18 February 2007:  - Gong Xi Fa Chai - Chinese New Year

One of the advantages of working in Malaysia is the number of public holidays. Because there are various groups of people with a different cultural background, every group has their own festive season. The main events for every culture are therefore Public Holidays for everyone. When you also take into account that every state also has one or more public holidays (like the birthday of the Sultan), everyone easily gets has between 10 and 20 days of leave per annum. For Kuala Lumpur (where Mayban Fortis is located), we have about 12 Public holidays in 2007.
At this moment the Chinese people celebrate Chinese New Year. During this festive season, it is quite common that everybody goes back to his or her hometown to celebrate the New Year.

A lot of (chinese) people therefore have taken a week of annual leave, immediately when the new Chinese Year starts (Feb 18). Therefore the coming week, it will be quiet at the office of Mayban Fortis....

To celebrate the Chinese New Year, people give away ""Ang Pows": a red packet with a (small) amount of money as a symbol for good luck and a long life. It's also quite common to have dinner together with family or friends or to make a family dinner in your own house and invite guests. Last Friday afternoon, I was invited to have dinner with the members of one of my teams in the Business Analyst Department. We went to a small, nice restaurant in the centre of KL. See the photograph in this section.

8 April 2007:  - Dataran Maybank - entrance of our office building

10 June 2007:  - Business Analyst team

At Mayban Fortis I am Head of Business Analyst Insurance. After a year we have managed to find staff for the major part of the functions in the department; we have a number vacancies, but arre trying to recruit from outside the company. This is a difficult task, because it's hard to find peope with both (Insurance) business and IT knowledge.

17 June 2007: Fire drill

Last Friday we had a Fire drill at Dataran Maybank (the first one since I joined last year). Although the objective of a drill of course is to have a 'real life' case as much as possible, some floormanagers who were aware that there was going to be a drill, already informed some people in the department that the exercise was going to be between 9.30 and 10am "most probably".

To avoid having to come all the way down from a meeting at level 19 by stairs, we decided to postpone the meeting. The timing was ok: at precisely 10am the alarm bell rang and everybody was requested to leave the building and assemble on the parking place next to the building. There everyone had to sign off a list with all names in the department, so the floor manager could check to see if 'everyone was safe'... The drill went well: within half an hour everyone could go back inside !

16 november 2007:  New brand "Etiqa"

Last Thursday the moment a lot of people have been waiting for finally arrived: the launch of the new brand name for Mayban Fortis. Actually a new brand name for 5 other "legal" entities because Mayban Fortis consists of Mayban Life, Mayban General, Mayban Takaful, MNI and Takaful Nasional. Since last Thursday, these five companies are rebranded and use the name "Etiqa".
Of course, such a grand introduction is celebrated with an official opening. About 1000 guests (partners, press, colleagues) were invited to KL Convention Center near the Twin Towers). After some music, a few speeches of VIPs, the CEO of Mayban Fortis revealed the new name and logo. Then there was food (obviously, no event in Malaysia is complete without an extensive buffet!) and a local (popular) Malaysian artist performed some of his songs.

Obviously changing the name is not only about a party: a lot of computer systems were changed to reflect the new brand, a huge media campaign will be running for about 3 months to ensure that the Malay get to know the new brand name, and on our buildings the old names are replaced by the new logo. Last week you could therefore frequently see a truck at one of the corners of the buildings with huge letters and our yellow "smiley". The new logo that has been chosen shows that we are a very happy company that "humanizes" insurance ........

With this introduction of the new Etiqa brand the work is not completed. We are still engaged in a large number of exciting and complex projects that will continue to run until mid-2009. The contract 3 of the expats, inclusive of Henk, has therefore officially been extended by one year: it is the intention to continue to work with Mayban Fortis until 1 May 2009 !

25 February 2009:  Hong Kong

Henk's contract in Malaysia comes to an end on 1 May 2009. The past two weeks we have therefore thought about the question: "what to do next....". Henk thinks that working in Malaysia for 3 years has been enough, so we have a preference to look at an alternative work-wise. We would like to stay in Asia for another assignment, but obviously in view of the recent issues with Fortis and the general issues in the financial markets it's not obvious that there is something else.
After a discussion within Fortis Asia, 3 weeks ago Henk has been on an orientation visit to Hong Kong. It looks like there is a job opening in Hong Kong and next week everything will probably be finalised. We have decided to stay a bit longer in Kuala Lumpur, so Henk can hand over his work to someone else, and most probably we'll move to HONG KONG on 1st of JUly 2009 !
To be continued.........

24 April 2009: Appointment with movers

It looks like our relocation to Hong Kong will take place. Henk's contract with Fortis HK has formally not been signed yet, but we have at least based on the verbal agreement started a few actions.
Henk's contract in Malaysia has been extended until 1 July. He has a fair bit of leave to clear and hence the last working day will be on 10th June. After that date we will be on leave for about 3 weeks. We have arranged for a serviced apartment in June in Bangsar area (close to Henk's work, Emily's school and with a swimming pool) see their website http://www.thenomadresidences.com/). We will arrange for our things to be shipped to Hong Kong in June so everything will be there in time.
This week two companies have visited us to look at all the things that have to go and to prepare a proposal.