Updated on: 15-Feb-09 2:39 PM

I was busy the past week. I checked in to Grand Hyatt on Monday. I had to rush down to Hyatt at 10am to help them out with some packing. So I shared a cab with the other committee, Guowei and Jason. We started helping them with the packing of the Welcome Kit. The t-shirts and Welcome letter being put into the paperbag together with their name labelled on it. Then we assign the individual badges with the lanyards into each assigned bag. We helped out whenever we could. We were introduced to the HK committee, there was the Committee Chairman from Pico Beijing, Lim Chiew Wee, then there was Rita Li from MP-HK, Helen Szeto, Zatti, Kat and Andy Chan from Pico HK. This was my first time participating in such a major event and getting to know so many people overseas. Anyway we managed to finish the packing so we left for lunch and bought back many packs of chicken rice for the others. We went to Far East and the chicken rice there was really good.


I had the first night all to myself cause my roommate, Faizah was on MC, so I had to cover her duties. She was supposed to be in charge of overseeing the Welcome Reception at Timbre but Sandra had to put me in charge now on top of my duty of the Opening Dinner at Grand Shanghai. So I had to go down to Timbre at Arts House to recce the venue. I was to liaise with Maxine the Events Manager. The Welcome Reception was to be held on Tuesday 16 Dec at 6.30pm. Maxine is a nice and helpful person. I went there with Guowei. Then I head back to Hyatt Hotel while Guowei went to Marina Square to meet a client. I reported back to Sandra of the recce at Timbre. So I tried to help out whatever they needed help in. Then Sandra and I went to Far East to buy dinner. I was already starving by then so I immediately had my dinner before they started. HK people are workaholics and this has proven true. They can work and don't eat at regular hours. After dinner, I log on and tried to clear my company emails and confirmed the number of Muslims and Vegetarians in total for the Opening Dinner. I managed to return back to my room at around 9pm as there was nothing much for me to do at that moment. As I was all by myself in the room, I took a nice warm shower in the bathtub. I managed to sleep at 12+. Fortunately I had brought my Nintendo DS with me so I kept myself entertained.










Flat screen TV with DVD player, we can bring our DVDs there to watch...









The dressing table inside the bathroom...











I woke up at around 7.30am and I was wondering if I should go to Straits Kitchen for breakfast alone. After second thought, I decided to head down to 7-Eleven at Far East Plaza (which is next to Hyatt) and I bought few cup noodles back to have my breakfast. Just as I was about to pour the hot water I just boiled in the room, I got a call from Faizah saying she is at the lobby. It was only 8.45am and she checked into the room. Then we went to the Secretariat Room and look for the others who were already there. We were busy sorting out the Welcome package once again and it was lunchtime again so Faizah and I went to Far East Plaza to buy lunch again. After lunch, we were brief once again on the shuttling of buses and I was in charge of going to Timbre earlier to set up the pull-up banners and making sure that everything is set-up first before the guests and first bus arrives at 6.15pm. I left with Lynn, Josie and Swan and when we reached there it was 5.30pm. We put up the stand which says 25th Annual Pico Conference at the stage area and outside Timbre. And then we actually found out from Lynn that Timbre was opened by her cousin, Edward Chia. Lynn is also part of the Chia family so I was impressed. (The Life! on Wednesday shows his interview and we realised he's only 24 years old and Arts house was his 4th branch opened) and thanks to Lynn, we managed to get our first drink before the cocktail reception started with a glass of Chivas with Green Tea each.

At 6.15pm, the guests slowly arrived and I started to got very busy with giving out the individual envelopes which is their Welcome Kit for Singapore office but few of them did not want to collect it today so I got to bring it back to Hyatt again in the end. The Welcome Reception was good and the owner of Timbre was introduced to everyone by the emcee as the son of our directors. The finger food snacks were good and some people there seemed to came here before also did not know who the owner was till today. Many outsiders wanted to enter Timbre that day but we had to tell them they are closed for private event. I'm glad that the event came out to be a success. Though I just coordinate and took over this event yesterday at least, Rita from MP HK has previously liaise and planned out well.





That day, after returning back to the hotel, we had to prepare to do the set-up the ballroom for the conference the next morning. The rest of us stayed up to get the tent-card ready to place on the tables. Before that, we had to rearrange the names according to the seating plan. In the end, we finished everything at around 12am. And we were to meet back at Secretariat Office at 7.30am as we have got to get the reception table ready before 9am. Faizah and I met up with Guowei for breakfast at Straits Kitchen at 6.45am. We shifted the boxes and stationery up to the Grand Ballroom reception where the conference will be held at. Everything was laid out the night before all thanks to the work of everyone who worked late. There were few early people who arrived before 9am so we directed them to where they will be sitting at. After the conference has started, our time at the reception was boring and quiet.



We have to standby at reception till the conference ends at 5pm. then it'd be proceeding to Group Photo taking. By then, I had already gone down to Grand Shanghai @ Grand Copthorne with Lynn to check out the stage set-up and where the banner will be put at. The first bus arrived much earlier at 6.15pm so the dinner will have to be pushed earlier by 15 mins.

The dinner did not turned out as successfully as planned. The food serving was very slow and the food wasn't nice at all. So disappointing as I heard many have complained about the taste of the food and service. Sigh...Anyway, we brought back a lot of food back to the hotel for the workers who stayed to helped out in tearing down the stage again.

After we went back to the hotel, I had wanted to go back to the hotel to bathe first but I heard someone call me. It was my colleague, Eric who was drinking with my boss in the pub at Level 1 so I joined them for a while. We stayed in our room till about 11.30pm, we went back to the ballroom and help out to put back the tent-cards and the seating plan has been changed so we had to rearrange the names again and wait for the hotel staff to rearrange the tables to the conference arrangement as before that, there was a wedding dinner so we had to tear down our stage within an hour and start to build-up again after 11pm. We went back to our room at about 1am.

I shall skip the conference part again and move to the Free & Easy day on Friday. Thursday was a free & easy day at 6.30pm after the conference so we only managed to have our dinner at 8+ to 9pm only after we managed to finish the work Rita assigned to us. That was the only time we managed to went out to Orchard Road and have our dinner at Food Republic and managed to shop around a little. Faizah and Guowei had to wake up at 5am to help out in the Golf Tournament at Raffles Country Club. I went to help out in the Games at 8.30am and after the Games started, I went back to my room and since nothing much was for me to do there, I decided to hitch a ride from Lynn and head back to office to clear some work. I brought my clothes to change for the Gala Dinner. Everyone was shocked to see me come back to office.

Anyway, I left office and got a ride to Raffles Town Club at 4pm. There was nothing much for me to do there actually since the Events D team is fully in charge of the event sequence there. I was in charge of bringing the trophies there and lay them out on the table and I was to tend to the reception booth. We then changed into our dresses and applied make-up. The guests soon arrived and everything was in a mess, the seating plan did not printed enough copies for the reception table. So we had to share among ourselves, the committee table wasn't catered enough to seat us all together so I went to join other table with empty seats.

The official photographer took this photos of Swan and me cause a few others and even himself said both of us looked alike like sisters...




After the dinner, our Managing Director invited the whole Pico Singapore people to Mezza9 at Hyatt for drinks as a post-celebration. We had thought we had booked the whole pub but there were other customers so we had to wait for seats. We had ordered our drinks for 6 times and none of our drinks came where as our next table had ordered after us had already started to order 2nd round. I even went over to the bar to reorder and complain about it and our drinks finally came. I returned back to an empty room at 1.30am. Faizah was out with her bf then so I slept alone till she came back at around 3am.





Next morning, we joined the Pico HK people for breakfast at Straits Kitchen (my 3rd time there for breakfast) as a thank-you meal from the Committee Chairman.

Labels: Experiences, Life, Work

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