Bangalore boy, who gets a two-week, paid exchange programme in the US, says he owes it to his colleagues

A bit of fun at work can be a good thing. Bangalore techie Bijoy Thangaraj has attracted the attention of the US state department for his award-winning video called Cultureu00a0+ Your Cultureu00a0= World of Wonder.

Bijoy won an online contest conducted by the US State Department's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs but insists that the credit goes to the fun-at-work initiatives and five other colleagues at Honeywell.

The award was announced on Tuesday in Washington. Bijoy, one of the four winners from across the world, was informed through an e-mail on Monday evening.

Team work

Bijoy say that it was a team of six that made the three-minute video. "The criterion was that the entry should be in only one person's name, but we were allowed to work in teams. All suggested that it should go in my name," said Bijoy, who composed the music.

Bijoy, Aurovind R, Gitesh Joshi, Ramesh Murugan, Deepika Gulati and Subapriya Nu00a0u00a0 had earlier worked together on a video on the company. "We got to know each other during that project and have been close since then. If not for the office video, we would never have come together and made this award-winning video," he said.

It was Subapriya who first spotted the contest in a newspaper. "All of us were excited and got to work. One of us wrote the lyrics, one composed the music, one collected pictures and so on. We met after work at 7 and worked till late in the night for three weeks. On the last day, we worked 24 hours nonstop, without sleep. Now, our entire team is very happy," he said.

The rewards

Bijoy will receive a two-week, paid exchange programme in the US. He will also receive multi-media software provided by Adobe Foundation.

The other three winners are Jose Vinu00c3­cius Reis Gouveia (16) from Brazil for his video entitled Human Colours, Grant Jirka (14) of Columbus for Winning Team and Tim Peters (22) of Illinois for A Friend in Nanjing.

The initiative was launched to encourage cross-cultural community-building and mutual understanding through the web and social media platforms and also to attract new members to the ExchangesConnect social networking site.

Lyrics of the song in the video

It's my culture my way of life
Beginning to end
It rules my life
It's your culture your way of life
Beginning to end
It rules your life

It's in my blood, in my veins
As high as the sun that rises and shines
We thank God with our hands open
For the light to the life it has given