Saturday, November 28, 2009

Sales shows their appreciation

Finally I have time to do some updates!!

Sales did pretty well for fiscal year 09 (which has ended for us). And they had a series of thank you meals for the key players. Yours truly got invited to all 3, I guess because I am neither here nor there in terms of department or function. Or maybe just coz I am regional. In any case, i appreciate Soh's invitation to all those thank you meals.

First there was an appreciation dinner for the Sales team (who else??). We had that at Reunion in Bangsar Village ll. The signature dishes of Reunion was ordered. Maybe it's because of the ladies in the team, but despite being full to the jaw with food, there was still quite a bit of leftovers. After that, we adjourned to Francis Kanner on another street for a round of drinks. We had our photos taken before, during and after the beer and it was obvious that as the drinks went in, the inhibitions went out. I even managed to get a shot with one of the patrons who was (in the opinion of the group) bigger size than me.

Next, we had appreciation night with the Support team in Neway karaoke in 1Utama. The place offers buffet dinner as part of the package.Yes, everyone enjoyed themselves. Only one comment that I have about their beer- I think it is diluted with barely an essence of alcohol. It must be because NOBODY got drunk or even looked drunk despite many rounds of beer (except for maybe Danny)!!


The last appreciation dinner was with one of our key distributors. For that, our distributor also invited a local politician who is a frequent patron of Unique Seafood 23 located at Jalan Kemajuan. Why? Because Jason would know what were the good/great dishes to order. We also had a few lessons from him on the art of drinking wine, as well as the good parts to eat on certain fishes. That was certainly an eye opener! For example, I never knew (and neither did most of the rest) that the best part of a Chat Seng Ban (7 star garoupa??) was not it's meat. It's the maw and areas around the head. And for that we pay RM40 to Rm80 for a reasonable sized fish at the market!! Wow!! Give me the flesh anytime. I am okay with that. This was one of those rare occasions when Izan joined us. The place is halal. Dinner ended with karaoke as we had a private function room.
I have been literally croaking for the past few weeks now.

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

An outstanding vehicle

It's not often that any vehicle grabs my attention. But as I was driving into a shopping mall's car park in Kuala Lumpur, Elaine C pointed to this strange vehicle which has cartoon figurines stuck all over it - both inside and outside the vehicle. It is stuck on every conceivable space that does not create an obstacle for access.
They can be found in the 4 corners fo the top of the vehicle, on the side mirrors, even on the exhaust.
Either the owner suffered from a moment of madness and decided to just stick all his/her childhood collections onto his/her vehicle OR his/her kids pissed him/her so much that all the kids collection were stuck onto the vehicle to prevent the kid from playing with them.

Whatever it was, this vehicle needs to be seen to be believed!!

Saturday, November 14, 2009

SAPK meet in Singapore

Just about a week or so after my last visit to Singapore, I found myself there again for a couple of days of management meetings. I have just been transferred back to the Asia Pacific operations and this was a good forum for me to update myself on the who's who in SAPK.
First observation - while there were some new faces, most of the others that I knew from 2 years ago were still there. Admittedly some were in different positions.
Second observation - things has gotten a lot more complicated in the 2 years since I left AP operationally. Obviously we have gotten more breadth in terms of instrumentation. We also have a lot more processes in place - with more to come. One of the senior managers put this into perspective - we just love acronyms and processes!!
Obviously, I cannot blog about the meeting. I am just glad for the opportunity to reconnect with the people that I knew and the people that I need to work with in my current role.

Cheers!!

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Humpty Dumpty

Here's what a little baby does when he is trying to gain his upper body strength.

Go Justin GO!!!!