so, after working for 7 months in this company, i finally got my proper/official employee "orientation". it was a week of packed schedule, mon-sat, 8am-6pm, filled with a wide range of different activities: from professional to personal education, mental motivation to physical training. apparently, the company started with this employee orientation not long ago, just a few years back, so the the training process is still quite new, in the testing phase, trying out what are the classes that best suit a bunch of rookies.
but i must admit that it was overall, quite satisfying. and oh dear, it kept all of us very busy and entertained.
mon: welcome speech, and all the usual formal package of blablas. there is a total of 40 someting new recruits this year, so each of us introduced ourselves, as anyone would do in any other occation or meeting. and as usual, i suck at names. especially chinese names. they all sound the same, not to mention that a lot of them look the same as well (in my opinion). hence, all my new co-workers ended up to be Joes and Janes for me.
kekeke. just kidding. in any case, monday's training was the normal/conventional one (AKA, BORING). watched a full day of power point slides from different departments in addition to their draggy speeches. we also had a make-up session. not very fun, didn't really teach us how to apply make-up but was mostly focusing on marketing the products that they were using.
however, found out an interesting thing: LG has a make-up line! hard to connect fridges with mascaras, rite?
anyway, by the time i got back to my sister's place, i was braindead. could not, and would not, think of anything at all. basically just let my body move myself to process the routine that i do at home.
tue: as part of TAITRA, whenever we go out, we will reprent our company and Taiwan, and that is why it's crucial to take care of our image. so tuesday was an "international culture and etiquette" class. the lady who taught the class was, whoa, so graceful. the way she expressed herself, the body language that she used, the way she took her seat... very VERY elegant.
and to put us to the etiquette test, we enjoyed a full-course meal for lunch. one of the most painful meals i've ever had. i mean, there's a have a full course of delicacy in front of you (apptizer, soup, bread, salad, entree & wine, fruit, dessert, coffee), but you have to restrain yourself. we weren't able to begin the meal unless we arrange the right set of utensils, then the lady was walking around during the meal, checkin on every single person's posture and the way that we were enjoying our food. we had to sit up straight, could not be hunched, tummy tucked in, could not make too much noise when cutting our food, food needs to be delivered into our mouth and not the other way round...
i mean, as delicious as the meal might have been, if you have someone staring at you while you eat, that's... quite a lot of pressure.
oh, but the white wine was sooo good!!! had a few glasses of the white wine. although white wine is not supposed to match with the steak, but watever, i like white better than red. a few people ended up with peachy cheeks, heh.
the afternoon was an EQ class. boring boring boring. this guy would constantly made us pat our neighbor's shoulders for motivational cheers. but he went a bit over, we don't need that much motivation because really, i couldn't stop yawning (hey, have to partially blame the white wine =P).
then there was the physical training part: 2km run. which was ok. we were supposed to run 5 rounds in the track field, but i ran 1 extra coz i miscounted. apffttt...
side note 1: it was a 15min walk to the track field. the 2km run took us only 7min. great.
wed: the class that i needed the most, "how to write a proper document in chinese".
haha. yeah, i still suck at it, and quite sure i'll suck at it for a while.
in the afternoon, physical training part 2: driving range! WOOHOO~~ i've improved a bit this time, at least the lovely-little-white ball can get all its way to the 50 mark (is it m? yard? watev), and maybe even "roll" all its way to 75 mark. i'm proud of myself! =)
thu: we went south to visit our branch office in shinchu, an IT designing company, and tw's biggest logistics corporation. it was fun, the designing company was too pretty that made us wanna switch jobs right away, and i'm more and more interested in logistics right now.
shinchu seems pretty, maybe because the entire region was well designed and planned before they started building any thing. streets were clean and wide, and the trees in the area reminded me a bit of redmond, of course, not THAT pretty yet. still, with all the trees and techs and geeks. hehe.
fri-sat: boot camp! can u believe it?! TAITRA offers employee bootcamp!!! hahahaha~ hilarious.
despite the happiness, we had to meet friday at freaking 730am, and they took us up to the mountains, where there's a center for different kinds of training. felt like i was going to a scouts camp or something.
AQ & MQ class in the morning. the instructor was fun, i think he did a great job on keeping us entertained and awake throughout the entire morning (because the instant coffee that they were serving was not of much help), and later, team cooperation/leadership class in the afternoon.
the boss of HR also came along to the boot camp, and joined us for dinner that day. with wine. more than a dozen bottles of wine. needless to say, it was hard to avoid some drinking during dinner. jose, the only guy at our table of 10 grls, was our table wine representative by default. however, it was not til shortly after that we realize he's... uhm... is not very good at drinking. haha. 2 small glasses of wine and he was totally red (just like me). conscious, but really red.
zoe and i felt so bad that he was doing all the drinking job that we joined in in the end. oh heck, the entire table joined the drinking session in the end. we all did a pretty good job (mixing wine and grape juice, lol), drank 2-3 bottles, and all alcohol high. hahaha~
caught quite a few "red lobsters" that night. maybe we can start a lobster club or something later.
the night didn't end there. the dinner finished round 7pm, and despite the subtle drunkness from a few people, we still managed to play more games, a la scouts style. all happy happy, high high. the only thing that was missing was the camp fire, seriously, else it would be a complete scouts camp.
later karaoke until 1030pm, and that's when they really rushed us to our dorms, because we were having a long day on sat. we were meeting at 650am the next day.
... why??? why on earth do they do that to us on a saturday?! it's bad enough that we were not sleeping in our comfortable beds on a weekend, and they want us to meet that early?!!
oh yeah, i forgot to mention that we had to be at the lobby, 650am, wearing a camouflage suit (they rented for us). T__T
no comments on that.
aaanyway, we all met up on time, with the fugly suits. the first thing they made us do was a morning hike. without giving us any breakfast, or water, or coffee! arghh...
fine, we completed the trail under the scorching heat (not sure how long it was yet the trail was quite steep) so we could get our breakfast, in an AC room. but the following event was more boot camp activities, OUTDOORS!!!
i wonder if they really welcome us to the company or not...
actually, i went to similar camp before in UW, for CISB manager training. just that back then, the weather was cool, i had a grande latte in hand, and drew's sarcasm with me. this time, stupid heat, a bottle of too-sweet sports drink, and some gay camouflage suit.
ok, i did enjoy myself in the activities. but the heat, oh god, the HEAT! we were drenched from our sweat, very smelly and wet. eewww... not very pleasant experience to go through, specially coz a lot of them require close physical contact
luckily, that was the end of orientation. the entire crew came back safe and sound.
despite all my whinings, i've learned something from this trip. let it be new friendship, new goals, different mentatily, or different direction. whatever that
something is, this is true: i feel that i'm really part of TAITRA now. there's no way back. hahaha
that's the role that i have to focus, that's the part that i should succeed. that's what i should be.
is it good, bad? i don't know.
but won't know until i do it.
side note 2: no pix. i was too upset battling w/heat. there are a few grls that i think are quite cute. unfortunately, no cute guys. >__<
side note 3: almost lost my favorite aviator sunglasses in the MRT station. thanx soo much to the lady who found it in the restrooms! you make me love taiwanese pple better now~ ^__^
Labels: events, thoughts
