks and an over worn moss green trenchcoat walks into the cafe. No one, except for a few people take notice of him or the 9mm pistol he's holding in his right hand. Almost in a whisper he says "I'm so fucking pissed off, I'm going to shoot every one of you mother fuckers overhere". No one really responds. Needless to say, I was shit scared - I didn't really want to die in a cafeteria in a shady NYC bus station, there had to be a better way. With most eyes on him now, this maniac marches upto an old chinese (he could be Korean or Japanese, I couldn't really tell) guy who was eating a hotdog, picked him by the collar and asked him "how much money you got huh, how much money you got?"...

[I'll leave it at this cliffhanger...will Maity escape with his life or will he succumb and become just another New York crime statistic, find out in the next episode of "Days of Our Lives"]