The inaugural TM Group Awards Night 2005 was held last weekend at the Dewan Merdeka, PWTC. It was an event where TM recognizes achievers from SPM performers to the best operating organization in the Group. Something like the Grammy’s for TM’s exceptional achievers. It was one heck of an event and kudos to the organizing committee for their effort. I don’t think many organizations in this country or in this region for that matter have this sort of event where they only usually have annual dinners, family events and stuff like that. Here TM as a role model to other GLC’s (claimed by Khazanah) managed to bring together staffs from all over the Group and for once that night it made me believed that TM is truly a global if not a regional telecommunication player where many representatives from our overseas subsidiaries were present during this fucntion.
The dress code for the night was all black with a dash of orange, blue or red reflecting TM’s corporate brand colours. I personally think that this has brought some feel of togetherness that we are all in a single company and working hard as a team. I picked up Mak at my parents house. She wore a black baju kurung with an orange tudung to match while I decided to wear all black with a dash of red and blue sprayed on my hair! What to do? I don’t have a blue, orange or red necktie to wear, so I went to the saloon and had my hair ‘highlighted’ in red and blue stripes.
We arrived at PWTC around 6pm and there were already thousands of people, all dressed smartly in black. I managed to ‘team’ up with Areehan from Marketing as he was walking around by himself. So we had dinner, mingled around with the others and right after the Maghrib prayers, we were called to board the PWTC hall. The hall was filled to the brim! I didn’t expect that it would be a huge turn out but I guess it’s an inaugural event for TM, so everybody wanted to be part of this. Afdlin Shauki was the MC and he was damn good. He is damn bloody funny I tell you.
Congratulations to those who won the awards. Awards were basically given out to the employee of the year from a different category of staff. We even have the Sportsman/Woman award and the Sportswoman award went to this lady who represents Malaysia in Chess tournaments! I told my friends we better start taking Carom seriously! The winners received a trophy and cash rewards of about RM3k to RM5k depending on categories. Congratulations also to Dialog Telekom our subsidiary in Sri Lanka who won the highest award for the night, which is the TM Group Award.
The stage performance was superb! I thoroughly enjoyed the singing contest in search of the 1st TM Star. Preliminary rounds were held weeks before the final contest and it was professionally judged by Syafinaz, Johan Nawawi, Norman KRU, Siti Hajar and many other well known celebrities. So during the final, we have not only contestants from Malaysia, but from Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh as well and the 10 finalists did very well that night. The first TM star title went to Noriah from the Corporate Centre and I take my hats off to all the contestants for their effort.
There were a few surprises. To me the highlight for the night was not the performances from Anuar Zain (yes he performed that night, and the ladies went all crazy and ogling over him by the stage) and Dayang Nurfaizah (power gila suara dia..pitching tinggi), it was this performance from this band called “The Just Formed Band 4 Days Ago”. Dato’ Wahid, the Group CEO himself led the band and sang 3 songs! The band comprises of other top management and Dato’ Shazali Ramli, the CEO of Celcom is one heck of a drummer! Dato’ Wahid sang Angel by Robbie Williams, Mungkin Nanti by Peter Pan and another song which I can’t remember. This is the man who just had a heart operation last month and he’s already up there showing some ‘action’. Talk about leading by example. Very sporting I tell you.
The dress code for the night was all black with a dash of orange, blue or red reflecting TM’s corporate brand colours. I personally think that this has brought some feel of togetherness that we are all in a single company and working hard as a team. I picked up Mak at my parents house. She wore a black baju kurung with an orange tudung to match while I decided to wear all black with a dash of red and blue sprayed on my hair! What to do? I don’t have a blue, orange or red necktie to wear, so I went to the saloon and had my hair ‘highlighted’ in red and blue stripes.
We arrived at PWTC around 6pm and there were already thousands of people, all dressed smartly in black. I managed to ‘team’ up with Areehan from Marketing as he was walking around by himself. So we had dinner, mingled around with the others and right after the Maghrib prayers, we were called to board the PWTC hall. The hall was filled to the brim! I didn’t expect that it would be a huge turn out but I guess it’s an inaugural event for TM, so everybody wanted to be part of this. Afdlin Shauki was the MC and he was damn good. He is damn bloody funny I tell you.Congratulations to those who won the awards. Awards were basically given out to the employee of the year from a different category of staff. We even have the Sportsman/Woman award and the Sportswoman award went to this lady who represents Malaysia in Chess tournaments! I told my friends we better start taking Carom seriously! The winners received a trophy and cash rewards of about RM3k to RM5k depending on categories. Congratulations also to Dialog Telekom our subsidiary in Sri Lanka who won the highest award for the night, which is the TM Group Award.
The stage performance was superb! I thoroughly enjoyed the singing contest in search of the 1st TM Star. Preliminary rounds were held weeks before the final contest and it was professionally judged by Syafinaz, Johan Nawawi, Norman KRU, Siti Hajar and many other well known celebrities. So during the final, we have not only contestants from Malaysia, but from Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh as well and the 10 finalists did very well that night. The first TM star title went to Noriah from the Corporate Centre and I take my hats off to all the contestants for their effort.
There were a few surprises. To me the highlight for the night was not the performances from Anuar Zain (yes he performed that night, and the ladies went all crazy and ogling over him by the stage) and Dayang Nurfaizah (power gila suara dia..pitching tinggi), it was this performance from this band called “The Just Formed Band 4 Days Ago”. Dato’ Wahid, the Group CEO himself led the band and sang 3 songs! The band comprises of other top management and Dato’ Shazali Ramli, the CEO of Celcom is one heck of a drummer! Dato’ Wahid sang Angel by Robbie Williams, Mungkin Nanti by Peter Pan and another song which I can’t remember. This is the man who just had a heart operation last month and he’s already up there showing some ‘action’. Talk about leading by example. Very sporting I tell you.
Dato' Wahid and his band doing some numbers...
Seeing TM staff coming from all our subsidiaries showed that this company has a huge potential to be a regional player. In fact, I feel we could easily become the No.1 operator in this country in the mobile segment. What we need is a more synergistic effort among our group and ‘attack’ the market as one. Cross branding, cross packaging or what ever you want to call it, we just need to click and work as a team. I let the top management to think about this laahh..if I continue writing about this…it will take me 2 to 3 pages to finish..hehehehe
I felt sad and happy. I felt happy because I can see that the company has a huge potential in the future and I believe that it’s moving towards the right direction. That night made me proud to be known as a TM employee and I definitely felt some sense of achievement. I felt touched as for all the hard work and effort that we have put in, I know somehow it was not a waste. That evening was like a Grammy Award for TM’s staff and this certainly put in more motivation for us to work harder.
When Dato’ Wahid sang this Mungkin Nanti song by Peter Pan, it meant a lot to me. To those who don’t know this, I’m resigning from this company soon. June 24th would be my last day as a TM employee. After more than 8 years in TM, it’s time for me to move on to the next phase of my career. Attending the TM Group Award Night was like the icing on a cake for my working experience with TM. I had the chance to share the joy with everybody in celebrating TM’s family successes. It was truly an event to remember and I would certainly encourage those who didn’t come to the Award this year, get yourself a ticket and make yourself available next year. As for me, who knows, maybe one day I’ll be part of this one great family again. Opening up possibilities? Anything's possible!
