1 year, 261 days ago (December 15, 2008)
One thing that I enjoyed working for Bloomberg is that it gives back to society by encouraging its employees to participate in social charity work. OK, this might sound a bit too close to a sales tag line in a company’s recruitment page. But that’s true though. Regardless it’s a real Corporate Social Responsibility, or another way to marketing the company image, it’s sending its employees to do volunteer work to the society in their paid hours. And I think it’s a good thing after all.
I attended one event this morning – went to a hospital (not exactly like the one in your imagination now where patience lying on the bed). It’s more like caring centre with nice decorations. And we were there to build a little “wonderland” for children whose families or themselves suffer from AIDS. They are holding a Christmas party for them and we were asked to help out with creating a little nice playground for them. It was a very interesting experiences as we not only helped to build a colourful wonderland, but also used our imagination to create games tools out from raw recyclable material like cardboard or wood sticks. And here is little creation of my colleague Frank and me – a catapult made out from wood sticks and elastic strings. Also a few painted target we cut and painted from cardboards.
For more photos, you view them here.
Tagged as:
BBOB,
Bloomberg,
Charity
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1 year, 267 days ago (December 9, 2008)
I thought it was just social networking event on a Tuesday night, but it turned out to be an exciting evening for Dimsum.co.uk, and me!
It is the Pearl Awards 2008. Pearl Awards is an annual event to recognise and celebrate Chinese achievements in multicultural Britain. This is the only event of its kind in the UK and the first, inaugural event was in September, 2004. (link from Dimsum’s interview with William Ong, co-founder of Pearl Multimedia) I went with Sarah and Wendy for tonight’s 2008 Award held in St. James Palace – a very decent Royal Palace.
After a nice performance from English Chamber Orchestra with one of young pianist Wu Qian, William Ong went on the stage to announce the winner of this year’s award. And the first one, is Dimsum.co.uk! We were very much excited when walked up to the stage to received the award from HRH The Duke of York. The other two award winners are Ching-He Huang from the BBC program – Chinese Food Made Easy, and also The 48 Group Club.
It was definitely an experience that walked out of the hall with the VIPs before other guests. Also my 60+ name cards that I thought would be more than enough for a casual networking event just gone in less than 30 minutes. People came to talk and congratulate us of being one of the award winners. But to be honest, it was completely a surprise! That’s why Sarah and Wendy didn’t bring any name cards along and took some of mine.
It’s another milestone for Dimsum definitely, and we will take a further from here!
Update1: Dimsum Article – Dimsum.co.uk wins the Pearl Awards 2008
Tagged as:
Chinese,
UK
{
1 year, 297 days ago (November 9, 2008)
Something might seem perfectly normal to most people in the UK, but as my first experience, it’s still worth writing it down. Believe or not, after living in this country for more than 6 years, I’ve only been to the hospital once – and that was for required medical check before I left for Japan. I suppose that’s something to be grateful about. I had a very healthy life.
With the effort to keep up with healthy lifestyle, I go swimming regularly. But last weekend when I was enjoying myself with the clean water in my gym’s pool, some water went into my ear. I tried my best to get them out with all the tools and method I could think of, but they just didn’t want to come out. After a few days, I found myself lost some level of hearing and realized it’s time to seek proper medical help.
I searched the net to find my yet to register local GP’s number. I was told that I need to register first before I can book an appointment with the nurse (not a doctor yet), and the next available appointment is about three weeks later. Three weeks later? Suddenly I understood why people complained about HNS so much at that point. However the lady advised me to visit a walk-in-clinic if I need urgent assistance.
Surprisingly I wasn’t asked for any ID or National Insurance number when I visited the one near Liverpool Street Station. Just filled in a form and waited for 40 minutes and a doctor called my name. He doubled checked my ear and found there were something there, but he didn’t have the equipment to remove it at the clinic so advised me to visit a hospital as soon as possible. When I left he provided me a map to the hospital, and also a statement for me to prove to my company that I need to do that ASAP. The next morning I woke up early in the morning and be the first patient in St Bartholomew’s Hospital’s minor injury room. The doctor checked my ear again and finally helped me to remove the foreign object out of my ear. Thankfully, it didn’t get infected.
So this is my first experience of medical care as a tax payer of this country. Throughout the walk-in-clinic and hospital visit, what surprised me was that I didn’t need to provide any ID or pay any money. Compare to my experience of seeing a medical care in China, regardless what the problems are, first thing when I walked into a hospital was to pay a registration fee before a doctor can see you. After that normally the doctors will advise you to take some prescription which will cost you more (sometimes they are not even necessary but they will still prescribe you some). I called my parents in China about my experiences and they were surprised by the fact that I didn’t need to pay anything for medical care. Free medical care in China is still something that everyone dream of. To most low income families in China, any unexpected accident can become a huge burden to a family’s budget – worse it might even make them go into huge debt. No wonder a popular saying goes – being healthy is best investment. At least that’s what I know in China.
Tagged as:
China,
Health,
UK
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