Tourism WA!

Hello everyone! I just completed my first week of internships at Tourism WA. I must say that it is a great feeling to finally start the internship after so much planning and liaising with my supervisor. The journey started well into the second half of last year when I contacted Tourism WA for the possibility of an internship for my placements and work experience. I almost started it last year as well but due to the fact that I had taken another internship at the Department of Corrective Services, I was unable to start on the internship. It all turned out for the best though and here I am working on Tuesdays and Wednesdays in tourism WA. I must say that while it has only been 2 days, it has been an immensely fun and educational experience thus far.

Being from Singapore, the internships I have underwent have always involved me playing more of a support role to the staff like proof reading and putting together presentations where the information has already been researched. I was pleasantly surprised and of course extremely happy to note however, that on the first day, I was given tasks to do that allowed me to put into use the skills that I have learnt over the past 2 years in the PR major. In fact, on my first day at tourism WA, I was told to draft a media release that would soon be released to several media outlets on the V8 Supercar Trading Post Perth Challenge! Another task that I was entrusted with was to draft an e-mail where I had to inform several magazine editors about the upcoming events that Western Australia would be having over the winter months (June – August). What got me extremely excited about this however was not only the fact that it was “real work” but more the fact that I would actually be contributing to the team and better yet, I was told that I could let my imagination run wild and “just go nuts” about promoting the events to the editors.

To top it all off, my colleagues have all been extremely friendly and helpful to me and have in a really short time made me feel rather comfortable working with them. For example, even though I am the only males in the department of four females, I do not feel at all uncomfortable. Also, I am the only Asian in that department and I scarcely feel the culture difference, I have concluded that this is probably due to how well the people in the department have been able to understand and cross cultures in their line of work seeing as to how it is probably a necessity if they want to appeal to their target countries which include Singapore and Malaysia. This brings to mind certain aspects of what many of us have learnt in the unit PR (International) about understanding cultures and being able to work with them. In a sense it does give me a “real world” perspective on how it works as my supervisor, Kara Jecks seems to understand and know where I am coming from when I speak about things that I have done in Singapore. Thinking about it gets me a little excited as it shows how the things we have learnt can be applied to the working world and personally, I look forward to the challenge and bringing my own unique Singaporean style to the team.

All in all, I feel that my first week has been a fruitful and enjoyable week; I thoroughly enjoyed being given meaningful tasks like the media release to tackle and feel that I can both contribute and learn a lot from my time at Tourism WA. Best of all, I am starting to see how what I have learnt from all my different units can be applied to my internship and it makes me look forward to coming to work.

That is all I have for this week.

Until my next post,

Derrick