18 November, 2009

High Spirits



Last night the Alphabet team were the proud recipients of a 'Spirit of Enterprise' award, for our "inspiration to fellow entrepreneurs".

There was a marching band, a bun fight, a Senior Minister of State, music from The Carpenters, a wine shortage, Michael Ma (the chap who established the 'IndoChine' collection of high end nightspots), a hapless MC from BBC World, some bad girls in stilettos, and my six year old daughter Saffy. Altogether a rather surreal experience, but then welcome to the wonderful world of the SME.

My excitement was tempered by the fact that the award was a particularly cheap and nasty looking piece of perspex, and the accompanying certificate managed to combine UK and US versions of English - but a gong is a gong, and it has now been added to our groaning awards shelf in the reception area of Alphabet Towers.

04 November, 2009

Paint ball

Institutions often develop a prowess for particular sporting activities over the years. Schools and regiments carefully groom their talent on the rugby field or cricket pitch. At the corporate level in Singapore, overseas chambers of commerce have developed reputations for dragon boating.
Here in Alphabet Media, the pasttime of choice is paintball. We went through boot camp in July at the Singapore Discovery Centre and all graduated with honours (despite a lot of cheating and firing after the whistle was blown etc). The measly 50 round allocation wasn't enough for most of our would-be terminators, causing finger strain on the final shoot out as we tried to keep the enemy's heads down with sustained bursts of automatic fire. Boot camp was tough, and we left splattered with paint and with some more longer lasting bruises in between the many gaps left in the protective clothing.
In December for the Christmas Party, we're doing our first overseas tour of duty in 'tam. Batam that is, where we'll be fighting it out to the last man in the jungle.
Watch this space ....