Annual Dinner

Every weekend is another adventure. The highlight of this weekend was the company's Annual Dinner. This has to be the biggest company event every year. The entire office of 1,000+ people is invited, along with the option to bring one guest. So there were 150+ tables (12 people per table). It was held in the Grand Ballroom of the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Center, which is another huge venue in itself. The convention center is gigantic. They can accommodate a crazy number of events at once. Not that I've been to very many convention centers but this one has to be the biggest one I've ever been to.

The evening consisted of lots and lots of picture taking, eating, and watching the entertainment provided. The pictures will surface very soon, I think. There were so many people that I didn't even get a chance to find everyone I knew. The event was more than just dinner. We had live music and dance. They hired some celebrities to MC the event. There were mini contests and raffle drawings. Most people left after the final drawing for $10,000 HKD. Some of us stayed behind to take more pictures and dance with the dancers. There were less awards and ceremony than I had anticipated though. They started the evening out with recognizing the 10 year and 25 year Long Service Award recipients. You get a silver bar for the 10 year one. Not sure about the 25 year one (gold bar?). Even if I end up at a different office, if I manage to last 10 years with this company, I would fly back and get my silver bar here.

This past week was a very tiring week. I went to a three day training course for Plaxis, a finite element program that is made for soil modeling. We use it a lot at work and I thought it would be useful to go and learn the ins and outs of the program. I don't think my supervisor entirely agreed with us spending three days on such a training course. But I felt like I learned quite a bit. Anyway, the classes took the entire day and were held on HK Island. Everyday, the few of us from the company would surround the instructors and badger them with questions. I went back to work afterwards, which naturally meant really long days. I felt pretty drained by Friday and decided not to go back to work on Saturday even though it seems like we keep having more deadlines to meet.

I spent Saturday mostly hanging around the house. I managed to put up some wall decals that I bought a while back from Groupon:

This one is in my living room:

This one is in my bedroom:

They make my space happier. I wish they had some color though. I didn't like the designs with color so I picked out these two. I've seen wall decals at other stores as well so maybe I'll get one more to add some color to these.

I also bought some green tea toilet paper. I ran out of toilet paper earlier this week and hadn't had time to go buy any.

I met up with a high school friend who was in town for her cousin's wedding. I took her to the dim sum place that I always take my guests to. We ordered way too much food. I wasn't all that into eating either since my stomach wasn't feeling that well after the annual dinner (too much alcohol!). We each did a little summary of what we've been up to for the last 6 years. Can't believe it's been 6 years since I graduated high school. That means it's been 10 years since I started high school. I feel old...