Category: Work

Discovering Croatia

After almost 5 years of not having to do business travel, this year will be quite different.  In addition to the routine work trip to Bucharest, I’m glad that I’ve finally visited a new country AND learning new part of the business.

Recently I went to Croatia twice in the period of 4 weeks.  The first trip was to Zagreb and stayed for 3 days to close an Audit.  That means I didn’t get to see the city much except trying out some local food in the city centre.  So it’s quite uneventful.

For my second trip, I had to travel 2 hours by car to a small town named Virovitica.  The town is quite near to the Hungarian border, in the middle of no where.  The “hotel” is an old castle, 10 mins drive from office and only serve breakfast.  Luckily we had a rented car which means we were able to spend weekend in other parts of the country.

We managed to spend the weekend in Plitviče Lakes National Park, known for a chain of 16 terraced lakes, joined by waterfalls, that extend into a limestone canyon.  The park was granted UNESCO World Heritage status in 1979.  It was an amazing site and due to ‘winter’ timing, we only managed to visit part of the lakes.

There’s lots of walkways and hiking trails wind around and across the water, and an electric boat links the 12 upper and 4 lower lakes.  There’s also bus service that brings you to different parts of the lakes if you’re not keen to hike.

Besides the National Parks, Croatia is also famous for it’s Adriatic coasts and not forgetting Dubrovnik (GoT – Kings Landing).  A few locals recommended a road trip along the coast to enjoy the beach and lagoons.

I will definitely go back with David to discover the country.

Movember Bake Sale

We did it!

We raise over £500 in just one day. There were soooo many cakes and cookies it was amazing. I spent the whole day tasting that I didn’t even eat lunch.

Moustache butter cookies. I used a different recipe, recommended by my sister. It was a much better cookies than the Hummingbird version. Even Dav likes it. It was very yummy.

The crumbled choc marbled cake was yummy too but slightly dry.

Movember

A few colleagues got together and formed a team to do Movember. During November each year, Movember is responsible for the sprouting of moustaches on thousands of men’s faces in the UK and around the world. The aim of which is to raise vital funds and awareness for men’s health, specifically prostate cancer and testicular cancer.

To support my colleagues in this great cause, the ladies in the team (Mo Sista) is organising a bake sale to give a helping hand. So I’ll be baking some cookies in the shape of moustache to contribute to the bake sale.

If you want to contribute, here’s the link.

Back from another business trip

Before I could recover from my KL & HK trip, I was off again for 5 days. This time the destination is Brazil, Rio & Porto Alegre to be specific. I went with my manager to run 3 workshops on risk & control for the local IT team. It was very very tiring. As this is the first time I’m delivering such workshop, there was a lot to learn and adapt after every workshop to help improve the content and delivery. But I’m glad that it went well and based on the feedback we received, the participants also enjoy it.

This is only my second business trip this year but somehow I dont feel very enthusiastic. I’m starting to wonder whether my passion to travel for work is slowly changing. Perhaps its the short duration I’m away for such a far away country (11hrs flight for 5 days!). Will I ever come to a stage where I do not want to travel for work?? I hope not!

It’s winter in Brazil but it was nice and cooling in Rio. However when we got to Porto Alegre, it was freaking COLD! We were experiencing 5-10 degrees temperature during the day. I was totally not prepared for it although I knew that it is winter. So we went from a nice 20 degrees to 10 degrees in 2 days! Naturally my cold came back and thus I knocked myself to sleep on the flight home by taking the drowsy medicine.

It was a fun but very tiring trip. Apparently my manager wants to go back there again in September to close an audit.

We stayed in Sofitel on Copacabana beach. The view when we have breakfast every morning is very relaxing.

The local audit team took us out to lunch at one of the famous churrascaria in Rio, Porcao. Each person is given a ‘red/green’ card to indicate whether you want more meat or no.

Latest happening in office

Sorry for the lack of an update. I’ve been busy hunting Easter eggs around London. 😛

While going through my Flickr album I noticed there’s been a few things that happened in office which I thought would be interesting to share in the blog.

International Women’s Day

All the ladies in my department was presented with a stalk of red rose on 8 Mar 2012. The rose was left on our table during lunch, so it was a very nice surprised. This is the second time the men have shown their appreciation in the office on this day. Not sure if the ladies will do the same. But I thought it was a very nice gesture. I dont even get flowers from Dav!

 

Evil Table

We have a communal table in the office which ppl share snacks, sweets or delicacies brought back from exotic locations. Lately the table has been constantly filled with lots of chocolates and sweets. The most interesting sweets found was a combination of caramel popcorn on top of a donut filled with caramel !! Definitely have to stay away from this table if I want to maintain my sugar level…. luckily my table is not next to the ‘evil’ table and I’m not facing it either. *phew*

Back to reality

We’re back in London for a week now. Time really flies. Been trying to get back to the usual routine. Jet lag certainly helps to make us wake up early and get to work feeling all fresh until about 4pm where it just hits you in the head to remind you that your’e suppose to be sleeping!

We did lots and visited many places over 3 weeks holiday. It will be too long to blog about it in one post. So be patience while we sort out our pictures and for me to write about them here.

On a separate note, Dav bought me this grow-your-own mushroom kit before we went on holiday. We saw it in a stall in Southbank and we thought it would be interesting to try it. So today I have finally opened the package and started the growing process. Let’s see how many days it takes before we can harvest our first batch of mushroom. To find out more, checkout the supplier’s website here –> www.minichamp.nl.

Risk Practitioner

Last year, my boss nominated me to attend the ‘Management of Risk’ training, which was held on the second week of Jan. Now I thought it was just a training until the week before Christmas. I was shocked to find out there will be exam at the end of the training. THEN, the week before the training started, I was told there will be TWO exams, foundation AND practitioner!!!!

The training was horrendous, to say the least. BUT I’m happy to announce I made it through!

I’m now officially a certified Risk Practitioner….. whatever that means…. LoL.

What is your preferred team role?

Towards the end of last year my office had a ‘Learning’s Week’, aiming to introduce the varieties of training available to us through the training portals. I took the opportunity to attend as many training tasters as I can to see which one would be suitable for myself and my team. One of the session was very interesting and so I recommended that the whole team do the assessment to my manager as one of the agenda for our team meeting in January. It is called the Belbin Team Inventory.

Basically a doctor (named Belbin) conducted a research and found that for a team to work successfully, each member of the team must play a role in the four defined areas (total 8 roles, 2 roles in each area). Basically you just need to answer 7 questions and the answer will determine which role one preferred to take while working in a team. It is important to note that this is a behavioural assessment rather than a capability assessment.

So we did the assessment, had a look at the team’s profile and then we did a team building exercise where an external person observed our behaviour with our preferred roles in mind. The result of the activity was enlightening. Basically the team with the most variety of preferred roles won the task. The team members’ composition was not pre-arranged. In my mind it did re-enhances the Belbin’s theory.

I went home after the team meeting thinking that Dav should do the assessment too, to see whether we worked well as a team… considering we have to do that everyday in our marriage. hahahahahaha I’m happy to say that Dav has a totally different preference compared to mine…

Conclusion: We make a good team! ;P

p/s: If you’re interested to do the assessment, email me and I’ll send you the questionnaire.

2011 Christmas CelebrationS

That’s celebration with a big S because this year’s Christmas parties are EPIC. Why? Because it happened so many times within 5 days.

Part #1 – BAT Christmas Carol and Festive Drinks

Every year my office would organise a carol service at a nearby church (Fleet Street) where it would last for about 45 mins then we would all head back to office for the festive drinks. Like last year, I was able to attend this year’s do with a few colleagues and we proceeded to the drinks after. It was free flow drinks and it started with strawberry champagne (my fav!). When all the champagne was gone, next on the list was beer.

We drank till the restaurant closes, so we proceeded to the office bar. Then even the office bar was closing so we had to go to our usual pub, Cheshire Cheese. By then I already have quite a few and starting to feel the alcohol effects, so I decided to head home.

Needless to say I woke up with a hangover the next day, and there was another Christmas Party to attend that day. So 2 paracetamol and more than 4 hours of nap later, I’m was all good for second round.

Party #2 – Charles’ Annual Christmas Party

This year’s christmas party was held in Charles’ new pad. He moved to a smaller apartment hence he could only invite a small number of guest. Prior to the party Dav has been ill so we were not sure whether we were gonna make it. Then I was informed that there’s a surprise installed for me and so the host insists that I try to attend.

It turns out the surprised was the Wii. It has both the dance and karaoke games. In the previous party held at his place, we had a karaoke session (everybody at work knows I love karaoke!). So this time round, we played the dance game too.

Selvan getting his groove on… heheheh 🙂

Party #3 – Team’s Christmas Drinks

2 days after Charles’ party, we had our team’s Christmas drinks at a German beer house. Only 3 things will come to mind when you have drinks in a German beer house, (1) beer by stein (1 ltr!) (2) sausages and (3) Jägermeister. We had all three!

I ended up having almost 2.5 litres of beer and a shot of Jägerbomb. So drunk on a Tues night!

Everyone still slightly sober…

Here comes the Jägerbomb… disgusting!

Party #4 – Department’s Christmas Party

This year’s theme for our department’s Christmas Party is Pantomime. I have no idea what this is all about and I was made a team leader and our story is Cinderella.

According to Wiki, a panto is a theatrical performer of mime, a musical-comedy theatrical production traditionally found in the United Kingdom and is mostly performed during the Christmas and New Year season. Panto story lines and scripts usually make no direct reference to Christmas, and are almost always based on traditional children’s stories, including the fairy tales of Charles Perrault, Joseph Jacobs, Hans Christian Andersen and the Grimm Brothers – not to mention tales from the Arabian Nights. While the familiarity of the audience with the original story is generally assumed, plot lines are almost always ‘adapted’ for comic or satirical effect, it being common for characters and situations from other stories to be interpolated into the plot. Certain familiar scenes tend to recur, regardless of plot relevance, and highly unlikely resolution of the plot is common. Straight re-tellings of the original stories are rare in the extreme. The best bit is, traditionally men plays female roles and vice versa!

So in summary I have to coordinate my team to come up with a ‘funny’ version of Cinderella. We had about 3 weeks to get the storyline, costumes and props. We managed to assign everyone to the opposite sex’s role except for me. As Cinderella do not have many male roles, I took have to play the Cinderella role. In terms of props, we had beach ball, mechanical mice, big signs and drums. Cant believed we agreed to get this done as it requires so much effort!

Besides Cinderella, we had Jack and the beanstalk, Aladdin, Snow White and Peter Pan. We even had a judge giving us assessing our panto based on originality, props and costumes and we won second place

I have to say this is the best christmas party ever. Everyone was very sporting and we made it so successful! Cant wait for next year now….

The traditional dept photo taken at the Christmas tree with our costume. From top left corner, Snow White, Aladdin, Peter Pan, Jack and the beanstalk and finally Snow White with only 3 dwarfs.

Check out the guys!!! My team had the best cross dresser EVER! Top right corner, me with my evil stepmother and 2 ugly stepsisters.