October 1, 2008

Petanque at Microsoft

So good to see a corporation - and not just any - discovering petanque: instead of sitting in front of your screen at lunch, or hanging around at the cafeteria, why not get out of the building and play a couple of rounds of pétanque?

Next to the brand new # 99 building on the company's West Campus in Redmond there is... a petanque court!

Around 650 people work in the building, from countries all around the world. Here you see Juan (China), Mike & Ross (USA), Francesco (Italy) and Manuel (Switzerland) during a recent lunch break.

Thanks a lot to Mike for the pics! And hoping you guys start a league: electronic scorekeeping and algorithmically random team draws should be no problem ;-)
By the way, I recently heard - from a different source - that Bill Gates himself likes to play as well.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

that's a really nicely designed court (sunken!)

Baby Nubbins said...

That's great!

You know, Joe Zajac (Michigan Petanque Club) - his brother Eric, recently started working for Microsoft. He took his primo boules and expensive leather boule bag out to the West coast, with the hopes of starting up a league... guess it's already in the works!

Jeff
Detroit Petanque Club

Anonymous said...

Could I join in the games, as I work nearby ?

Anonymous said...

I wonder if Bill Gates uses platinum shooting boules...

If we could get him (newly retired) in a photo playing petanque... WOW... that'd be something...

Anonymous said...

Some of the technique needs work.....a lot of work! Great stuff though!

Anonymous said...

Hey, this Eric Zajac, Joe's brother, and I am in building 109 just a few buildings down from 99. I have meetings in that building frequently so maybe I'll stop by to teach some of the Michigan Petanque techniques!

Let me know if any of the MSFT folks see this blog so we can coordinate a game, my alias is ezajac?