CFAB: ICAEW High Tea

Greetings!

On the 7th, I went to help out at the ICAEW High Tea which is held at Sunway Resort Hotel & Spa. The main purpose of this event is to promote ICAEW to the school counsellors aka representatives from 30 schools around Klang Valley (I actually thought the representatives are students, so it actually gives me a shock as I have no idea how to interact with teachers). It was actually a one day event for the counsellors but not for us volunteers (Oh, there are a total of 7 volunteers, including me). 

So, how I came to know this event? One of my classmates is actually an ICAEW ambassadors and whenever he needs help, he'll get us (classmates) as free labour. Well, the thought of having some hotel food and the experiences gain are enough for me. So, I don't mind free labour as long as I get to enjoy. Now, who wants to hire me?? (Joking)

Now, back to the topic. As I reached the resort, the first job that I had to do was to prepare the goodies bags. How can our honourable guests leave empty handed, right? Yeap, so as an appreciation - goodies bags! After the goodies bags were prepared, they were then put on the seats and after a short briefing, the guests started to arrive slowly, SLOWLY.... As they were short-handed, I helped out with the registration (and again, it was my first experience). 

After all the guests have arrived, I took my seat in one of the tables. There are 7 tables in total and the volunteers can choose any table they want to mingle with. 

Then, began the speeches from the ICAEW members such as Mr. Mark, Mr. Teo Ee Sing (Founder and Executive Director of Sun-TES), Dato' Gan (BDO's Managing Partner) and a miss from Malaysian Institute of Accountants (I forgot her name...).

Then, we were allowed to have our afternoon tea. It was a buffet. A simple one. There were mostly finger food like fried popiah, lamb balls (meatballs made with lamb), dumplings, tarts filled with fish, and of course desserts (lots of cheese cakes!! mmhhmmm), etc. I can't really remember their names as they have a really long name (you know how chefs like to name their dishes with really long names? That's how it is.... but the ones I gave are basically their "common" names). Some food were good, some were bad, but the others were ok.

The buffet is outside the ballroom

(There aren't any close ups of the foods as it was too awkward to take the pictures. It took me all the courage to actually take these 2 photos.)

So, after taking some food, I went back to the table to have a chit chat with the counsellors. To my surprise, most of the counsellors were so quiet (and here I thought counsellors are supposed to be quite talkative). And thus, I had a hard time initiate a topic with them. Either they were too tired after the talk before the high tea or maybe they just didn't have any questions about ICAEW. Either way, it gave me a platform to practice my communication skills, so I have no complaints.

The high tea ended earlier than I was expected as most of them wanted to avoid the traffic jam. As there were still a lot of leftovers, we volunteers helped ourselves with the food as most of us did not have our lunch. And when our stomach were filled, we bid farewell and left.

The whole experiences were good. I got to make new friends and learnt more about ICAEW. If I have the chance and time, I would definitely like to participate more events or maybe organise some events. As when come to these, I have zero experience.