Fourth Year… in Malory Towers (???) February 27, 2008

Today was my fourth AND LAST time that I’ll ever volunteer to help out with the company’s Annual General Meeting (AGM). Things went terribly wrong this year — I won’t go into the specifics — and being in the “administration” line meant that we are first in the line to receive the “bullets” and “bombs” from the unhappy shareholders.

It’s really like a freak accident kinda thing that happened, and it just so happens that the shareholders that “kena” from the freak accident just HAVVEEEEE to be the most outspoken people EVER in the history of AGMs. Hahaha! Haih, I didn’t really get scolded from anyone (I have this “I’m so innocent / blur!” look that helps me… MOST of the time), and in the end ended up trying to help put out the “fires”. Don’t know what one PAD (Public Affairs Division) officer did to this one uncle, he kept on talking and talking and refused to move and kept telling everyone that he’s not afraid to make a scene. So I tried talking to him and distracting him. Ended up with him asking me if I’m married or not, wtf super irrelevant things also came out. T_____T Cindy told me not to continue talking to the uncle otherwise he would mail his son to my house. Wtf wtf. After a while I also got tired of his ngam ngam cham cham (ramblings), that when he said, “I’m so old already, I might not be able to come to the AGM next year coz I’m dead and yet you all want to mistreat me this way!”
I replied, “It’s more likely you won’t see me here instead of us not seeing you.” Muwahahhaha… yeah, I really don’t want to volunteer here again.

Seriously ler, I think I should work in public affairs instead of IT, I am such a charmer.

Pauline, KimChoo, Jessie (soooooo cute!), Krish, Geetha and LiTeng… after everything was over.

Oh yeah, Jessie and I also got ‘conned’ out of RM10 today. One of these shareholders, a really friendly old lady was collecting donations to build a “taman didikan” (kindergarten? not sure), so she asked us to pay RM10, and she’ll give us this small embroidered chiffon bag as a token of appreciation. Since she was soooo nice and friendly to us (as opposed to those who were angry) we also just paid up. Later, another lady from the secretariat division saw us with the bags and said, “Oh you actually paid her RM10? Aiyah, you donate RM2 or RM5 also she’ll give the bags lar. I didn’t know you’re so gullible. Later you come to my place and I sell you some bags ok.” @_@

Oh yeah, Jessie and I also got ‘conned’ out of RM10 today. One of these shareholders, a really friendly old lady was collecting donations to build a “taman didikan” (kindergarten? not sure), so she asked us to pay RM10, and she’ll give us this small embroidered chiffon bag as a token of appreciation. Since she was soooo nice and friendly to us (as opposed to those who were angry) we also just paid up. Later, another lady from the secretariat division saw us with the bags and said, “Oh you actually paid her RM10? Aiyah, you donate RM2 or RM5 also she’ll give the bags lar. I didn’t know you’re so gullible. Later you come to my place and I sell you some bags ok.” @_@

Never mind la, it’s for charity… right? (How come so far my money seems to be going out non-stop for “charity” stuff?)

Anyway, there’s sooooooooo much bad stuff that happened today, the whole AGM is supposed to start at 8am and end by 12pm, but our “volunteering” session was from 7:30am until 2pm, omg. And thanks to the freak accident, we were supposed to work past 2pm, but hello, I have some more work waiting for me back in the office. Ate lunch at Shangri-la hotel and then buzzed back to the office where I regaled my colleagues with the usual adventures of “The Proxy Club” at the AGM. Sigh… and here I am working on some more system modifications.

Our lunch at Shangri-la. Quite nice also, “ada standard”.

Gawd, these kinda things can really demotivate a person. Already quite demotivated from some things that I learned about “the company” recently, and these extra information doesn’t help. Oh, and my boss thought of sending me to Cambodia to work for a 1-3 months project, which I thought was AWESOME, but when I was away at the AGM today, she told Raymond the same thing. It’s more likely that he’ll be sent and not me because I am ~a girl~. I think the only reason she considered me was because the director told my boss, “Send Leech there… all you have to do is find her a gym in Cambodia and she’ll be happy.” HAHAHAHA!!!

Cambodian Body Combat wtf.

Searched back the archives for previous AGM memories:
First year working as an usherer
2nd year working as an usherer – gets a sty in the eye
3rd year, and still happy.

I was telling my boss that this is my 4th year helping out and we were all temporarily confused because I haven’t worked in the bank for 4 years yet (this coming June will mark my 4th year here). Then Raymond cleverly remembered, “Yeah yeah, it’s possible. You came in in June 2004, but you helped for 2005, 2006, 2007 an now 2008 la. It adds up.” I marvelled at the fact, “Wow. I have been here for FOUR years.” Then Julia piped up with a, “Leech!! 4 years usually marks the time when the young girls with the company leave!” My boss had this really strange, strangled look on her face as she said, “Julia…. WHAT. ARE. YOU. TRYING. TO. SAY. Don’t try and chase away my staff arh!”

Some things never change, and some things do. And have to.

Some food that people are willing to stand around waiting 2 hours for:

I have to say that it’s quite yummy — but not worth your 2 hours wait..
And the souvenir this year is some kinda lunch box carrier thing ok, it’s also not really worth your time to redeem…

Of Annual General Meetings , Aquaplaning & Japanese Buffets. March 18, 2007

::Originally posted on Completely Random::

Last year, I wrote about it here, and this year, I was roped in to help out again. It is Company XYZ’s Annual General Meeting! As usual, it was held in Shangri-la Hotel, and I was (again) in charge of registering the proxies who arrive, and giving them their food, parking and souvenir vouchers.

Open for business!

The whole process is quite complicated (especially to an old person, which is the demographic group of people who actually attend AGMs. Apparently.). First, they register with a group of people outside (show IC) to get their counter number. Then, they go in to another room (just behind the 1st registration counter), show their IC again, to get their vouchers. Being old, these people usually grumble a lot about having to show their ICs twice. =p I always feel quite cruel when I ask them for their IC and they say they have “just kept it”. They have to root around inside their bag to find their purse which has another purse inside which has a plastic bag which has their photocopied IC inside. -___-” Super typical old person behavior la.

The hardcore shareholders / proxies arrive shortly after we had merely BEGUN setting up the registration counters. Hardcore!

Anyway, I sound like I’m annoyed, but I really am not. I actually semi-enjoy helping out in the events. My usual day-to-day work is interacting with a stoned PC which makes me stoned too. To just do registration, and meeting people and talking to them makes me happy la. I feel like if I’m nice to them, then they also feel happy, then they also buy more shares in Company XYZ, then they enjoy the AGM more, etc etc. HAHAHA! Seriously, my friendliness during AGM is like… a million times more than in the office. Even my IT Director said I’m charming ok, don’t play-play. =p ((perasan-ing))

Charming me hard at work. Krish is laughing because she knows that I was posing for this photo, and I’ve actually finished my work ages ago… hehe.

I met a really old guy there… he was so funny and chatty! And he said that he likes to joke around (and apologised for annoying us, which we all most definitely weren’t!) and laugh because “how many more years do I have to laugh?” He also mentioned that he likes to go for the AGM because “the debates and arguments… hearing people talk… it makes my brain stay sharp.” I was thinking, “Hmm… he does that to keep his brain sharp. My grandparents play mahjong to stay sharp.. hehe.”

MY and Cindy hard at work tabulating the amount of shares being represented by each counter that day. My counter alone represented for 700,000+ shares!

Of course, every year, there’s people who like to cause us trouble. People who want more than their allotted share of souvenirs and food. Of course, if we have leftover, sometimes I wonder why not just give them instead of spending time arguing with them. But if we give one, then all will start to ask, then where does it all end? Someone told me that these old people have seemingly started a club … “Club Proxy”. They have gone to other companie’s AGM, and it seems that the SAME GROUP OF OLD PEOPLE KEEP SHOWING UP. Hahaha. I wonder if I would be tempted to do that at my old age? Try to get free stuff and free hotel food. -__-”

Shangri-La hotel staff actually had to get more people to help distribute food because last year there wasn’t enough and some of us IT staff had to help out too. Not that we mind la…

One old guy said that “Hong Leong gives free Western buffet breakfast too! Company XYZ, please provide free breakfast also aside from the lunch set.” And during the AGM, got one guy praised Company XYZ and the chairman so highly. He said that his shares not only have made money beyond his dreams, but that his investment also got unexpected returns in the form of free souvenirs & free delicious food in ALL THE AGMS he has ever attended. Very semangat man!

Ah Siang & Warren, who came and helped us out too. Thanks a bunch!

Special photo for Mr M because he’s the one who comes in when we get bullied. I didn’t need his bouncer-like talents, but a few girls were glad we had him around. Hehe. What to do, I have secret ‘talent’ in handling tough cookies.

Anyway, there’s a lot of funny stories that day… can’t write it all out here. But I had a good time chatting with my colleagues while working, meeting my friend from training dept, and basically getting all these strange, strange stories to talk about. =)

In case you’re curious, this is the food which is being given out in the boxes (that pple are fighting over). I gave it to my colleagues:

And this is a buffet-like lunch that the hotel provided for all that worked during this AGM. Shangri-La food is damn nice wey.

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OCM explained to me that what happened to me the other day was called “aquaplaning”. Very scientific explanation from him as well as what I should do and so on. Even read the Wikipedia entry on it. At first I didn’t think it was what happened because it was such a small puddle I went over. OCM said, “Puddle is puddle regardless big or small. Besides, you were probably relaxing. And you were probably speeding.”

“Is 105kph speeding?”
“Over 100kph will cause you to aquaplane already la!”
“So what should I have done?”
“Slow your car done, hold the steering firmly so that once you get traction again, your car will go back to heading straight. Never brake, never jerk…”
“Eh seriously, my car was headed towards the railing already. Can you guarantee me that it would right itself in time?”
“Worse come to worse, it’ll just lightly graze the railing. Isn’t that better than spinning off across the highway? You wanna try it again? You already got the lottery once, wanna see if you can strike again?”

Anyway, I probably *was* too relaxed. I’m much more alert and tension when driving in heavy rain and therefore I always do have a firm grip and keen eye on the road. But seriously, that was such a random puddle on the ground. It probably had rained earlier, but the sun was shining brightly. There was September playing on the radio! Wouldn’t you relax too? Sigh…

A strange thing that happened was yesterday after telling OCM about it, I heard a “community service message” from Traxx FM about aquaplaning! Hahaha, how coincidental is that? Swear I never heard it before that day. Anyway, I’m not that scared of driving anymore, because I know the ‘mystery’ of what happened the other day, and now know what to do if I encounter that situation again.

Hope you learn from my tragedy-lottery too. Take care! =)

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Friday evening, left work at 5pm, and rushed to Starhill for our Jogoya pre-appreciation dinner. I ended up 45 minutes late. Wanted to cry with rage and helplessness at the stupid jam which is caused by nothing except people leaving their offices. (Later I found out from SeeSee that I took a damn complicated and convulated way, no wonder end up late la)

The dinner supposedly was from 6pm – 8pm, I reached at 7pm! Felt damn sad that in the end I could only eat for an hour. But guess what? Later, Pauline (organizer) said that we can stay until 11:30pm. =D Happy, happy, joy, joy. You know those private “rooms” that have the special sliding door in Jogoya? They booked the entire stretch of those rooms! At the end of the room was a huge TV screen, where they showed us the edited version of the performance.

Excited & pleased staff / performers cheering each other on… didn’t get many photos, was concentrating on eating everything within 1 hour.

The video was really funny, very memorable to rewatch everything again. The kind editors left out all shitty facial expressions so that everyone looks good. I’m quite happy because I appear a number of times, although Rodney is the star (main singer and all). And the main reason that I am even seen so much is because I’m clinging to his armpit. HAHA. Screenshots when I get the DVD la.

Anyway, there was a lot of nice stuff that I *swore* that I would wanna try again but they didn’t have. Like my CHEESE BAKED OYSTER, FRIED MUSHROOMS and PINEAPPLE & PRAWN ROLLS. No where in sight! Service was also horribly slow and there were lots of mix-ups in the orders. I gave away so many of the “clips” (in case you don’t know, you deposit a “clip” at a counter which is making the dish you wanna try. They will bring the dish back to you later, with your clip. And the cycle continues), but I got either different dishes, duplicate dishes or nothing at all.

Jogoya – what happened to my miso soup crab hotpot?!
Jogoya – what happened to my fried chinese abalone mushroom?!
Jogoya – what happened to my teriyaki cod fish?!

But the BEST BEST BEST part of the evening was that each staff was entitled to get ONE “VVIP” dish. You see, you can’t deposit your clips in ANY ol’ dish in Jogoya. Some which uses special (read: expensive) ingredients require you to be a VVIP member in order to be able to try it. Well, I don’t know how you become a VVIP member in Jogoya, but seeing as we had 100+ people each paying more than RM100, they “rewarded” us with this.

I “surveyed” some of my colleagues on what dishes they tried before ordering the Grated king crab with butter fish. It was definitely the best dish I’ve ever tried in Jogoya. The king crab claw was smothered in cheese and was the richest dish I’ve eaten there. The butter fish was definitely unique. The texture of the fish is firm and bouncy. It has a real bite to it. Aiyooo… how do I become a VVIP member?!?

Despite not having cheese baked oysters, there were CHEESE BAKED ESCARGOTS which were real nice. Different from the ones that Simon force-fed me in Windmill & San Francisco Steakhouse. Those really felt like dead snails. These were white and firm and crunchy. Muscular snails! Here’s some pictorial evidence on my pigging out:

Black pepper chicken, cheese baked escargots & cheese baked prawns

Beef Teriyaki

Smoked salmon roll, salmon sushi & pineapple prawn.

Golden tofu (stuffed with some eggy thing), chinese mushrooms, black pepper lamb, and ‘sphinx ball’ (some seafood ball thingy covered with almond flakes)

Only drank ice blended drinks. The blue one is ‘lemon sherbet’, and the orange one is mango. Mango one was very nice because it had little cubes of mango inside as well.


Tempura vegetables, more escargot, and pandan chicken.

Blueberry cheesecake, mango pudding, mango mousse & sherbet Movenpick ice-cream

Madras prawns. Sounds damn spicy, but turns out to be fried prawns in what looks and tastes like Thai chilli sauce. But to be fair, the prawns tasted v. fresh.

Fried aspragus with clam.

Fried softshell crabs

Honey sour plum ice blended & pink guava ice-blended.

Left after eating for 2 hours, phew! And I’ll always remember and treasure the dance practice with these girls, even though I got insulted most of the time (9 times out of 10). Thanks for all the training, I learnt a lot from you all!!

One of them is the dance choreographer.. heheh. If you read my previous entries, you can easily guess which one la…

And these are some other stuff that I got from the performance, aside from fun times with colleagues, learning to dance something different, time off, opportunity to attend the chairman’s birthday celebration, expensive appreciation dinners, etc. I got the giftbag that they give the managers who attend the birthday celebration. Aside from the program book (which is a beautifully printed HIGH QUALITY book (probably costs more to make than a high school magazine which has hundreds more pages), we also got:

Small box of Ferrero Rocher & Ferrero Rocher Prestige. Hahah, this is what I got Priv for her engagement party present. *malu*

Lucky Arowana notepad paper holder & paper-weight from Tumasek pewter… hehe. Nice!

These are some accesories that EeHui helped buy for us from ‘hor ching yuen’. Huge bling ring and diamante hoops. Quite nice la, and quite affordable also. Anyway, she got reimbursed for the jewelry, so she let me and Ivy keep the stuff we wore. Heehee. =)

Bloody Eye… March 25, 2006

::Originally posted on Completely Random::

The most eventful thing that happened this week was going for the company annual general meeting, as an usherer usherette again. I met my “hamsap fan”, although as per his actions last year, all talk, no action. Last year I was stationed at what they termed “front desk” / “reception” where the proxies would sign in and get a registration code. It’s very simple, just smile, act friendly, key in their name / IC and then get the reference code for them. I wanted to be in the front desk again!! But I guess this year I was not leng lui enough, heh! I was shoved to the “back office” where I had to deal with kiasu proxies who wanted more food / parking voucher / souvenier coupons. Bleh, distributing freebies is never easy. I also don’t get the amount of people who want these stuff, or would bother going for an AGM as there is such a lot of hassle. I was afraid of working @ the “back office” because last year there were lots of drama. But this year more drama occurred at the front desk than the back office, so once again, I was not bothered much.

6:30am at Shangri-La’s basement carpark inspires camming.

So I’m giving a big clue as to where I work – the AGM was held recently, and it was held in Shangri-La Hotel. ;] And it’s big news because the event was featured in the business news for a couple of papers.

My work is basically getting the reference code from the attendee, then making them sign on a sheet to confirm they have collected their coupons, and then basically just act all friendly and give them directions, etc. Few drama occurred, like a girl pretending to be her elder sister so she could get another gift (hello, if you want to pretend to be another person, at least wear something more discreet than a bright orange shirt with diamantes), people coming late but wanting to sign-in & then refusing to leave the room until they could, people who scolded the staff for stealing their IC (!!) or food coupons (!!!!), but those were few and far between. And most importantly, those did not occur under my counter. =p I got all the nice & friendly people… hahaha! But again, I don’t want to curse myself by saying that my counters are always trouble-free. Next year I want to be back in the front office!

Light falls upon us…

The empty hall, which would soon be filled with all our shareholders / proxies…

This is the “front office”

Where you collect your souvenirs and get your parking vouchers.

Colleagues setting up the laptops at the “front office”

Crunch time at the “back office”. I seemed to have a lot of free time, but I found out later from my sheet that I had about the same number of people at my counter as the rest of my colleagues, if not more (by a little).

Angry mob waiting for the free Shangri-La – packed lunchbox

My own buffet lunch. Didn’t eat a lot, see? My stomach shrunk , I tell you…

After our work was done, we got a free buffet lunch, and got to ta pow back Shangri-La food packs for the office guys. It’s a yearly ritual that has one of my other colleagues telling me, “I don’t know you anymore!” when she sees me with two bags of food in plastic bags tucked under my arms.

Of course, I got a little lost in KL, but that’s mostly because other people are bastards and blocked up a side of the road, so that I thought that I couldn’t go straight, and was forced to make a U-Turn. Geez, I really hate driving in KL in the afternoon. Mornings are great though.

The sad part of my story is a-coming…

Got back to the office, and realised that there was this throbbing sensation on my left, upper eyelid. By the end of the day, it had swelled up, causing my entire left eye to look like I had gotten punched. IT IS DAMN PAINFUL, OK. So depressing. Until today, the swelling hasn’t gone down one centimeter, so I’m left feeling sore, ugly and miserable. One good thing about all this is that it’s VERY GOOD for my diet as I am too vain to go out and eat (or even to the cafeteria!) so I end up eating oats for lunch and dinner (unless I get a colleague to ta pow for me). That is the only ray of sunshine in my otherwise swollen life. Even my plans to go out this weekend has to be forgotten. *cries*

What I got after the Annual General Meeting…

A stationery holder-cum-paperweight-clock-cum-decorative item!! It’s sooooo nice, much better than last year’s souvenier!!

A sty in the eye!! Lol, freak!!

Oh yeah, just wanted to say that I am now reading three books concurrently – American Gods by Neil Gaiman, The Blood Fold by Terry Goodkind and The Wheel of TIme #10 by Robert Jordan. Stone of Tears was amazing!! I’m hooked to the Sword of Truth series now, thanks to my bf. ~_~”

Leech The Usherer March 31, 2005

::Originally posted on Completely Random::

Today was the Annual General Meeting, and despite what they said earlier, I got roped in anyway. Anyway, it’s not a tough job. Most of the people being registered are cheerful old people who came for the free gift and free food. Also, I found out that I could talk to them in Cantonese quite easily (for those who couldn’t speak english well), and not only that – a few could speak Hakka, so I could converse with them in that as well! Cooliez! I think some of these people are quite lonely, so when you just smile at them and say, “Hi! Good morning, proxy counter, right?”, they’ll proceed to tell you these long stories about how they became a proxy, and why they are the proxy and how the jam to KL was so bad this morning, etc etc. SO STRANGE. But I enjoyed talking to them. (Only cannot talk that long, cos have to keep the line moving). A very nice lady said to me, “Wah, they only ask the pretty girls to be usherers ah.” Hmm, older women love me. Nyek nyek.

Got a few aggressive people, but my act-cuteness and sore throat got me out from a lot of tricky situations. Hehe, sometimes having a sore throat is good. They see you struggling to explain things for the millionth time, develop a conscience and decide to bug someone else. I love working with all the IT team members today, about 12 of us who I know from the office. Mo keeps calling me “Cruella DeVil” because of my semi-bleached hair. ~_~ And all of them are in awe of me because I walked to Shangri-La from Jalan Ampang. It’s not that far, people!!

After work was over, we all each were supposed to take back one food pack from Lemon Garden (a cafe in Shangri-La), which had some pastries, fried chicken wings, cakes, egg tart and springrolls. However, they had so much food packs leftover, that Jon (our leader) kept encouraging us to “pau sai” everything. He boasted that the previous year he managed to sneak back 20 packs for people in the office. Inspired, we started unpacking and repacking boxes (so that 1 box contained items for 2 boxes), and I think all of us took an average of 8 boxes each. Can’t believe I just wrote out how kiasu we all are. Cind kept saying, “OMG, at this moment I don’t know you all! Leech, help grab two more boxes for me!” They also provided lunch for us – roti jala, chicken curry, fried rice and lots of wantan. All the spicy and fried stuff that killed my already half-dying throat.

Something funny that happened – one of my colleagues told me that one guy who she knew approached her and asked her to introduce him to me. Haha! So funny! It’s strange because out of all the gals there, I think I’m the most childish looking one and if he wanted to know hot gals, he can ask for my other colleagues. O_o Maybe it’s because I look quite approachable. I’m good at putting up a friendly front for events like these. Anyway, she refused to introduce him to me because she said that he was too old for me, among other things. -_- I told Babiben about this, when he was asking me to become this ‘signed guarantor’ that he’s not into subversive activities.
Ben : “Great, so I can sell your personal details to people like that.”
Me : “Hah. Be lucky if you get two bucks.”
Ben : “He’ll give mortgage his house for your personal details.”
Me : “Make that one buck.”
Ben : “If I get one buck offers, I might as well publish your personal details in the newspaper. To destroy supply, means that everyone can get it for free. Then that guy won’t have exclusive rights to your information anymore.”
Me : “As if I don’t have enough weird shits haunting me daily, right?”

Drove back to the office after that, and gave all my colleagues the food that we “pau sai” for them. They were really happy, and OppositeCubicleMate and CubicleMate kept trying to make me eat most of it, saying that, “You’re the only one who can eat it… cos you’re the one who is going to the gym to work out.” Heck, that’s crap la. At this rate I go to the gym also no use. ~_~ But the food was good… the three of us so semangat shared chocolate cake in the office.

Haha, today I heard I Can Love You Like That by All-4-One, brought back some nice memories. Also… (courtesy of Ben)… t(‘,’t) … what does that look like to you? I think it looks like some guy performing the chiu kup mou dik pik lik sau (courtesy of my colleague who owes me lots of Balinese wooden cats). Ben says it’s a guy flipping someone off with both hands. Either way, it looks damn cute.