taiwan travelodge on siam reap

saw this travelodge on CTI this morning and reminded me of my visit to siam reap in May 2009.

5H

Recently, SM Goh has revised the 5Cs dream for Singaporeans: Career, Comfort, Children, Charitible, Considerate. The old 5Cs Dream are Career, Credit Card, Car, Condominum, and Country Club. Even if we cannot have all the 5 Cs, we can still lead a happy, satisfying and meaningful life.

After going thru a week of enlightenment over career change, I feel and view that the following 5Hs dream will be better for myself and some good friends who share the same thoughts as mine

The 5Hs dream are: Health, Hope, Happiness, Home, Hobby.

Only when we have a heaLthy body with healthy hobby, then we can have hope and happiness, establish a home for us to live in a harmonious society.

Happiness is key to people within a family, organisation and nation.

A happy leader produces happy staff and environment. If a leader cant lead and dont know how to create a happy environment and make his staff happy, then everybody will be mniserable. Staff in return will also need to put in efforts to create a conducive environment and produce results. Same things apply to family and society.

Gone too soon - Ken

July was not too good a month as witnessed the sudden death of a creative colleague Ken (7 Jul 2010, he became Singapore citizen in Jun 2010). It is quite amazing to have a Malaysian who was so deeply in love with Singapore and helped to promote Singapore in his uniquely singapore way. If he were not recruited by neo chian in 2003 for this job, then maybe we all dont share this unforgetable story, sights and sound about Uniquely Singapore. It is really 非常新加坡。

I worked with him closely during CAEXPO in 2005 and 2006, to showcase Uniquely Spore offerings at the singapore pavilion in Nanning. That was the first 2 years of CAEXPO and STB was the lead agency for the design content of the exhibition. It was an enjoyable working experience.

Subsequenlty, i supported his brand team and China team to showcase Spore at the Singapore Season in Beijing and SHanghai in Oct 2007, I and NAC Kian Ngiap even mangaed to pull through all odds with him to partner Ocean Butterflies to stage the JJ Concerts in Shanghai's Hong Kou Stadium.....very memorial experience.

Attended the memorial service run by his circle of friends in arts at action theatre on 14 July, many close friends and ex colleagues were there including neo chian, chin nam, mei nee .....so touching and sad. Luckily he had so many good friends and a dog named max in this world remembering him and his works......

Visiting old friends of 12 years

Toh Sim loves this Iron Orchid very much, and has now become the expert for orchid nurturing!

Visited old friends Toh Sim and Woi Lee in their Suzhou bungalow house in early June and had a wonderful and quality time there in a green setting environment with 3Fs :fish, flowers and frog.

Thanks to their warm hospitality and beautiful home-made breakfast and healthy morning fruit juices.

Let;s enjoy the photos which tells a thousand words.....

Confucius' in town

Was fortunate to be invited for the dinner reception in Euqunoix Swissotel Hotel on 26 Jun 2010 with the 120 directors from the 52 Confucius Institutes (CI) in Asia with the highlight of listening to Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew on his tips in learning Chinese Lauguage. The sharing session by MM Lee was so candid, it was a very rare occasion to see MM Lee talking in such a relax mood with down-to-earth responses. You got to be there to experience and enjoy it, no wonder nowsadays we all talk about the popular term of "experience economy" and experiential enjoyment.

Was also delighted to make new friends from Thailand (Ms Sutipporn), Korea (Jaewoo), Philippines (Ellen) and Japan (南部捻）who are directors of CI in their respecitve countries/cities. Suprisingly that some of them speak such fluent Mandarin, the most impressive person was the one from South Korea, Jaewoo Choo of Kyung Hee University who has studied in Beijing University (basic degree to MBA) for 7 years and had worked and stayed in various part of the continent including USA, Japan, Korea, Philippines, Taiwan etc. Have got with sharing with him and Sutipporn who is so easy to get along like a sister, was a french teacher before and now studying PHD and working at the same time.

The dinner was wonderful and we enjoyed the appetite (coctail of raw marinated Tasmanian Salmon with Tosa zu jelly, sesame cured wakame cucumbers and mirin vinegar sabayon) and deesert alot!

At the same time, also get to know a young PRC Diplomat Guo Jing and Beijing Foreign Studies University executives Sabrina and Chinese Lei who speak fluent English and offering translation and interpretation services at conferences.

welcome Hong Kong Travel Agents to Spore

First time organising a welcome repception in the Spore Zoo in a safari dinning setting for the 166-member delegation from the Hong Kong Association of Travel Agents led by its Chairman Paul Leung and COnvention Chairman Jason Wong (an up-and-coming entreprenuer) on 25 Jun 2010. They were in Spore for their Annual Overseas Convention entitled "A world without travel agents?" held in Fairmont Hotel from 25-27 Jun. Another 2 members - Tommy Tam and Richard Willis with their unique interpersonal skills also left us with a deep impression.

It was a s successful convention and the HK travel agents are very excited after 15 years (the last convention held in Spore was 1995) to see the unique, different and transformed Singapore especially the new tourism products of Marina Bay Snads and Resorts World Sentosa, Helix Bridge, Marina Barrage etc

Wow, we were so delighted as the guests were very happy with our hospitality, organisation of the event, cuisine and safari dinning experience and programme arranged with extensive networking and sharings. From the photos, u can see that they were really enjoying themselves and had a good time at the zoo and thereafter the night safari tour.

Even though there was no specific counterpart took the lead in fronting it when the ball landed on no-man's land due to the lack of visibility and communication in the beginning, I picked up the ball and knocking at the doors of dear colleagues and we proactively formed a task force to accomplish the project. Thanks to the borderless support and efforts contributed by my dear friends from various departments of Healthcare, MICE, Tourism Shopping, IG and Desitnation Marketing, with Christine coording from HK as well as the Singapore Zoo Valerie, Jennifer and Vanessa. Through this exercise, i found my faithful and sincere friends and supporters in the entire eco-system.

my takeaways are the friendship established with the Hong Kong trade partners and comradeship within the organisation.

Malaysia - Kuala Lumpur retreat

friends, see the view of our camp resort in rawang, KL....it is really look better in picture, however, overall it is quite a nice retreat place with right company.

Went for a combined church camp from 17-20 Jun for 245 members last week in MBS Recreation Resort at Rawang in Kuala Lumpur. The recreation centre was supposed to be a golf resort but didnt take off due to its off-site location, and now it became a resort for various type of leisure acoommodation and activities.

It was quite a nice place to hold team activities as there are some 300-bed ( dormitory, chalet etc) with big swimming pool and multi-purpose halls and parking facilities. But it is really deep inside (at least 15-min drive) after the Rawang tol.

The camp programme was quite well organised and have some free time where we can do our own sports and i even went out with KL firends to have a good durian and dinner feast (simple and delicious) and patronised its pasar malam on saturday evening of 19 Jun.

see the scene of the traffic light and sunset

The fruits stall selling tomato at only Ringit 2 per kilo, very nice and crunchy tomatos...susan is selecting the best....

the shop where we have our lovelyunique steam sting ray, deep fried mini-shark and stir fried long beans, very delicious, total cost only Ringit 27 (about S$13.50)


But the journey back to Spore was not as smooth as expected due to tyre of coach punctured 30 min before reaching Tuas checkpoint which resulted to 2 hours delays, then checkpoint long queue where limited coach stations open for inspection (hope Spore cusotms could open for lanes so that visitors in coach dont need to suffer long wait in the bus and on the road). We set off from KL at 2pm, and cleared customs at 12 midnight, goodness!!

in the midst of journey, the Malaysian tour guide did their country a national sevice by bring us to a shop for souvenir shopping (even though it was quite a good break with nice tidbits, but on the hindsight, we should not have gone as it draged from 30-min to 45 min due to long queue at paying counter and contributed to the total jounrney time taken. The consoldation was i have taken some nice shot at the shop cafe for friend Priscilla...

Overall it was a trip worth making with knowledge, sharing and friendship acquired.