Last week I was in Singapore for a few days for our Annual Country Manager Summit. It’s an annual event we have Singapore where all the heads of our offices in the regions will come together, share updates and formulate a strategy to grow the whole company in the next year.
Last year we had representatives from our offices in Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, Australia and China. This year though we added Hong Kong and Thailand to the list.
This is David Lee and Kingston representing our Australia and Hong Kong side.
And here’s Carlos and David representing Philippines and China.
Carlos is one helluva sweet talker. I took a bus with him from KL to Singapore that morning. At the Singapore immigration check point there was this really pretty immigration officer. I went first, gave her my best smile and tried to convince her that I wasn’t going to run away to Singapore and work as a waiter there. I got my stamp and moved out.
Carlos then went after me. And in that 30-45 seconds that he was there. He not only got a stamp but managed to get her PHONE NUMBER. He eventually called her out that weekend and she came out to meet him. What the hell… I’ve seen guys pick up girls from all sorts of places in all sorts of scenarios but never have I seen anyone pick up a girl over the immigration counter.
So anyway back to the Summit. It opened as usual with an opening speech by Ming.
Telling us how bad he thinks the world economy is going to be next year and how we have to prepare for it and stuff like that.
Then it went on with each Country Manager sharing what their country has managed to achieve in the past year and together everyone taps on each others minds for the plans of the future.
The Summit lasts for 5 days. That’s right.. there is that much to discuss. On one of the nights though we went for a really nice Japanese restaurant for dinner. Ming has a media embargo on the name of this place because he says it’s his little secret and doesn’t want anyone else to know about it. Haha although I’m sure many already do.
Lucky for him I can’t even remember how to get to this place or even what it’s called. But I remember the food being really good. I was sitting next to Jamie.
Jamie works in our Regional Office in Singapore. She’s basically like the hub or the glue that glues all the countries together to make sure that good practices of one country is shared with the rest.
Before I end this post, let me share something with you guys. I saw this version of our Nuffnang logo in the Singapore office when I went down this trip. Guess what it’s made of.
Look closely. No the picture is not pixelated or messed up or anything. That’s how it looks in real life. That my friends…. is the Nuffnang logo made out of lego. Don’t ask me how they did it… but they did. Cool huh?
Timothy Tiah – Co-Founder of Colony, Kuala Lumpur Co-Working Space