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Reports

A Fruitful Internship Experience

2019-09-20

陳泳彤

CHAN Wing Tung

香港上海大酒店有限公司

The Hongkong and Shanghai Hotels, Limited

曼谷

Bangkok

 

During my seven-week internship at the Peninsula Bangkok, I was mainly working at the River Café & Terrace and occasionally worked for big catering events and banquets. The local colleagues passionately explained the company's structure to me and arranged a variety of orientation activities, which helped deepen my understanding of the company and facilitated my integration into a new work environment.

 

Working in the food and beverage department was not as simple as I had expected. It required strong communication and interpersonal skills as I had to work with many people on a daily basis. When I was working in the banquet team, I learned about banquet preparations and management such as banquet room setup, table setting and post-event cleaning. I felt a little uneasy in this fast-paced and dynamic work environment and the responsibilities weighed me down at times but I am really grateful for every experience I have had as it has helped me build resilience.

                                                                               

I also found that Bangkok’s workplace culture is very different from Hong Kong’s. Most Hong Kong employees rarely take on extra tasks, whereas my colleagues in Bangkok were more willing to help out their colleagues and took on additional duties even if the duties were outside the role they were employed to do. I was highly impressed by their dedication and passion for work. My colleagues and supervisor were very friendly and helpful throughout my time there. My supervisor often encouraged me to take responsible risks. He taught me that when we made mistakes, we also created a learning experience. We grew up believing that we should avoid failure at all cost but failure in fact presents invaluable learning opportunities.

 

I am beyond thankful for this rewarding internship opportunity. In addition to enriching my work experience, this internship also allows me to make a lot of new friends and hence establish valuable friendships and expand my social network.