OneIT Cyberjaya Annual Dinner 2008, the final dinner for the OneIT community

The Last Dinner

30 June 2008 150 views 2 Comments

Last Saturday I attended my company’s last ever dinner before I formally move to my new job and before the rests of my colleagues officially being outsourced to AT&T, EDS and T-systems depending on their service lines. The dinner was held at KL Convention Center, a second time in a consecutive year. I like the location because the ballroom halls are huge and spacious. After dinner you can just walk to Jalan P. Ramlee for another session of partying.

To be honest, and if I may put it in a bluntly, the annual dinner was very boring if compared to last year’s grandier Jazz night. This year the theme was Living In Colour where everybody was wearing white or at least something with the influence of white. Albeit the big turnout since this is the final annual dinner, the atmosphere throughout the night were very dull and gloomy. Performances were very lame except for when the in house talent band showed off their skills with numbers from Creedence Clearwater Revival and Eagle’s Hotel California. That was great stuff!

The menu was Malaysian affair served the hidang style (i.e. served in a large tray in the center of the table). To my own interpretation, it reflected the speech made earlier by the company’s chairman when Dato’ said that he was proud that the nearly 2000 strong employees who are made up of mostly Malaysians providing 24×7 global support to the businesses around the globe.

I was a bit disappointed with the country’s general manager speech when he did not mentioned STO in his tribute note. All the other service lines were highlighted and projected on the big screens around the hall but STO were not mentioned. Maybe it’s a case of being overlooked but I consider this should never happen considering STO provides telecommunications services which is the backbone of the IT infrastructure. Shame shame shame! Whoever prepares the speech and slides owes us a very BIG apology.

It will be last time I sit in the same table with the STO guys. Young and talented engineers who have proven that Malaysia boleh! A bit sad the rest of the team could not make it. Otherwise it would have been bigger crowds.

Another disappointment of the night is that I missed winning one of the grand prizes i.e. an iMac. The winning number was “00568″ and mine was “00548″. I missed it with one digit!!!!

Here’s one for the album with Mike Sweeney who will be returning to Houston for good. Mike has been living in KL for 3 years and I’m very impressed that he’s more Malaysian than some of us.

My old boss posing for the camera while Mrs boss was sharing a joke with me.

As the crowd at our table suddenly grown bigger we realised that we were so serious and queit. A bottle of vodka courtesy from the boss worked well in losing the tense.

After a few rounds of vodka, the guys turned into a bunch of jokers. Nicholas was trying to prove to us that Ooi was drunk using his fingers formula.

The dinner ended close to midnight. We proceeded our night to The Ascott for another round of partying in celebration of Adriaan’s one year living in KL, away from the Dutch land. I reckoned there were four bottles of liquor opened on the table for the celebration. After hanging out with the guys, I continued my own private party at Bollywood’s Sharara (somewhere behind The Beach Club at Jln P. Ramlee) entertaining my guests from Kuching. The night was concluded with another bottle of vodka. By the time the party was over, I was still sober but feeling rather sick because of the alcohol intake.

The partying was supplemented by a wee hour supper. I’d normally go for a bowl of pork porridge after having hard rounds of liquor such as last night for recovery. However, due to the presence of a friend who is only restricted to halal food instead we headed for Nasi Lemak Antarabangsa at Kampung Baru.

After seeing my guests back to their hotels, I drove home at 80km/h with my wind screens down to get some fresh air to prevent myself from turning drunk. By the time I reached home, I vomited twice before I took a shower and finally sleep at 5.30am. That was hard partying in two consecutive weeks and I don’t fancy for another round in a very long time.