Thursday, February 03, 2005

Welcome back people! In case you have just tuned into the program, its about the one day experience you can have with IPO launches. As continued from the last episode, the press conference has begun and the panel for the press conference were taking their turns to deliver their speeches, both in chinese and english.(btw the IPO company is from Hainan Province, China, if you can't tell from the company name.) The press conference turned out pretty well, which I was quite impressed with the chinese speech delivered by the MD of CGL(she's pretty as well) and also the set ups for the conference room; it is good enough to suggest to you that you are surrounded by professionals, if IPO is not good enought to suggest anything to you. No thanks to all those ring tones that interfered with the conference, and also to dumb questions like that guy who said he doubt the ability of the Senior Management team when they are professionals with more than 20 years of experience in it.

After all the boring conference has ended(apparently some participants were dozing off), it was time for dinner and all guest were invited to help themselves at the buffet reception outside the room. All of a sudden, even before the M.C could finish saying that, everyone started to empty the room, as though they were evacuating from a fire inside the room. People were running out of the room, and yes I'm not kidding, to my amazement some senior citizens sure can run, at least the distance to reach the queue line. As mentioned earlier, the company is from Hainan, and thus the highlighted dish for the night is the Chicken Rice(anyone could have guessed that).

With that, the "chicken-rice" war of the century has begun. Mind you people, these guests are not from third world countries nor are they from the european continent and so we cannot blame them for not having chicken rice before for a meal. They are neither people who have been suffering from some form of plague that they have not had a proper meal for a couple of weeks, but these are the people, who we term them as professionals in our society, who are those people who have high education standards, who are those with the 5cs, the supposingly highly successful group of people, are the same people who are rushing for a generous amount of chicken rice served in Suntec City Convention Hall which will cost them around $2.50.(I'm comparing to the standard of the best chicken rice of 2004, which is found in Maxwell Hawker).I'm not sure if that chicken rice is the best around(I'm not saying it doesn't taste great, so please dun get offended), or is it like a chance of a lifetime thing where you only get to try this once.

So, once and for all, I have changed my perception about some of the so-call working adults in this world and wonder if their conducts can be comparable to kids at certain times. I can't help but feel for the reception crew, for their efficiency in topping up those items that some "locusts" have seemed to swarm over the plates. They also have to bear with those people laying plates and their cutleries all over the area, and provide the best service they can for any kind of request. Apparently, some senior citizens must have thought that tomorrow is Chinese New Year as they were having a mini "reunion" dinner around one of those reception tables, that was meant for placing plates for guests to take. In all, its very disappointing to see the ugly side of humans, and it took me one night to see all of that.

However, on the good side, it is good to be at such events where you get to mingle around with people from the industry. Like I got to know that lady who was in charge of the buffet reception this evening, and she's just graduated from SMU and only worked there for a few weeks. You also get to experience talking with some of these professionals, who will share bits and pieces of their work experience with you.

And so for more updates in future, reporting live from Wilfred@stratagemconsultants.com.