HK Trip – Day 3 (Friday 25 Feb)

Wah piang oi… so fast day 3 in HK liao… Zi wo an wei yi xia (自我安慰一下) lah: if I discount Wed since we’re only physically here at 2+pm, then it’s only day 2. But face it lah… KNS…

This morning we decided to have McDonald’s for breakfast. I had the set of hotcakes + sausage + coffee. Thank goodness the breakfast set didn’t come with hash brown since I could never finish so much. My impression of the HK people is that they eat a lot!!

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Met the MD (Mr Lim) at 10am. He was busy reviewing some stuff while trying to talk to us. Scary how “fast-pace” HK is!! Everyone seems to be on the run. During the interview, I felt so inadequate cos Mr Lim was asking about GIRO payments in Singapore. I had no answer for him. Told him we would try to look into whatever he requested. He then went on to comment that since our focus is on internal control and not compliance, it is alright if we do not have the time to take on the additional work. Mr Lim commented that we should be posted to operations department for about 6 months to understand their processes. By this logic, then all internal auditors / compliance officers would have to be attached to the various departments for a couple of months!! Siao ah?!

Lunch time was a nightmare. Went to Pacific Place food court and was shocked to see the HUGE crowd there. So many people were waiting for seats and the queue for the food was so long!! We decided to “da bao” (打包) back to office to eat. No wonder Calvin told us on Wednesday that they usually pack lunch instead of going out.

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In the afternoon, after much consideration, I’ve finally decided (and yes, it’s my final answer!) that we are leaving HK on 12 March 2005 (Saturday). Called Cathay Pacific to change my (+ the 2 ladies) flight from 17 March to 12 March. Was told by their hotline that I should call Reservation instead. Reservation then in turn referred me to Ticketing! After a few calls, I managed to get the flight changed. Wanted to change WL’s flight too but to our horror, his ticket was a discounted one that couldn’t be changed. Cathay Pacific advised that there’s nothing they can do about it except for WL to purchase a new one-way ticket (that costs HKD4,300 or close to S$900+) back to SG!! WL called Zuji.com. We were then informed that he could only change his flight to one with departure from Mondays to Thursdays, with a surcharge of S$55. Now we have so many possibilities:
1. All of us to leave on 10 March 2005 to accommodate WL’s flight
2. WL leaves on 10 March while the remaining 3 of us leave on 12 March
3. WL to purchase a ticket back to SG and we all leave on 12 March
4. Stick to the original plan and all leave on 17 March
5. All to leave on 14 March 2005 (Monday)

After some discussion, we came to the conclusion that WL would leave HK on 10 March 2005 while the rest of us would leave on 12 March 2005.

Now you know how these nitty gritty things can get on our nerves sometimes.

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Met 3 departments after lunch: Retails Sales, CS & Marketing and Proprietary Trading. Starting to understand the operations better, However, there’s no Ops Manuals for Retail Sales and CS & Marketing. Somehow we’re not able to really understand fully what they do. Gotta make-do with whatever information we could gather so far. I’m sure by the end of the interviews with all the departments, we should be able to piece everything together.

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Met Raymond for dinner. We were thrilled to see each other again after our last brief meeting in Dec 2002 when I was here. That time we only met for one evening cos the next day he left for a KL holiday trip.