Archive for July 2008

There are probably 3 things I don’t quite like about going for an overnight outing.

I always end up bringing more than enough things which makes my luggage super duper heavy.
Sharing a room with a person who snores.
It’s hard to get someone to take pictures or videos for documentation purposes.

Maybe it isn’t such a good idea to start my story with a negative feel but that’s all I dislike about the recent team building I attended. The rest of what remains were just fantastic! Uncountable fun and excitement was what I felt, to put it modestly, because as it was my last activities together with my wonderful colleagues, it meant much more. For 8 months I’ve been attached to the Process Department of Ranhill WorleyParsons, KL, the most exciting event came just right before I leave, which I couldn’t have asked for more, except wishing for Li Yen, Siau Huey, and Annie to join.

Therefore, I would like to tribute this documentation to Li Yen and Siau Huey who would very much like to join but was unable to. I’d love to be as detail as possible but that’s quite impossible. You’ve just got to be there to experience em’ all!

WARNING!! If you are a RWP staff who has not gone through the team building, please DO NOT proceed further as it would spoil your anticipation and fun.

After lunch in Auntie’s Shop on that Friday, Celerance, Grace and I decided to just head back to the office for a chat to kill an hour or so before we depart to Port Dickson. It was nice to get to know the seemingly shy and quiet Celerance better. Mind you Li Yen, she can crap too you know. Hehehe.

‘Sailormuna’ Grace caught teaching Celerance the art of ‘kepo-ing’

My bus-mate, Celerance

The bus was already waiting when about 42 of the process staff gathered in the lobby. We boarded soon after and shortly into the journey, Majid, who was in-charge to making sure of the participants’ attendance, took the liberty to ask for volunteers to sing a song. Naturally, everybody kept quiet and that caused Majid to resort to ask Andy (head of department) or Parissa (one of the leads) to pick a number from the attendance list. We had a few rounds of that and one particular sport I like was C.S Sharma, who sung so lovingly. He’s one heck of a cool lead engineer, and seemed very cute with his rotund physique, moustache, accent and antics. I like him very much and he was very supportive of my participation throughout this team building.

Sharma belting out a Hindi ballad

When we hit the highway, everyone was chatting away, sharing the tidbits that was distributed earlier. I was also chatting away with Celerance, and Grace with Hafizah, PC with Su Lin.

To our amazement, we reached PD in just 1.5 hours. According to Celerance, it used to take roughly 2 hours before the new freeway was built. While waiting for everyone to gather around for the Learning and Development (L&D) to give a short briefing, I took some photos of the Ancasa Resort lobby view.

From the lobby, oversee the swimming pool. Beach volley ball court can be seen on the left

The swimming pool. Behind the coconut trees, directly across, is the Bali Garden

At the Ancasa Resort lobby where we were briefed and assigned to our rooms

We proceeded to our respective suites to ease off our luggages. Again I took some photos there before going down again.

This is how our suite looked like. Mr. Ooi was my roomate, while Majid got a room all by himself when Vireen, who supposedly also stay with us moved to be with his gang upon finding out a vacancy in another suite.

My bedroom. These two beds we joined together. The first thing that Mr. Ooi did was to pull it apart to leave a gap in the middle so it won’t appear so gay. I was glad he did that.

There was an orchard view from my suite

Another view from my suite – the sea of PD. But sadly, no time to observe sunset or sunrise

In no time, we began our team building. What entails from here onwards might not so in chronological order, though I try to be, because there were too many things in between that I could not remember which came first before which.

Anyhow, we were brought to the ballroom, of not so grandiose, but good enough for our activities. We started off with an introduction presentation from the L&D and then some ice breaking session. One is called the ‘find your flock of animal’. We were blind-folded and can only make our own animal noises to find our group. When it all ended, I found myself in the wolf flock but kept quiet as I was suppose to be a monkey. I was afraid that there might be some punishment for that but fortunately, it was not in the game plan.

Monkey sound was hard to pick up compared to others like tiger. Not fair! Anyhow, a lot of us cheated by peaking. kekeke

I don’t understand what became of my scarf. How was it able to defy gravity and ‘flew’ up like that???

Food and breaks! My goodness, we ate helluva lot during the whole course. I was usually very greedy when it comes to free food but I just didn’t somehow. I ate moderately, and at one point, I lost my craving for food simply because 6 meals a day was just too much.

We dined mostly in the Kiyoshi restaurant

Japanese painting in front of Kiyoshi. I wore my new Adidas shoe to PD! This pair cost me RM 399…. Nah.. just kidding. It was only RM 45, bought from Petaling Street during our last outing with Li Yen, Siau Huey, Kum Kum and Yau Yau. We also ate ‘ikan bakar’ which was supposedly to be famous but we found out it was overly spicy (not nice also), so we left without paying except for the deposit of RM 10. So much for waiting an hour to get our seafood, and it turned out sooooo spicy!

Sorry I digress. Let’s come back. Next, we were arranged in a group. Grace, Su Lin, myself and even our beloved Pidd kor with some few others were the red team. We were to create our team name, flag and war cry. Other teams were the green team where PC and Parissa was in, red where Celarance, Behnaz, Sharma and Hafizah were stationed and lastly blue where my apartment mates Mr. Ooi and Majid were in. From now on, the competition began! ~ jeng jeng jeng~

Red team where Sameer and Maznah were the leader and assistant respectively. HOD, Andy is exempted from becoming the lead in this TB.

Creating our flag. Paint paint paint….

….paint paint paint

Tada! Superior’s flag

After our flags were done, we proceeded to something a little bit more serious called the ‘You & I’ session, chaired by Pidd kor, where together as a process team, we discussed the problems that is preventing us from becoming a more effective team. That lasted for about 30 minutes before we were brought into the night to walk the treacherous hilly jungle of the wild. Nah, just joking – actually we were brought to admire the night sensation of the serene resort garden, decorated with warm lightings and music. At around 10.30pm, we went into the sports bar for a get together cum karaoke session.

The scene at the sports bar. Mostly older songs available. Not so updated like Green Box

Slowly everyone warmed up, and started to fight for the mic. Some just merely chilled out, enjoying the free flow of drinks including beers and carbonated drinks. That nite, Hafizah became my karaoke mate. Sharma, Jatin, and their group of friends also took turns to sing some Hindi songs, including Kuchi Kuchi Hota Hai. I also get to know Tridip (Li Yen’s office neighbour) better. Along at some point into the chat, he gave some advice that came from his own experience – it was about continuing study or working after graduation. He’s cool too although a bit quiet as compared to the other playful Indians. You’ll never know this bunch who look all serious in the office can be so fun!

Everyone slowly dispersed back to their respective rooms. I went back around 12am and found Mr. Ooi doing his qi gong routine. FIY, he’s an advocate of this qi gong stuff since 1990. The center where he learns qi gong does not charge him anymore as he’s now a teacher himself. He does his routine every night for about an hour before going to bed. No wonder he has an upward curve on his lips when he sleeps. I thought he was having a very nice dream. Maybe for him, but for me, it was a nightmare because half way into the night, Mr. Ooi started snoring. *teer* T_T

Having only slept for about 4 hours, I woke up early to take a bath to freshen up myself, only to find the water pressure very low. Anyhow, I was the first from my apartment to go down to start the 2^nd day of the team building. With my ‘dulan’ look, I reached the swimming pool around 7.20am, Grace and Hafizah were already there because they’ve mistaken that we have to gather at 7 am. Nevertheless, quite a number of people were already roaming about – for one, Sharma with his backpack and his gang can be seen happily strolling around the garden. Soon after, more and more people joined us in the Bali garden, eager to start the day. My weariness was also fading away when the sun came up to greet us on that beee….ooooo….tiii….ful day!

Azam, Behnaz, and myself by the swimming pool

All of us gathered in the Bali Garden

War cry showdown was the first event on that Saturday morning. It was very funny, particularly the blue team who called themselves Bluewaves. Green de Greats was also just as funny. You’ve just got to be there to witness it…hahaha. After Bluewaves, Rockers and Green de Greats did theirs (all equally were funny), came our turn, the Superior!

Whuar!!! SUPERIOR! THIS IS WAR!!! We managed to make the rest pee on their pants! Don’t play play

What’s a team building without torturing us, claimed the L&D department. They’ve got a professional aerobic trainer for us that morning, after the war cry showdown. More than 30 minutes non-stop of solid aerobic. It was to certain extent challenging, upbeat and I sweated! I remember my lame uni orientation morning exercise – I did not even sweat a drop. Anyhow, I loved this aerobic exercise but I’m not so sure for the others. Those who were more well ‘rounded’, obviously resulted from too much office work and too little exercise, were seen panting and slacking off halfway into it. It was hilarious to see them bouncing up and down, and flexing their arms and legs trying to keep up with the trainer who kept changing the dance style.

Everyone was sweating

Breakfast came next to replace our burned calories. Then we started our indoor activities in the same ballroom. The first one was to write what we feel towards other person. Each of us had this white manila card to our back and everyone around the room were free to go around and write his/her thoughts on their manila card – anything at all. There were of course some revelation and surprises. Behnaz got a secret admirer! So does Pidd kor, who by the way had the most comment written on this card. He was also labeled cute, handsome and big boss! Hahaha~

What my friends think of me. I don’t know who wrote the “itchy fellow” but it meant ‘kepo’ not some other stuff. Please don’t misconstrue

Next was the memory, math, and the number sequence game. Pretty good, IQ-centric game I would say. I won’t go much into the details but that two latter games made us all looked rather stupid, being an engineer. Most of us went quiet and disheartened, and then the L&D guys console us by saying not to be too hard on ourselves. Hehehe~ By the way, groups gather points from these activities (it’s a competition!).

We played another game, this time more physical. We formed circle within our groups, chained ourselves, with only a leader aka the communicator in the center. He/she is to direct us to collect items strayed around the room, but it wasn’t easy. Again too bad, I don’t have a picture taken on JitChak for this. I don’t want to go into the details either as it will make this long post even longer. Suffice to say, it was fun for us ‘arguing’, shouting, and making hell a lot of noise cheering.

After a short break, we came back to play a game which caused the most noise ever! Simple game – blinde folded and cross over the obstacles with the direction of two communicators. When one group is done, they can go and disturb other groups. That was when all hell broke lose. I shouted a lot to disturbed other people, especially Celerance. Some got a bit more physical by being bodyguards. It was very very funny in all that fiasco. Aiyo~~ crazy. It was funny, when Celerance jumped but still ended up in the boundary.

Take a look.

Scene at the indoor game

Next was the lego game. Given a construction project, we had to build a bridge structure that allows three people to go through without collapsing it. This game needs proper planning because every piece of lego and time elapsed caused money which will be deducted from the profit we made from successful ‘commissioning’.

Crawling like a caterpillar. This was the commissioning part.

Superior team by their structure. We jumped ahead and built without planning and that cost us loads in materials. Even though we finished first, we burst the budget way too much! wuuhuuuhuuu

That concluded our indoor activities. We proceeded to lunch and were given some time to chill out before we continue on outdoor activities. Some gone back to the room for a short nap but I took the opportunity to explore the Bali garden more. JitChak was a great company and worked wonderful on outdoor setting (though can’t be said for indoor – still couldn’t find the right settings).

Around Bali Garden

Can you see the ants?

Lovely! my JitChak can do this with big aperture setting

Tada! 2.30 pm marked the start of the outdoor activities, the one that I was more eager to play. The weather was nice, clear and not too sunny. First game was the scavenger hunt where we had to find answers to some questions and items that were required. We took some time to discuss and delegate tasks. The L&D later congratulated us on this as all teams (not just one or two like what happen to other department) took time off to discuss and we were all so determined – we didn’t even bother to move under the shade during discussion. Anyway, Pidd kor and I teamed up to find an item that I thought was easy only to find out later that I was wrong – to get 4 mosquitoes, dead or alive.

The scavenger hunt score board

Myself and Pidd kor - the mosquito team

He was really cute with his natural gestures (Li Yen would understand this). He was convinced to get some from stagnant water and I was more sure that I could find some in the bushes. I resorted to using my flash -deprived legs and arms as bait, sitting in the bushes, hoping to catch a few. Although I got two from there, it was not easy. Time was not the luxury we had. Anyhow, towards the end, Pidd kor managed to squashed another two, one with only half remained since he smacked that ‘bloody bugger’ (according to him) without mercy! Hehe~ so that made our part complete. Superior team rendezvous back in the Bali garden with all our respective treasures 5 minutes before the time was due. And we won the game! According to L&D, we were the third team who got all items correct, complete, with no time penalty. Hurray!

Rendezvous back in Bali Garden. Pidd kor’s holding the flag the other way round. Su Lin thought she was very sexy in her pose but Sameer thought she looked rather like a monkey

This game was tied to another game called the ‘Balloon March’. Since we had no penalty, we marched out first with 10 seconds advantage from the second team. Although we managed to finish first, we also earned plenty of points deducted from all the things that we shouldn’t do like holding the balloon, bursting them, etc. We could have done much better on this….

Bluewaves doing balloon marching meticulously. Indiana Jones Majid was a good leader

Next was finding marbles in the pool. Again this was to test mostly our communication skills.

Pool where we had our marble game

The score that we got from the marbles collected was translated into the number of paper clips we earned. So the next activity is to join those paper clips and the winner is the one with the longest clips joined. Again Superior team won this part. Yea.. Our joined paper clips measured at about 1 meter extra from the 1^st runner up. One thing to note was Parissa went extra length to get a hammer from the maintenance. Most of us just used rocks to hammer the clips. Gotta salute her for that.. haha..

We then had a much needed break after the outdoor activities under the sun.

eeeya eeeya yoo.. Two ponies by the swimming pool. Actually I pitied them because they’ve been under the sun since 9.30 am. This picture was taken at 4.30 pm. Only kids were allowed to take a ride. Too bad la Su Lin.

In that evening, each team was supposed to do a performance for the Ranhill WorleyParsons Night of Starz in conjunction with our scrumptious BBQ dinner that would start at 8 pm. We were allocated free and easy time from 5 pm. So, all team went and prepare for their performance then. Superior team were very indecisive on what to do, and as such, wasted a lot of time. Even at 7 pm, we were still changing our plans. At 7.30 pm, we had our so called full rehearsal. At 8pm, I was feeling rather tired and convinced we will be a joke on the stage.

We all proceeded to the dinner place set up by the resort, completed with a mini stage and all the nice food lined up. There were lamb, spaghetti, lasagna, crabs, prawns, desserts, salads, and many more. But I wasn’t feeling hungry, partly maybe I was tired (we all were), partly a bit worried about the performance. Su Lin however, was gung ho about us winning. I on the other hand, was not convinced even coming 3^rd placing. Rockers has the likeable, fun and motivated leader, Sharma together with his ever united team. Bluewave, arch rival of Rockers, has Majid as the fearsome and meticulous leader, also with his ever punctual team. Greenwaves, silent but smart competitor.

At quarter past 9, came the time for performance. Superior went first, followed by Green de Greats, then Rockers, and last Bluewaves. Here’s our performances!

Team Superior’s performance part I

Team Superior’s performance part II

Team Green de Greats’ performance

Team Rockers’ performance part I

Team Rockers’ performance part II

Team Bluewaves’ performance

After Superior’s performance, I gradually felt better, not because I thought we did superb (after all) but it was because of the support from the crowd. I enjoyed a lot the rest of the performances too. Particularly the one from the Rockers. Hats off to them for making an interesting sketch. When it all ended with lucky draws given out (I, again didn’t get any), some of us party some more. We danced along with music. After a while, I joined the rest in the sports bar, again for more karaoke session. This time we really let loose our hair. We sang like there was no tomorrow. Even without mic, the room was filled with our united voices, singing English and Malay songs. Pidd kor and I agreed to duet on ‘Summer 69’ but unfortunately the bar doesn’t have it… Ooowwww. Pidd kor was so keen. I was disappointed too. Nevertheless, we just sung and clapped along whatever that was played. PC was also great in hitting high notes.. kekeke. We were very close knit now as a process team. Yea.. we are the best of the best.. I really like RWP, not for their work, but for their people and culture. Nice..

Scenes at the sports bar

I called it a night at near 12 am. Went up and found Mr. Ooi doing qi gong in horse stance position. He didn’t even look who entered the apartment and I of course did not disturb him. But before we hit the lights, we chatted a while. He suggested that I do a shoulder exercise for 15 minutes everyday to ease my constant neck and shoulder pain. Hehe~ see whether I’m persistent enough or not. That night, I think I was too tired till all my sensors were offline – I slept through the night without waking up.

The last day came – Sunday. That morning we had another round of exercise, to keep us fit. This time, we learned Tai Chi.

Gather in the Bali Garden. Hmmm.. who are those kids?

Kungfu (mini) Pandas

Tai Chi was too slow-motioned for my liking. Should have taught us wushu instead, then we can all fight in the office.

For about 20 minutes, sifu taught us stretching, listened to surrounding sounds, appreciate a coconut tree, and did tai chi movement (it was kind of hard, even more so to balance with slow movement). After that, we sat back and watched very young kids demonstrating wushu (proper name of kungfu). They were awesome.

Kids performing wushu part I

Kids performing wushu part II

With the kungfu kids at breakfast… Hieeeyak!

Then we had our breakfast and 1.5 hours of reflection session – to discuss and share what we’ve learned and how this team building can benefit us as a process team and for us to work better. Then prize giving ceremony. Bluewaves was the champion. Green de Great, 1^st runner up. Rockers, 2^nd runner up, and Superior 3^rd runner up (my intuition was right).

Time to reflect… Most of us just kept quiet actually.. kekekeke

Big boss giving his thoughts

Superior team photo. Li Yen you’ve got two more competitors. Actually, it’s now 3 because Grace has also been charmed by Ayoub. She said: eh.. Ayoub actually not bad eh…

Process Department photo

Finally, we did one last round of fun activity! To the beach!!!!! I didn’t bring JitChak along this time, so no documentation of us on the beach. It was drizzling when we headed there, then it grew into a heavy pour on and off but we didn’t care as we were about to get wet anyway. I played football using a volley ball with Sharma and friends, and Pidd kor and L&D tailo, while waiting for our turn to ride on the banana boat.

Banana boat was fun! Pidd kor sat in front and I in between Grace and PC. Our beloved HOD was behaving like a kid, purposely bobbing up and down to shake things up a little bit. Haha~~ First round was okay, the speed boat pulling our banana boat would make a sharp turn in the end so that we will all fall into the sea. Second round was even better. I rode with again Pidd kor, and the L&D guys and Hanni on my immediate back. Pidd kor and others in front and myself were jumping up and down while the boat was traveling at high speed in the middle of the sea, and at one point, we bounced a little too much to the left and the boat lopsided, plunging us into the middle of the sea. That impact had Hanni’s nose bleeding. Poor girl. She was transported back to the shore on the speed boat while the rest of us climbed back on the bobbing banana boat to head back to the shore – this time a little less naughty. I was thinking to test my swimming skill by swimming back to the shore about 300 m away (or so it seemed) but better not.

Well, that more or less sums all the activities we had on team building. Actually I’ve left a lot of details out. After the fun beach time, we headed back for a shower, and then lunch, and then prepare to go back to KL.

Su Lin wanted to carry the pot back to the office

Su Lin and I

My bus mate Celerance. Why is she always in pink?

Harizah who helped to take video for me, and I for her

FIY, I’ve got to know that each person cost more than RM 2,000 for team building in PD. So if you have about 40 staff going from each department and about 10 departments all together, roughly RM 1 million is spent for team building. I guess that’s very very affordable for a company earning hundreds of millions annually. Come to think of it, it’s less than 1%. Yea.. next time we can afford to go overseas…woo hoo..~~ (ish..like I’m going to be there when it happens)

I am so going to miss the process people, especially after the team building because we’ve all bonded so well. All good things must come to an end isn’t? So, anyhow unwillingly, I said bye bye to RWP. It was my pleasure to know all of you. Salute!