tornado thoughts

Playing Host

Summer holidays. Not Singapore of coz but in European countries where the temperatures can reach at a peak of 30+ degrees. This would be a period for them to take the opportunity to get out of the country and go abroad.

I had the honour of hosting 2 representatives from Germany. They are our overseas suppliers. One is the regional sales manager and the other is the sales and marketing director. They are on a asia tour whereby Singapore is their final destination before heading back home.

On the night where they arrived, my dad and I were at T2 waiting for them. Now I can understand those people taking cards and stand at the arrival counters waiting. I stood there waiting for more than half an hour not knowing how they look like! When they finally came out and acknowledged who they are after looking at the card i'm holding, it was almost 90% of the ppl from that flight had already came out and left. As my dad don't talk much, i had to do most of the talking from the airport to Orchard Parade Hotel and it doesn't help when there is a massive jam at the marina to orchard area. So much for the first night.

Second day, my colleague and I went to fetch them from the hotel to our office. Thank God my colleague is good in talking and he talked to them 70% of the time. Hee. The whole morning was spent introducing them to the bosses and colleagues and discussing on new product range they they have launched and also marketing strategies. They also proposed on other possible market industries that we can look into with their wide range of safety products.

In the afternoon brought them to eat Boon Tong Kee chicken rice as we want to let them taste some local delights. After that we brought them to visit one of our customers (SPH) and it was my first time visiting their production plant. It's really an awesome experience! At night, we brought them to Turf city to eat seafood. I can only say that they love seafood! Both eating and looking at them live! So much for the whole day. After fetching them back to hotel, I reached home around 11+pm and just KO after my bathe.

The 3rd and final day, we wanted to let them have some R&R thus we told them to go to Mustafa to buy what they wanted (sony thumbdrive, video cam, etc). The actual reason was we need to clear our outstanding enquiries that were untouched the previous day. In the afternoon, we picked them up from Mustafa and went to a "fear factor" lunch (for them). We treated them to the famous Hill street ba chor mee, ba kut teh & rojak. Can see that they love the ba chor mee but not the later 2 items by the amount of portion that they had taken. Visiting the Energizer production plant was the next and final destination before they head to the airport.

Overall, it was really an experience for me to host foreign suppliers and it is definitely not easy to play host. You have to be always taking the initiative of thinking where to go, what to do. Before they left, they told me that we have to let them know if we are going to Germany and they will play host the next time round. =) Thus, this week really flew very fast.

Come next week, we will play host for our supplier from Finland. But this time round, it's not my turn to play host. Hee.

posted by tornado @ 7:39 PM