barghers.com

First day of work went quite well for me. When I first stepped into the office, I was introduced to my boss. I went in expecting to do filing, photocopying and those mundane work that most interns would do, for at least a week, but the first thing he told me was this: “Don’t worry, you won’t be doing any boring work like photocopying and arranging files. You will be working on projects”. The thoughts that was running in my head at that moment was: “Wow, this boss of mine sure is cool, he must have read my mind”.

I was given an entire cubicle to myself, and mind you, it’s quite big (roughly 2.3m X 2.3m). I was also given a laptop, a company e-mail address, my own landline and everything else that a regular office worker would have. The fact that I was given all of these priviledges really surprised me, as it is very uncommon for an intern to be given all of these things. My boss then gave me a pile of documents for my reading, all of them relating to Risk Management, which is essentially the things that my boss and colleagues do. I also attended their weekly meeting where they update everyone else in the team about the progress of projects for the week. There were many confidential matters that were being discussed such as on-going projects, stalled projects, payments and politics with clients among other corporate things.

The team that I work in is essentially a very small group. They basically provide solutions to help company manage the risks that they are facing in their business. They would  go into a company, find out what are the risks that they are facing and help to provide solutions by giving suggestions and action plans. Also, since they are such a small team, everyone in the team gets to travel very often, since their clients consists of not just domestic ones, but also foreign ones in China, Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam, Thailand, Australia and other countries in Asia.

The way they take flights to another country is just like the way we would take the bus to another city. They could be in Vietnam for Monday and Tuesday, back to office on Wednesday and Thursday and go off to Japan on Friday again. And since they are also part of a large company, I get to experience working in a corporate environment. The team really made a good impression in me, and I think I will enjoy working here for the rest of my internship.

On Saturday, I went out to meet my friend Yun Ching again, to get back my shaver that I left in his car last week. We had porridge for lunch and I was to meet Daniel in the afternoon for a movie. However, while I was eating, I received a call from him saying that he was involved in a car accident. Thus, our appointment was cancelled and I later found out that, luckily, it was just a minor accidents with no injuries.

At night, I went out with my relatives to the Singapore Flyer (which is basically a copy of London Eye). It was a half-hour ride that costs S$30. Quite pricey if you ask me, but we all got to try it once, right? Since it was night, all we saw was lights scatterred all over Singapore. The ride was fine, but my aunt said that she’s gonna take another ride again in the afternoon to get a better view. Hope I am still here when she decides to go there.

p/s: Post is a bit dry, cause I didn’t bring the camera out for the entire week. Was really busy with work for the first week, and also getting my body adjusted to waking up at 6.30 am every morning. I apologise for that.

Hey barghers,

As I have promised to keep you guys updated, here is my post. Since I am going to blog about my 2 weeks experience in Singapore, I have broken it up into 3 posts, Pre-Work, 1st Week and 2nd Week. For now, here is the Pre-Work post:

Pre-Work

As some of you have already known, I was accepted into a company to do my internship. So I took a bus from Sitiawan down to Singapore on a Thursday. Arrived there late evening, and was picked up by my uncle. When I arrived at their house, I saw my cousin sister, X, whom I hadn’t seen for the last 3 years. When I first saw her, I thought that she was someone else in her late teens and not my cousin X, but when I was told that she was X, I almost fainted. She’s only 12 but already looks like she’s 17. What’s up with children these days?

The next day, I went to the Ministry of Manpower (MoM) to get my working pass. I was given a Work Holiday Pass, which is actually a pilot programme by the Singaporean government to attract graduates from selected universities in developed countries all around the world to Singapore. As for now, it is only open for undergrads from Australia, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, New Zealand, UK and US. I was even given a welcome pack by the MoM. Hey, how often do you get a welcome pack from a government department?

As Singapore’s only resource is their human capital, it is natural for them to get people from outside to help keep their economy running.

The next day, I went to meet up with Chang Yung in NUS. After the sun had set, CY’s gang in NUS hijacked the university van and took a ride to Geylang, the red light district in Singapore. It was a cargo van, and so there weren’t any seats and windows at the back. There were six of us at the back, and after sitting in the van for 5 minutes, we decided that it was just too hot and stuffy inside. So while the van was travelling in the highway at 90 km/h, we slide open the door to allow wind into the back. It was a really crazy thing to do, and whenever we stop at a traffic light, all of the drivers would look at us. We look like a bunch of hooligans hijacking a van with the university’s logo on it, and the best part of it all, we were heading to Geylang to have fun.

At Geylang, we ate the famous Beef Hor Fun and took a tour into the back lanes after our meal. It sure was an eye-opener for me, with so many hot chicks lining up along the streets, ready to be ‘banged’. My eye-balls got freaking wild, and so did my other balls. There were dedicated sections of the streets for different nationalities, so if you want a ah moi, or adik, or tang-ke-chi or a chick, it’s all there. Needless to say, as people walk pass those beauties, they were pulled aside and given a free massage. I must say that those from China sure are hot, unlike the image of prostitute that I had in my mind (you know, those mid 30s lady who’s already well beyond their prime time). Too bad I forgot to bring my camera, otherwise I would have shown you some ‘pretty pictures’. :p We went back at eleven something and I spent a night at NUS.

The next day, I went out with Yun Ching, my friend from Warwick. He took me to Vivo Mart, the largest shopping complex in Singapore. There, we dined at a up-market Japanese restaurant. We ate some Japanese satay (grilled stuff on skewers) and drank some sake (Japanese rice wine). The sake there was really good, I must say. That lunch set us back at about S$90. It was a freaking expensive lunch. After that, he brought me to a specialty shop where they only serve oriental tea, mostly Chinese. It costs us S$20 to just have tea, but I must say that it was worth it.

We were taught how to drink Chinese tea by the waiter there. Its basic is pretty simple, and the steps are as follows:

1. Pour tea into teapot and add hot water. Depending on the type of tea, different temperature of the water and different immersion time are required.
2. Pour tea into the ‘communal pot’. The purpose of this is to normalize the concentration of the tea that we made, as sometimes we might make a very concentrated and bitter tea while at other times, the tea might be too light.
3. Then, tea is served into the tasting/smelling cup where we would take our first sniff at the aroma given out by the tea.
4. The tea is transferred into the drinking cup where we take our second sniff at it. By now, the tea would have cooled down a bit, and thus there is a slightly different aroma to it.
5. The tea is now drunk, and we would allow the cup to cool down a bit to say, around 50 degrees Celcius. It is then we take our third and final sniff from the empty cup, where the smell would be quite different.

In my drinking session there, I opted for a type of green tea (can’t remember its name). In the first 2 tasting/sniffing session, the smell of the tea is something like Chrysanthemum, but with a lighter taste. However, at the final sniff, the tea gave out a hint of honey smell which was not present in the first 2 tasting attempts. It was quite an experience for me, and I intend to bring any of my barghers who wants to go there to savour Chinese tea. I will upload the video that I have taken once I get the program to shrink it.

Throughout my entire outing with Yun Ching, he mentioned a few times that I’m like a ‘kampung’ (village) boy in the city, lured by its riches. To him, I’m basically the most ‘kampung’ friend of his. I guess its true, as there are many things in the city that I have not see and my heart has not yet been hardened by the vicissitudes of city life. But I think I prefer it this way, as I don’t really want to be city dweller with a hardened heart. Most of the city dwellers have lost a huge part of their empathy, and I certainly can understand why it turned out this way. But for me, if being ‘kampung’ means being more empathetic and perhaps naive, I think I’d rather remain ‘kampung’.

The topic i chose for my health promotion assignment is social marketing. N very briefly, social marketing means doing social good via commercial marketing principles. Hence, i've come to a conclusion that i am doing social marketing by promoting mystyle voucher..hehe..as i am doing sth good for the public, and my social marketing approach is via advertising through my blog.*winks*

Well, I got to know this voucher thingie for quite some time already, but today was the first time i actually used it, thanks to my bro. N i find it really very useful!.

Anyway, i went to sunway pyramid today with my bro n his gf, n we had dinner at sushi king. My bro has already purchased the voucher via sms beforehand. For a meagre amount of rm3.50, we got this offer:
Buy 1 FREE 1 all sushi on the belt. Limited to 5 plates only, for same or lower value.

How cool is that wei..!! I mean, we took only purple and red plates...hehe..those rm6 or rm5 per plate that usually i'll b sooooooo reluctant to take! N hence, tak ambil la!

We ordered only one set meal, n the rest were sushis that we took from the belt. Note the one n only miserable blue plate on top that is rm2. That was excluded in the buy one free one sushi.=P

Anyway, this rm3.50 voucher can only b used once a year. But there are other rm1.50 vouchers that can be used with no limit. For the sushi king offer, the rm1.50 voucher entitles you to get 10% of total bill with no minimum amount.

There are lots more offers in various shops..e.g. Buy 1 FREE 1 Fish and Chips @ Manhattan Fish Market.

Btw, i bought a new bag for uni purpose. I told chin yeong n her one n only word was 'Finally....'
Hehe, yea yea i know. My housemates have been pestering me to buy a new bag for ages, saying my bag is too old.-_-"

last night, i went to midvalley to pick josey up from jusco. we met up with zidong, who did plan this come together. i will leave the details to him to blog about, and move on somethin else i spent my time on the moment i woke up today.

i was awaken abruptly at 5.25am this mornin, with a call and text message from a uni-mate stayin opposite of my house. the message reads “Tl…ur car alarm”, and true enough, when i opened my room door, i heard my car wailin it’s ass out.

shit, this will definitely disturb my neighbours at the wee hours of 5am. later on, i found out that it was soundin for almost 20 minutes! my 2 great housemates in the master bedroom didn’t even hear a thing when i asked them >.<”

anyway, last night i finally got myself a wardrobe, after livin 2 weeks without one. it’s not easy to find one which is spacious enough for a reasonable price these days. i was energized this mornin when fixin it up hehe.

the box

box’s content

half way through

final product

now i won’t have my clothes lyin around my room again =)

Ystd, devi went to meet up with dinie and anju in midvalley. So chin yeong n me tagged along cuz we only had one class in the morning!~~

We had a great time 'girl-bonding', just me, cy, devi and anju. She studying in ireland and is back for holidays!! Btw, fyi, she was my roommate when we were in intec.^^

Anyway, we went for lunch in Italiannies, and it was the first time i had it @ The Gardens. I kind of like the interior deco and table setting. I took picture of the table as proof!haha..

Not bad eh?? And the best part was we had a SET FOR FOUR, comprising mussels as appetizer, angel's hair, pizza and chicken fillet as main course, and raisin bread pudding as dessert. OK OK i know, i don't rmbr any of the names except the dessert.

Well, i din really like the mussels, tried a lot of better ones, but yea, cannot deny the portion is large la. So tat's a plus point.=) Anywa, here's some pics of all our dishes.*winks*






Later on, we met up with dinie, who was with juliana, but only had a very short time to talk, cuz we were rushing to times square to watch Imax the Dark Knight!!hehe..but i know la many people watch d.=( Anyhow, we managed to take a group photo, in New Zealand Naturals.


We managed to make it to Times Square by 6, although we only went to get a taxi at 5.15 and the taxi din wan to send us there! But yea, he did stop us near VI so we walked to times square from there.

Special thanks to Giri, for booking all our tickets.=) There were like 30 of us, n it was pretty hard to gather everyone for group photo with them walking here n there! So, below was the best we could do..hehe..

Oh, btw, i don think i have to comment on Dark Knight as semua pun sudah tengok. So, i shall proceed with our pretty much failed surprise for poh yee in times square.

First up, i asked wen yi n shen yang to go get the cake, then meet up with hang chuan (poh yee's bf) then only go kenny rogers, our supposed place of celebration. BUT, kenny rogers' waitress told us we had to wait 45 minutes for chicken, so we had to change destination. We went to secret recipe, BUT was denied entry oso. The guy said 'take away only'. Tat time was only 9pm!

We ended up in Food N Tea. N throughout our searching for place to eat, i kept having phone conversations with wen yi as the place kept changing, n there was problem with the cake. I guess poh yee got suspicious la that i was constantly on the phone.*sob*

Anyway, the real surprise was awaiting at home.*giggles* I gave brendan our house key n asked him to gather all the people we invited at 11pm. BUT, brendan called me wen we were in the lrt, n poh yee got suspicious cuz i walked away to answer the phone. Arghh...

Nevertheless i guess it turned out ok. Ard 30 ppl came.=) We bought her a mushroom soft toy, a gift from housemates. N we shared another gift with the rest aka cosmetic stuffs.=)

A photo of housemates.=D

Here's a group pic.=) The first photo we took din turn out cuz my hair was flying. It was quite bad la..hehe.. N they made a conclusion that it was bcuz my hair is light.-_-"