So I've started working, as of 7th February 2011. My position's a little funky. On one part I'm supposed to be taking over this girl who's leaving off to Melborne (or Sydney). On another I'm helping out on a current hotel project, mostly to do with overseas procurement, as well as hotel channel management (I quote) thingy.

The last 2 weeks have been super jam packed. A daily routine may sound something like this: Wake @ 6:20, leave by 6:45, send my sister to school, hit the gym @ 7:30, finish showering by 8:15, in the office by 8:30. Work till lunch. Lunch for an hour. Continue working until 5:30 or more. Either drive home and get stuck in stupid traffic, or work for another 30 mins before leaving. Either way, I'm home around the same time.

My job scope so far comprises of a few things: helping out my boss liaise with Chinese salesmen, analysing our current channel management, any odd jobs that the directors throw at me, and lastly sending out multiple mail-merged notifications via fax (and/or email, snail mail) to clients, which is tedious, mundane yet dangerous if done wrongly. So actually it's more intense than mundane.

The people at the office are definitely very nice. I didn't have the most complete handing-over-taking-over process due to time limitations, so I've been asking a heck load of questions. Couple that with my reduced sensitivity to Mandarin, it's like I'm playing 20 Questions with everyone. But they've been quite patient with me, so that's awesomes.

Some people in the office take long lunch breaks. I mean, like, wow. They're not particularly slacking nor skipping work, because they seem to work quite hard in the office. It's like a Singaporean work-hard-eat-hard policy. But really. Wow.

Working in the same company as my Dad feels annoying, especially when my Dad is the Deputy GM. It's not because he bothers me, because he doesn't; in fact, he hardly interacts with me at all. Smart. Actually, it's whenever I casually talk to my colleagues, I sometimes get the sense that the your-dad-is-the-GM atmosphere lingers in the air. This is bad, definitely. I would much rather achieve something because of who I am, rather than receiving external help or 'face' just because I'm the boss' son. This went through my mind a few days before I started work, so I adopted a few personal policies:

• If not absolutely required, do not bring up my Dad in any topic / subject / conversation. Try to ease off personal issues regarding him.
• Never call him Dad in the office. If necessary, call him Mr. Lim (even though everyone else calls him by his first name).
• Look professional. Perform professionally. Build the trust and respect from my colleagues based solely on how I perform and portray myself.

It very much feels like being back in the army office again. The overall hectic-ness, the dilution of focus due to multiple tasks at hand, the time-sensitive rush of work... But all these definitely beats sitting on my hands all day. At least I've something to do. And hey! I finally get my own cubicle now! Desktop, phone and all! Woot!

And just for the sake of recording these events in time, so I can look back and laugh my ass off:

I was asked by one of the directors to speak to this guy. Let's call this guy Phil. The director was supposed to chat with Phil to see if he could supply us with toilet units for some real estate. Thing is, he never got round to speak to Phil and eventually hired someone else. But Phil persisted and kept calling. So the director wanted me to pretend to be the procurer and apologise to Phil, and maybe even get his catalogue. But in essence, lie.

So I called Phil, introduced myself as someone from the Procurement Department, and got over the formalities. (Everything below is para-phrased.)

I understand that you were trying to bid for toilet unit for the real estate, correct?
Yes. Oh this is for Mr. Director, right?
Yes, correct. Mr. Director.
Yeah that's right. I called him yesterday and he told me that you were on leave yesterday.
O.O UMMMMM Yeah correct, correct. I was indeed on leave yesterday. See, we have already sold the toilet contract to someone else. I'm terribly sorry about this..
Oh yeah, yeah... I kinda figured that out..
Yeah.. But, y'know, for future references and projects, we would very much like to get your contact info.
That sounds excellent. I can just pop around to your office reception and drop my catalogues and name card for you.
(As long as I don't meet you.) Yup, sounds good, at the reception is fine.

We bid farewell and that was that. I was thrilled that my story checked out. That would've been a good ending to a good story. Unfortunately it wasn't.

2 days later, Phil calls back. It took me a while before I realised who he was. After formalities...

So actually, I've been wanting to ask, who exactly did you give the contract to?
(OMG OMG OMG I DIDN'T PREPARE OMG OMG OMG OMG OM--- *sszzzt* Brain fused.) ... ... ... ... ...
I mean, you know, for the real estate, could you tell me who the job was given to?
Ah. Umm, actually, I'm not very sure... I'm new, you see. I was just transferred to the procurement department. Yeah... Previously I was in the IT department, so you can tell I'm having a hard time readjusting.
Oh... Oh okay. I see.
Still trying to figure out where everything is, you know. Ha ha, yeah... ...
Well anyway, I'll be in the east side later on in the afternoon, so I'll just drop my info at your reception.

After the call, I quickly went to see our receptionist. I told her that Phil would be coming over with some documents for me, and that he knows me only as this ex-IT guy who is now in Procurement. If he asks to see me, I'm out of the office.

Talk about office drama. Thank heavens I'm essentially a temp and will probably never see him again.

Goals. Right, goals. I need goals. Goals for my work.

1. Complete my primary assignment as assistant hotel project manager.
2. Learn how a SMB (small and medium business) works.
3. Grab this opportunity to get all the proper office wear that will come in handy in the future.
4. Make some nice friends.
5. Learn everything else.

Excellent.

I've decided to write this out on the very night that I was MC for the 79/10 cohort of Signal Officer Cadet Course, held at the Jewel Box on Mount Faber on the evening of 29th January 2011. Definitely sometime worth recording down.

It's quite interesting how I got this position in the first place. I actually went on an overseas exercise with these guys. At that point in time I was an officer, and they were, well, cadets. I looked forward to the trip because I knew it would feel awesome to train officer cadets, and turns out I was dead right. It was almost like training my own men, except to a whole new degree, because officer cadets have the fire and the mental stamina for you to push them to.

And so I did, I pushed them as hard as I could. Screwed around with their minds. Made them think outside the box, even when they're so deprived of sleep they can't remember the mission. I hit them hard, but I think that kind of training gave them steel minds. I had made a serious impression on them, and that was probably the initial reason why they ever considered asking me as their MC. (Well, of course, you'll have to take into consideration money factors - I was working for them practically for free, except for my fully-paid-for meal. At least they offered me valet parking.)

The prospect was very very inviting indeed. I was looking forward to seeing so many familiar faces, as well as working with a few of them. On top of that I wanted to be MC again - it was something I did before back in YCIS, and I felt that I was definitely up to this challenge.

The event was planned for the 29th January (although it was initially planned for the 21st, but changed halfway due to unknown reasons). They invited me to MC for them around end of November, which gave me 2 months for us to prepare everything of the sorts.

Preparation was a bit tedious; most of it happening during the first month, and on the very week that the ball was planned on. The first month was basic moulding of the programme, but because a lot of the finer details had yet to be tied down, it was hard getting anything more than 'basic'. I suppose that's quite expected, taking into consideration the busy schedule that a cadet would have.

I had 1 meeting with the 2 main committee members in Starbucks to sort out a lot of the basic problems. All the other times, we were basically using Google Documents and GChat to communicate changes and problems. Sure, it was effective, but it's definitely much better to be face-to-face. Still, the electronic means worked fine, especially when I was on holiday in Korea, Shanghai and Hong Kong for a total of 32 days.

The remainder of the preparation was polished up only on the last week itself. Another meeting was held to tie down more loose ends, as well as a final rehearsal on the afternoon of the ball. I was heading most of the rehearsals; upon reflection it's a good thing because on the actual event I effectively the only person that kept the programme moving. But during the rehearsals it was a bit annoying, because often many other people would get side-tracked a lot, and I would have to forcefully pull them back into the discussion if I need them to know what was going on. The Jewel Box contacts were, naturally, quite professional about things and stomached anything we threw at them, which was absolutely awesome and really took some burden off me.

The actual event arrive. Firstly: appearance. I looked a lot better in my suit than I remember. For some non-apparent reason I had a long-lasting impression that my custom-tailored suit wasn't that good, until I put it on that evening. I don't mean to blow my own trumpet, but if I had 12 trumpets I'd blow them.

It was raining since noon. Sometimes drizzling, but most torrential downpour. With that, goes my chance of taking long-exposure shots with my Canon DSLR of the night city-cum-coastal scenic view outside the function room. I even brought my tripod!

On my perspective my MC role started off a bit stiff. I was sticking too much to my script, reading things too off-the-paper, with extremely little trivial things added on the spot. For my previous MC roles that I had done back in YCIS, it was all quite formal - Prize Presentations or Art Shows. All of which required me to simply read off the script with minimum improvisation. I felt that this event, however formal the attire may be, couldn't be too formal in mood because the occasion itself is a celebration. Trivial injects and random (hopefully) comedic reactions are in order.

Fortunately I noticed this role-change early on during the event. Maybe around 20 mins, I don't know. I reacted more fluidly to the situations and improvised a lot more. There was even this one section where there was some technical difficulty and I was thrust upon the task of entertaining the crowd for 5 minutes. Wow.

One thing I think I definitely learned is that when it comes to such casual MC roles, you have to be more spontaneous, but not only in your speech either. For instance, halfway through I started talking in the middle of the room instead of at the front of the stage. Changes the situation a bit, trivial things making the moment more interesting. I learnt that it's okay if 50% of the people in the crowd are talking amongst themselves while you're talking, but I also (kinda) learnt the skill of drawing people's attention when it's most needed.

There were a lot of injects too. The main one was the sudden shift of the highlights of the evening towards the middle of the programme, due to Guest-of-Honour leaving sooner than expected. Most of the injects was taken quite well - communication with the Jewel Box contacts was good, and they reacted quite fluidly themselves. I'm quite sure they've been doing this for quite some time already.

I received a goodie bag as well as a gift from the Comms Ball Committee. The goodie bag included vouchers, a shot glass and other miscellaneous stuff. But there was also this calendar, and in the month of October is this quote: "Just think about it; LTA Bryan Lim". Talk about swelling up in pride, haha. The gift was a Parker leather notebook and ballpoint pen. Nice. That's definitely going towards my goal of achieving my stylish wardrobe. (It counts as an accessory!)

Overall, all in all, the night was definitely a success!

P.S. Drinking a glass of wine before everything starts helps. Mr. S's (from YCIS) methods of drinking Black Label disguised as Coke-Cola isn't such a bad idea after all. =P