Simply Rojak: An all day event at the Mall

I see Sharon has already blogged about the one day outing at Queensbay Mall that we had as part of our department's celebration, which is suppose to celebrate the release of a feature enhancement for our products - a pretty big one too considering the amount of work that has gone into it. Not to mention the amount of people who were involved.

Let's rewind to a few weeks back on how I got involved in organizing this event. I think it was about three weeks ago that I received an email from my manager asking whether I could take up the task of organizing, what should be "Appreciation Dinner + Some Activities". And that email was copied to almost all the managers and senior managers in the department. Haha...even if I didn't want to do it, it was kind of hard to refuse, right?

Anyway, fortunately I didn't think organizing it was a problem, so the issue of thinking of a way to decline nicely was not required ;p Personally I thought it was a challenge. This time I wanted to organize the appreciation event for my fellow colleagues - something fun and not just a typical dinner, at a typical hotel. Although some did indicate that food is the most important and all else shouldn't matter much ;p

For this sort of event, having a dinner was a given. But we also wanted some sort of activities in the day so that fellow colleagues and friends can have some time interacting - and have a nice time off from work. God knows, some of them has worked their asses off - even on Hari Raya and other public holidays.

The idea of having a 'Treasure Hunt' in a mall was mooted after getting to know that another department has recently organized such an event at a local mall. And it seems that they had quite a bit of fun too. To Penangites, Queensbay Mall should be a familiar name.

Well, if they have done it before, it shouldn't be too difficult to do it again, right? That's what I thought. Unfortunately, the mall's management disagreed with the way we are going to look for the treasures and so I had to modify the whole concept in order to meet their requirements. At first I was doing alone and frankly speaking, there was only about a week plus to get everything in place - so it was really fortunate that I had two other friends, Kin Wei and TJ, who volunteered to help out - Thanks a lot guys!

We were at the mall practically a few days in a row, trying to figure out the treasures and clues. And we are probably a bit sick of going there already ;p But cutting the long story short, we made it in time - the hunt involved 23 shops/establishments and 25 treasures in total. Phew...that was a relief because after the invitations went out, a lot of my friends has expressed anticipation for this event. So it kind of became the anchor event for the day - if there was any such thing ;p

As for the dinner, remember my previous entries where I was deciding between G Cafe and Cafe Laurel? Well, due to some foreseeable difficulties in our company's method in making a claim (for the cost), we decided that it would be better if we didn't have the dinner at a hotel. Instead, we decided to have the dinner at TGI Fridays - which was also at the mall. Having the dinner at the mall means that we need not have to travel to town, which means no traffic jams and more people who can join the celebrations. In total we had 76 people who attended the dinner. We went for the current 3-course meal deal at RM39.90, which covered an appetizer, main meal and dessert. Haha...it was really good business for TGI Fridays that night ;p

Anyway, coming back to the activities, thanks to the help from KW and TJ, the Treasure Hunt was a success. And in between the 'hunt' and dinner, we threw in a nice activity for them and that was going to the cinemas! Yup, all paid for and any movie that is showing at that time. Well, to clarify, all paid for by the managers - we have a fund you see, for funding team building activities and I guess this can be considered as one if them...hehehe ;p

A lot of us watched The Kingdom and I must say it was really good, much better than expected. There were of course some parts that were censored, but it didn't really affected the flow of the story. Some went for the other favourite, which was the Enchanted - you can read my views for this show in my previous entry.

So now that all the words have been laid down, let's have the pictures do the talking, so you can see how much fun the whole team had. And for that I'm truly happy 'cause it made the effort that we put in, truly worthwhile.