A wedding that almost failed.

There are times during my internship that I got to accompany my supervisor to escort travel agents, the local media, or tour operators to view the ship and answering any questions they might have, giving tours of the ship, arranging interviews between the crew members and at the same time try to build the ship's image. Building the ship's image have been a challenging task as the ship is still slowly undergoing renovation. There are times when my responsibilities are divided into different categories such as administrative, correspondence, promo and editorial. Sometimes I would spent answering to incoming inquiries, either from potential customers, travel agents, or the media.

Researching, gathering and distributing information, and creating press releases for the media and also for the sales department is sometimes required as I make sure that the newcomers are familiar and well-informed with the ship. It is of full advantage that I could speak and listen to several language which is Malay and Chinese apart from English which makes it easier for me to communicate with the crew as they are more willing to talk and get along with me.

Finally, I use the rest of my day for working on promotions and new programs. This internship have give me an opportunity to build a network with others in the business, brainstorm for new ways to promote the river cruise, and how to implement those ideas. This is probably the most exciting aspects of my internship which is meeting people. When people think about a "cruise ship", most would think about ocean liners but because this ship will never leave the river, it has been a task to repetitively try to explain especially to potential customers that this boat is not able to charter for sea-cruising. "What types of programs and activities does the ship offer?" is what is being frequently asked.

Decisions are made based on revenue. There are times when I would come up with an idea that I think would be really fun and interesting, but when I send it to the sales department they say, "no way, too much work, too little profit" Money seems to be the bottom line in the industry and it usually takes time for acceptance of any ideas, no matter how brilliant I think they would be.

I have been assigned a task to coordinate the ship's first ever wedding reception for a couple from Singapore. The event was a buffet dinner course for a total of 100 people on ship chartered for 3 hours cruising on the 10th October 2009. For this, I looked forward the most is to do the decor and theme for the wedding within limited budget. For situation such as these, regular correspondence with the couple and also their elders for decision making is outmost important. At first, the couple are flexible with the ideas that I had suggested but at the end of the day, Chinese tradition and culture issues from the elders such as 'no white, as it symbolizes death', 'no butterflies', no dead branches' has been limiting my choices so it would be best to consult and re-confirm before coming up with ideas and realize at the end that it will have to be thrown into the trash.

This lesson I learnt the hard way which was a day before the actual event. With major brainstorming and discussion with the rest of the crew on board, I managed to camouflage the white lantern with branches of green leaves so that it wouldn't look too white. I had to do new placement cards for the bottom deck which was mostly the older folks (who believe that butterflies symbolizes the departure of the soul), and managed to persuade that the butterfly placements be kept upstairs to blend in which the garden theme which I had for the top deck. The bottom deck which was originally white theme was added in with gold-colored items (borrowed from anyone I knew) so that it won't look too white like a 'funeral dinner'. I had to replace the dead branches in the main table's centerpiece with flowers I managed to obtain from home before the dinner.

On the same day, the traffic at Kuching City Central suffered from traffic jams as several roads were closed for the venue of launching the "Malaysia Day Parade" (http://www.malaysiamerdeka.gov.my) Guests had to be informed of different road options on how to make it to the waterfront and avoid the jam thus the dinner started a little late. It was lucky for that because of the event, most of Kuching's landmarks were lit up with lights thus makes the cruise more vibrant along the river at night. At the end of the day, with good weather for cruising and also enough time to do major adjustment, the dinner reception went very well and still maintain within budget. Phew~

PS: A picture in before the dinner reception. Sadly, I was too busy running around after that to be taking pictures.