Work Privileges?

Working with the Fairs & Exhibition Department has couple of privileges...

1. Free luncheon

On my 3rd week of work in Melbourne, we were invited to a seafood luncheon organized by the Sail Melbourne committee. Among the guests invited were 2 other freight forwarding companies (ie. our competitors) who also handled the freight of shipping all the sailing equipments (eg. yacht, laser, windsurf, etc) & sponsored for this event.

The luncheon was held at the Port Melbourne Yacht Club - with a panorama view of the sea, overlooking all the yachts & laser boats set up & ready for the massive competition ahead. The Sail Melbourne 2005 event was held over 5 weeks with a total of 318 different races conducted from 10 different yacht clubs, involving 1948 competitors from 21 different countries - Singapore amongst them!

The food was great & best of all, it took our whole afternoon off from work!

2. Casual Wear

With the nature of our work, we are exempted from the standard office wear regulation. We are the only department (with exception of the warehouse staff) who can wear jeans & t-shirt to work from Monday-Friday! Yup! Monday - Friday in jeans & t-shirt! Above all? The company provides free polo t-shirts & jackets (with company logo, of 'cos!) + a pair of safety boots! No... not Phua Chu Kang's yellow boots but those hiking shoe look-alike. Cool rite?! I know it's the envy of many people...

Not being informed about this, i've packed quite a lot of office suits when i came to Melbourne along with only 1 pairs of jeans & 3 other pairs of casual pants... So, i went shopping last weekend to look for a pair of jeans. It was quite a shopping experience for me - everything (i really mean EVERYTHING!) is so expensive here! Being a brand-conscious person, i checked out the departmental store for brands like Levis, Just Jeans, etc & found out that a pair of jeans would cost me AUD120+ (ie. approx SGD150). Almost $30 more than what i had paid for my Levis jeans in Singapore... Tried a few pairs but didn't like the fit. Besides, they were so long i would probably need several folds to get the right length or spend more money to get it altered!

Living with a tight budget, i'm not willing to spend that kind of money on a pair of jeans. So i moved on to check out budget stores like Target. Found some no brand jeans which cost AUD50 each (ie. SGD63) & mind you, that's the cheapest price i can find! Interestingly enough, they have 2 categories for the same pair of jeans: the standard length & the shorter length. Guess which one did i go for? The latter, of course! Tried it on, found it very comfortable, fitting & thank God - perfect length! Phew! For a moment i thought i would need to look for 3/4 jeans & pray that the Aussie 3/4 length would match my full length... haha!

3. Free Admission to Events & Exhibitions

The best of all the above! We get special entry pass to be on-site for exhibitions & events we are participating. Some of the up coming events which i'm really looking forward to are events like the International Melbourne Motor Show; the F1 Australian Grand Prix & the Australian International Airshow! Sure, we are there to work & will start prior the event dates & along with that? long working hours... Still, i think it's all worth it!