X'mas Luncheon@CCO

Received an email last week titled "Team Building Gathering" a.k.a X'mas Luncheon on 17th Dec, 10.30am-2.30pm.

I was told to prepare the games for the day. Other than that, the prior itenary would be a team learning session, to fix our broken english.

Event was held mainly in the limited spaced conference room. 14 staffs, 4 student assistants and 1 temporary staff.

Our "english teacher" of the day was Eileen. She prepared a worksheet consist of 20+ Q's with common English error for us. We were supposed to spot the mistakes and correct it.

Subject-verb agreement which operates sub-consciously was brought up to our attention. Sometimes automated operation fails hah.

Preposition that has been forgotten. Unnecessary preposition. Comma before and after a clause. The blur look on many made our director started to wonder whether we were taught of all these in school. Common mistakes like "well-wishers" and "good wishes" was highlighted. No proceed on to. Is repeatitive. Just proceed to is enough. Many of it which were so commonly found in Mediacorp or even newspaper. No wonder they say, language is alive! Unless you are taking about latin...

We had 4 games all together. The extremist, like send out candidates without knowing the category, when we were actually looking for the widest smile, strongest arm, smallest shoe size. A little get-to-know-your-colleague session. AMK won in distant while Swimming & Gyming make your arm strong. Mr.Keith won the widest smile with 8cm width while Chandra only wears a 5.5 shoe size. Amazingly small!

Usual Win-Lose-Or Draw was played with categories like movies, phrases, cartoon characters and drama series/Variety Show. Easy Bitsy for the office. A game they are too familiar with. Not challenging at all. No fun on my side. Haha.

A little Christmas Hunt in the office was fun! A list of items including wrapped presents and Christmas Socks were included. A Christmas pouch was presented while another drew the Christmas Socks. Wrapped presents under the Christmas Tree deco at the main lobby were borrowed (under the supervision of the guard uncle at the lobby) while it was forgotten by another team. Getting $3.95 using 13 coins was a bit too easy for Patrick when $1 coin was allowed. An item both teams couldn't fulfill was 2 Samsung handphones. Only 1 person in the whole office uses Samsung handphone. Careless on our side! Getting 3 stuffed toys was not challenging at all. Having a stuffed toy around has become an necessity in the office. It was really fun seeing them runnning around in the office gathering stuffs, working together to beat the 5 minutes limit. Although both couldn't present the complete list of items, it was of good effort.

The last game we played was Christmas Card Making Session. There was a 15 minutes time limit and the team must sing Christmas Carols while they make the card. The team must send in one representative to present their "creation" and describe why Corporate Communication Office should use the design. You will be surprise by the number of carols (including the lyrics) one can memorise. I observed there were basically three types of people when it comes to teamwork. 1. The leader or commander. 2. The hardworker. 3. The slacker or use-eyes-to-work type. Two innovative Christmas Cards were well presented by Director Tan and Keith.

One interesting thing i observed was, when we were annoucing the winner for the card making session, they started to cheer for their team. This was not seen in the games conducted earlier on.

My conclusion: you will only feel the pride of the card and be proud of your own team when you are involved in the making/when you feel the belonging.

The Christmas Card Making Session marked the end of the whole CCO Christmas Luncheon. I'm glad that they enjoyed the games and we got to know each other better through the games.

Corporate Communication Office Staffs

Oh, how can a foodie lover like me forget to show you a glimpse of what we had for the luncheon?

I'm really sorry because i was busy preparing the games session, that was the reason why i didn't shoot the full range of food as individuals. Some of the food feathured in the picture are Fried Rice, Braised Vegetables with Carrot and Mushrooms, Thai Green Curry Chicken, Sweet and Sour Dory Fillet, Prawn Roll, and Home-made Otah with Okra. Some food not shown in picture are Singapore Style Mee Siam (with gravy), Fried Softshell Crab with homemade gravy and Bor Bor Cha Cha.

It was a simple Christmas Luncheon with simple buffet layout. As many were on leave (year end annual leave clearing season), we were all fed to our max!