Finally, after 3 weeks of loathing around, our thesis project has started. Our first problem was whether we have our SharePoint which eventually we ended up being required to meet the PIKOM board of executives(which consists of the bosses from various corporations such like Microsoft!) during their meeting at 10-12pm by Thursday at and ask the SharePoint for ourselves ==|
So there we go, we went all the way to Phileo Damansara II in PJ to meet the PIKOM committee. As this isn’t the first time that I’m attending an official, business-like meeting, though the meetings I attended in my internship days weren’t attended by so many big shots like this, I wasn’t as nervous as I ought to be.
When we arrived at the PIKOM office, we found out that we were the first ones to arrive (so much for worrying being late ==|). As the usual Malaysian-style meetings, most of the attendees were late. The meeting didn’t officially start until 45 minutes later. Those who attended the meeting were Ms. Shamini (the coach of the Intern Psychology Students previous semester), Mr. Cheong (our forever-full-of-surprises CyberCare coach and client of our project), Chairman of PIKOM known as C.J., Alex, representative from HP Malaysia, Yasmin (Managing Director of Microsoft Malaysia), and various other PIKOM staff and representative from other corporations
At the beginning of the meeting, as they were waiting for Yasmin and Alex, we were questioned for the purpose of our attendance. It was an adrenaline moment as once Shamini asked “the” question, everyone, including CJ were looking at us, waiting for an answer. We were dumb struck, stunned for a moment as we did not see this coming so soon. I recovered from the stunned moment and started answering the question while facing the CJ.
At this very moment, all I have in my mind is “I have to do this, I must answer as best as I could, I must show confidence…” With all the confidence I can show on my face, I answered
“We’re here today because we need to know if we have the SharePoint so that we know whether we should proceed on our project with it or we move on using Google.”
Silence…after a moment (which feels like millenniums), CJ nodded and answered
“We’ll see what we can do, and you’ll have to tell Yasmin when she’s here.”
Right after CJ spoke, Yasmin come in and took the sit beside him and looked around the meeting table, scanning every attendees of the meeting while exchanging casual jokes and greetings with some of the attendees. When her eyes came spotted us, she looked at us with a little bit of surprise. Catching the perfect moment, Shamini repeated “the” question and again, I gave the answer in a slightly different version while looking into Yasmin’s eyes to show that we’re serious for what we’re asking for. After that, Shamini asked a few more question regarding the deadline of our project and duration of our project which was answered by our project manager, Zaif who was obviously nervous while trying his very best to show his confidence.
After we’ve answered the questions from Ms. Shamini and Mr. Cheong, Yasmin took a moment to look at four of us, nodded and answered
“I’ll look into it.”
As the meeting proceeded, Mr. Cheong started to present the results of CyberCare’s previous project which involves the intern Psychology Students from previous semester. At a point when yasmin was asking questions of scalability of the project and whether the community project can involve adults instead of just children, they started to round her up opinions and suggestions which partly also involves our request. CJ even went as far as asking her to give us a place to work at Microsoft!!! In KLCC!!!!
She considered a moment while others were still voicing out and smiled, took a brief look at us and told them
“I’ll have to ask Tyson about this, once he said can then we can do it”
After the end of the meeting, My mind when blank, I can’t believe it is happening this way, I totally didn’t see this coming! 2 hours ago, we don’t know if we got the SharePoint for our project, we don’t know if we have a server to work with, and we don’t know where we’re going to work on our project…and now, we have a confirmation that we’ll get the SharePoint, they’ve already have a server prepared and ready for us, and the best part, we might get to work on our project inside Microsoft!!!
For this much, I must thank the few people (including Ms. Shamini and Mr. Cheong) in the meeting who helped us on our requests by giving their precious opinions which lead to Yasmin giving that much of promise to us. I truly am looking forward into starting our project.
