First try at Corporate Events

Tee hee, with a new year and new office, I have new opportunities....

Flowers in waiting area

 In the past, I always thought I only wanted to do weddings and the occasional party or celebration, but would not really enjoy doing corporate events. The reason being I thought corporate events would be quite boring, it's always just the food and very simple decorations, and the event is mainly people sitting at the table and nothing much happening...

But recently in January, February and March, I got to do events for the company, some are client focused and one for internal Randstad staff.

In January and February, we did a client cocktail and candidate cocktail event respectively. They were fairly simple, just some canapes and drinks and lots of people! But it was still a new experience to pull everything together and make sure that it fit what my boss was looking for and also my own expectations of a successful event! Sadly, no photos though! We were all too busy entertaining guests, or (I was) running around cleaning up... :) But that's part of the job.

Reception flowers for the week of March events

Then in March, we had another client event, but this was on a smaller scale (the previous ones were for 60-80 people in our office), with just under 20 guests, for lunch with our APAC director and our Randstad Board Member from the UK. And we also decided to host the the official office launch on the same day!

It was actually great fun planning the events, although at times also a bit frustrating and hectic, as it was the first time to work on a lot of things, but definitely a great learning experience. I did a lot of the flowers and as much of the purchasing and putting together of things myself as I could, even though this was a lot of work, but I think it's worth it. I like it when things are made personally for people to enjoy.

Lots of planning ahead of time, from the invitation design, table design, deciding the menu, deciding the content to be discussed (even though it's supposed to be a discussion forum but we still need to give it some structure), and creating gifts for our guests and more! I can't even remember every single thing in detail now.... lol...

So instead of going into all the boring details of planning, I will just recount them as I share photos, and I can always look through my file again in the future if I need to refresh my memory....

March 15th, 2012

Above: I shopped for a blue cloth that was as close to our Randstad blue as possible and used that as the table cloth. I also made grey napkins specially for this event.

 below centre: I used black marble slabs for a cheese and antipasti platter, at first I wanted to use slate, but didn't know where to find them, and thought they might be really expensive in HK. So in the end I was told by my uncle that I could get marble slabs from these marble factories, and I was wondering where can I find a marble factory in HK? and it's actually quite simple, there are always these factories next to cemeteries in HK, so we went to one on HK island and we got three black marble slabs for only HK$ 270!!! Such a deal! and the proprietor was so nice!

A great turn out!

It was so crazy, because we put down 12noon for this event on the invitation and expected guests to arrive a little later than 12, but a lot of them actually arrived earlier than 12! We had to rush to put all the food on plates, and thanks to the help of my two very good colleagues, we got the food out all nice and presentable... :D

Once the lunch started, then I was able to relax a little and eat a bit and sit and rest.... I didn't have to prep for the afternoon cocktail until about after the luncheon was over.

The guests of the afternoon cocktail was all the core staff of Randstad Hong Kong, and some special guests from the APAC region: Brian Wilkinson (Board Member for APAC region), Deb Loveridge (Director of APAC region), George Wang (Managing Director of China), Roop Kaistha, Lousia Wilson, Karin Clarke and many others - there were so many guests here that week, it nearly filled out all the empty seats in our office.

For the cocktail, my boss wanted some Chinese traditions included as well, such as a Lion Dance, pig cutting, red pockets, and most importantly a fun time for everyone!

It was quite exciting to plan, as we had some surprises in store for everyone, such as the Lion Dance, and the gifts that we came up with.

We made cufflinks with the Randstad logo for all the men, and bracelet and Randstad logo charm for all the women.

Left: This was the set up for the cocktail, we had champagne, cheese, foie gras, truffle sauce and lots of other yummy nibbles.

So we started the evening off with getting everyone into the board room and just a brief opening speech. And then I went to get the Lion Dance troupe and had them get ready. Then the gong sounded and everyone came out for the surprise Lion Dance. It was a special ceremony for our APAC Director and Board Member, because they had never been to one of these. They had to dot the eyes and run their brushes down the Lion from head to tail, symbolizing from beginning to end. And the Lion grab the head of a lettuce to symbolize Wealth/Fortune, as Lettuce in Chinese ("Cai") sounds similar to Wealth/Fortune.

Above and below: photos by Chung Yeung

Photo by Teresa Wong

Photo by Chung Yeung

Then the Lion led everyone around the office once and then back into the board room, to spread wealth and fortune to all corners of the office. I have two videos of the Lion Dance, but I am not able to upload them here.... so if you want to see them you can email me and I'll send them to you - but you'll have to watch with your head tilted, because the camera man forgot that filming a video does not work in portrait orientation.... hehe

I think everyone was really surprised by the Lion Dance and truly enjoyed it. Even though a lot of us are Chinese, we have not ever seen a Lion Dance so close, and it's so much more special during this occasion... everyone had their iphones out taking photos and filming... I think I should ask them for photos and videos!

Once back in the board room, I had a roast pig on the table waiting for them. Our Board Member had the honor of making the first cut for us, and he really gave it a big "Whack" on the head! hehe....

 Photos by Teresa Wong

Photo by Anthony Wong

above: the gifts we had prepared for each member of Randstad - cufflinks and bracelet charms

And then after a few speeches, we had the wine flowing and people chatting, taking photos and enjoying themselves.

Above: Randstad Support Team!

Wingsi - Office Manager

Steven - Regional Analyst

Sinisa - Markeing & Communications Executive

Randstad Football Team

Just a touch of something more

At the end of December 2011, we moved into a new office space in Hong Kong, not sure if I've shared any of the photos with you, but here are some photos.





Before and During Renovation

If you look at this photo on the left, you'll see two sections of our office. Down the middle of this photo there's a wall that separates the two section - the left of the photo is the Reception, the right of the photo is the back office area.

The view outside, we have floor to ceiling windows letting in a lot of light. :) Everyone was fighting for a table next to the windows.

And after we moved in.....

 My seat is in this photo's bottom left corner... :P

And to make the office more warm and welcoming, a colleague and I potted our own plants for each row of desks and different flower arrangement for the reception area. Nothing extremely stunning, but it  adds that bit of personal touch and also it's different from the usual boring potted plants that we would get if we asked a florist to do them for us. Plus they would charge us a hefty fee for putting them together and also maintaining them.... 

So here are some flower arrangements that we did around Chinese New Year....

And here are the potted plants that we did for the general office area.... I usually water these once a week, and will need to prune them a bit.... it does take time, but it's nice to do something like this and not have to sit at my desk all the time (although there are times when I'm too busy and wish I didn't have to do this... lol....)

Selecting different plants for our office - it's quite fun, similar to shopping for ingredients to make a dish, but also different, because we really didn't think about how things would go together, we just knew we could mix these up in any combination and they would look good. hehe...

 

Just a few of the potted plants, and we even found these water plants that don't need soil. See the plant on the far left? These are called Water Butterflies (in Chinese) and they just float on water...

Using 60lbs (or was it litre.... I don't even remember, but it was one of those measurements! A lot either way!) of soil, and spending about 2-3 hours time, we finished about 10 pots of different plants. The pretty, but exhausted, girl on the right is my colleague, Elva!

Another time that we did something for the office was to take this flower arrangement that our office received for our new office (in Chinese culture, they usually send these HUGE flower arrangements to stand in the doorway of a new store/office - to send their congratulations), and re-used the drooping flowers in new arrangements.... it was quite fun, because we thought we wouldn't be able to get much out of the old flowers, but in fact, we were able to make some impressive flower arrangements and even revived some of them just by putting them in water (as they were without water for a couple of days).

Above: the arrangements using flowers from the flower placard below.... we're so proud of ourselves!

Below: It's like we dissected it.... lol.... we striped it bare of anything that was savable.