Conversant Company Update @ Bintan, Day 2

It is a wonderful morning, as you can tell from the turn up rate at the breakfast early morning -- NONE! Only until about 1 hour before the team building activity, you start to see people mushrooming out.

Averna, she is one of the most resourceful one, selling her banana boat sunshade lotion for S$5.00 per apply (free for big boss), but... no one pay her though :-D. She also got me the 青草油 for me injured palm!

While we are eating, we start to worry about the programme later. The team building game, which is going to be held at the beach and yet, the sun had already high up in the sky.

Beach volley ball court, as we pass by, the staffs at the beach were asking us for a game.

As we go on to the team building games, you won't see much shots, since all of us are in the game!

The games that we've played are:
1) Balancing Transporter - A wooden board with about 8 holes at its edge, and a string is attached to each of the hole. The team got to pull the string and maintain the balance of that board so that the bottles of water on top of it won't fall.
2) Shot them all - Each team got to pick 3 shooter and the rest are in the 2 confined square. The shooter got to shot the opponent team out!
3) Balloon stepper - Everyone got a balloon tied to the angle and when the whistle off, there you go burst them all!
4) Fill the bucket - Each team given a beach tower, and got to use it to get water from the sea and fill up a bucket. That's fun!
5) Tug of War
6) Water Rafting - Build a boat from 7 tires and 5 spokes, get the whole team out to sea, 200m away to get your team flag. The first team to grab the flag and carry their boat back to the starting point wins!

My team - the ACE Team! Ace Ace, sure win!

The Cheong Team! their slogan --- CHEONG Ah!

Yeah, that's indeed team work in action!

After the games, those who had put their gems in averna's suit case got to grab them back quickly! Because she is going to put it on lelong!

The lelong in action, Alvin got back his stuff and start smoking... (oh man.. look at his belly)

Thank God! the sky is like going to fall down! Just a min after we've left the beach, it was raining cats and dogs! I got to know that our sport men - Alvin, Pete and Rizal went for ski by then, which they are the 3 only crazy guys that went towards the sea when everyone flee back to the resort to escape the rain.

As the trip is coming to an end, we head to the Miyako Japanese restaurant for our lunch.

Samuel, he got no better pose apparently.

Aor and Samuel! His tie is creative isn't it?

Alvin talking about... (too far I couldn't hear)

Aik Hwa : "hmm... " (day dreaming)

Averna and Joyce Foo, say "cheese.."

Pete and Aik Hwa, buddy buddy : "We are hungry!!"

Rizal, Joyce Lim and my miniboss Siew Wah: "look here!"

Pete telling us the beefy story: " I read some where documentary .... they cut a slide of the beef meat when the cow is alive! and eat it. Then the cow recover back... and cut.... wa, life shorten by 2 years for each cut...."

My bento set (beef choice), the better one among all the meals that we had during the trip. But still, the dish are not hot.


Yupp.. and that's the end of the Company Update Trip! Aria Bulapa is the ferry that we boarded to go back to Singapore! Cheers the Conversant Family!

Conversant Company Update @ Bintan, Day 1 - Part 3

After the paint ball, there was some free and easy time for us to tour around the resort. And this bunch of ladies decided to visit the beach. And I choose to tag along :-D

The main purpose of why were are here, that is -- Company Update. Soon after our short break, which some went wash up, some went tour around, some went for a nap, we are here at the Sulawesi meeting room:


Kong Wai, the big boss started the meeting. And the first and foremost, he answered the very first question that many of us have in mind -- "Why are we here?". And the answer is simple, probably by some statistics and theory from the past, it seems that if the company update session that is held in Singapore office, the turn out rate will not be as good. Thus, the management give it a try to host it offsite, and hopefully, next year we are going somewhere, perhaps, Thailand!

So, doubts cleared, we are here for good, not only listening to our boss about how well we are doing, but much more fun and gluing each other thru team building activities.

Everyone in the meeting room, and each has to ask a question before we are allowed to take the snacks.

As the meeting ends, all of us went back to our rooms to wash up and rest. So do the sun, it went down pretty quickly as well.


The resort main lobby building view at late evening.

The beach view, at late evening, which I've took a series of shots to stitch this up. Not very perfect, but it is quite nice. ;-)

The Nelayan restaurant is where we have our Surf and Turf dinner set.

We start off with a shared loaf of garlic bread.

The starter is buffet style, take all you can eat. This is not bad, I like the starters.

Pete, the game boy! :-D looking at him in this posture always reminded me of a little boy hogging on to his Game Boy and plays quietly.

After the long wait, the main course finally served up. For me, I had the beef steak medium cooked, and the set also has 1 piece of red snapper, 1 kebab roll, 2 prawns, 1 potato (or garlic rice/french fries/rice) and 1 sweet corn. It doesn't taste nice, partly because it is not hot enough, except for the potato.

The program for the night is either Karaoke or Club. And while most don't have any opinion, some of us headed to the Karaoke after the dinner.

On the way there, we saw this cute big size snake ladder, it reminds us about the old kid day! Not bad, this resort is a good place to go for family with kids.

The early comers, flipping the song book that is very hard to find chinese songs. And Aor is looking for her "สบาย สบาย" song. (translate it here!)

And big boss on the left here. Jimmy is concentrating on his mobile phone game.

A song that finally our boss sing! The recording is too dark though.

We have some real fun and the group sing along when the song is so common.

This is the last photo that I've taken, and it marks the end of the battery life. Which the next day, I've spent S$8 bucks to get 4 AA size energizer! (not to mention that is the only money that I need to spend on this trip!)

Conversant Company Update @ Bintan, Day 1 - Part 2

We are now heading to the paint ball game site, apparently, it is not easy to get everybody together and transport them.

On our way there...

Yeah, I saw some funny creature on the road.

The instructor with a great sense of humour, explaining to us on how to operate the gun and what to do and what not to do.

The orange team - Aik Hwa, Averna, Joyce Foo, Janet, Samuel and Choong Seng (me!)

The blue team - Dan, Alvin, Rizal (top row of guys), Aor, Winnie and Joyce Lim.

As you may know, some of them are the chechen terrorists.
The gun, essentially is air gun with CO2 gas talk at the end of the gun. When you press on the shutter, a gummy ball filled with vegetable oil and some paint will get shot out and it gonna be really pain if you got hit!

We are going to the battle field.

The blue team, can you recognize them?

The orange team, where am I?

As soon as the whistle beeps, the battle begins.

We got to face the reality although this is just a game. Dan must had disturbed someone or somebody must have hated him so much that he got shot in the 2 most important parts. :-D... you can see him literally lying down..

The game is real fun, unfortunately, I got felt down and got my hand injured during the game, which is really painful after that :-D.. that make me unable to join some of the team building the next day, but I'm on still!

Conversant Company Update @ Bintan, Day 1

On 7 Apr, our dear HR -- Zahara, sent us an email, title "Offsite trip for Company Update". And all of us start to scratch our head and asked what is that all about? Company update at offsite - Bintan? Was it a company trip or what? and the dates are on friday and saturday - 25-26 Apr 2008, which means you gonna "burn" one saturday for the company. And after 2 days of consideration and getting my "out-station passport" from my 6-months pregnant wife, I'm going!

So on early morning of 25 April, I woke up very early, and my wife explicitly asked me not to disturb her early in the morning the night before. Well, I manage to woke up and brush up and took the luggage that my wife prepared for me and Go!


I'm probably one of those few, or the only one that took a bus to the Tanah Merah Ferry Terminal. And I reached there on the exact time -- 8:05am. Which I thought I'm the last one, but to my surprise, there are still four, our Ong sisters, Dan and the father-to-be -- Jimmy! Anyway, they all manage to get on the board eventually, and our journey starts!

Zahara and Janet, from the HR and Admin office!

Along the way, or rather when it is about to reach the Terminal at Bintan, you can start to see some scenery:

The ferry took 1 hour to fetch us there and finally we've reached:


And the first thing that we need to do is of course, custom clearance. It took us about 10mins maybe, I didn't really time it, but in the mist of chatting, time flies and I was told that many Singaporeans came here for weekend getaways and the crowd on the day is consider as "not that bad".


This is Aor, our new blood on Marketing, from Thailand. She flew over to our singapore office a week ago prior to the trip, to have packed sessions of discussions.

As soon as we cleared the custom, there is significant welcome board for us, and the slogan reads "The ability to connect".

The Conversant Family, well blend of nationality, gender, heights and ... weights?


There is a bus transfer service from the Terminal to the resort, and all of us are excited it seems.

Jimmy: "What are you doing?"


Dan : "Heheh... I got the best seat on the bus"

Joyce Foo: "Choong Seng, look, got mountain!" (haha... )

As soon as we've reached the resort, we were greet with the traditional local dancing performance, just a short welcoming performance though. I thought we are so specially treated, only later figured out that this applies to all resort visitors. Anyway, the lemon grass tea welcome drink came just in time to cease our thirsts in the hot weather.

We were then being issued a room card for each of us.

And this is how the rooms are, twin bed, with safe and baygon!

After got ready for the next activity -- Paint Ball, I took my camera, walk around and took some shots.
yaya... I wish I could have a tele-zoom lens or wide-angle lens for this!