the end

Guess what! Im at the end of my internship tunnel. This would be the last blog written in my office, my seat in the secluded room. =p its been 2 months long, 8 weeks to be exact, but seems like it’s just a blink of an eye. When I first started, I only knew one person from the entire office, but now, im proud to say that I know almost everyone here, except for a few IT employees where we totally don’t have any chance of talking, unless of course I attempt to approach them. Different from my first impression of catcha’s employee’s are all actually friendly and helpful bunch of people! It’s just that sometimes you got to be the ice breaker and introduce yourself first. So, yea, I just got to be like that in order to make friends with some of them here. Of course, there are also some of them here who would come in just to say hi to the new interns, don especially, the editor of evo, I still remember him as my first thought of the only friendly staff in here. He would come in and offer us new chocolates and cakes, and greet us and all. Although we’re not really directly under him, he would treat us like the rest of the employees.
It has been great interning here, I mean, compared to some of my friends, im quite glad that I end up in catcha. Though sometimes im dead bored here, but other days are good. Work comes in and out, like that. so what did I learn? 3 persons had asked me this question so far. I would say I learn a little bit of everything here. Not specifically just on publishing, but also some marketing and pr skills. From making phones calls, writing, conducting interview, attending events, ushering, returning goods, checking invoices, posting news to website to photocopying (I only did that once and I didn’t like it) etc etc. everything sounds so easy peasy right, but actually some simple task like making phone calls is quite tricky at times. I encountered numerous people with different phone ethics, most of them were really good, some of them got angry over the phone for no apparent reason, which then requires me to act quickly, think of something to say, to remedy it. Another challenge was writing product reviews and press releases. It’s not completely easy, I need to understand the target audience of the mag before I can start writing. One of the mags that I wrote for was evo, a high performance motoring mag for car enthusiasts. Well, honestly, I don’t have much knowledge about cars or anything to do with motoring and im required to write an article for these readers. So that would be quite tricky for me.
Had a one on one internship discussion with my supervisor yesterday. im contented with what she said about my strengths, the credits are all from sgm and im really proud about it ! and of course she also gave her feedbacks on some setbacks of my performance, which I can take it, because that was what I thought my weaknesses was. Hehehe.
Bought a thank you card and a zipper pal form memory lane for both my supervisor and my ‘senior intern’ (my Australian boss who sits next to on every returns from s’pore). He did not directly had any task or assignments for me, but through some chit chats with him, inconspicuously I learn a lot form his experience, like how he started and end up to what he is now. Even sometimes he would sit with us without talking, by observing how he work and give instructions to employees, I actually learnt something here. Though of course he has got his negative traits, hehehe, one he definitely swears a lot, and he is a smoker. But on top of that, he’s a workholic, good leader and humble and funny. Hehehe. For my supervisor (the only white lady in the company), she is a reserved lady, she don’t talk much, but she is definitely someone whom I respect a lot. Ive seen her chair meetings with editors and Im totally impressed to see such polite lady to have such leadership in her when it comes to work. It’s really great to be under her of all other supervisors in here. =)
And so, today is my last day. Feeling ambivalent, happy because im moving on with my plans on my uni application and sad for leaving here when I just got close to everyone. Some people that Ive closely worked with are jon, diwa, muna of course, david who left for uk already, april, dewi, tk, Karen, and the le prestige team, love them a lot ! everyone has got their unique strength that I could learn. Guess im going to miss these people. Last but not least of course, I would like to thank my internmates, mel and so for being here with me for the past 8 weeks. Well, without you guys, life in catcha wouldn’t be that interesting. Lastly, from the bottom of my heart I thank everyone who helped me in whatever ways during my time in catcha. Adios!