First day at the office

Today is kick off day, a day I was looking forward to for already a couple of months now. To be honest, I had no idea what to expect. Would I be getting assignments from the beginning or would it just be an introduction? The day began stressful as I did not expect the traffic to be so extremely chaotic in Kuala Lumpur. Of course, I knew it would be chaotic but this was so much worse than expected. It took me 45 minutes for normally a 10-15 minutes ride, I hope it will not be like this everyday.. When I arrived at the building the second challenge began, finding the right office. When I found the office I was immediately welcomed in the company, that gave me a good feeling. After 20 minutes of adapting to my new situation the first meeting began. It was an internal meeting which gave me some great insights in the ongoing projects. Afterwards, we went on to have a meeting and a work lunch with Zurich Insurance. The first big cultural difference I noticed was the amount of lunch time you can take here. You don’t have a specific time here for your lunch as in Holland, but you can take as much time as needed. It is very normal in Malaysia to take more than an hour for your lunch, quite interesting! The second half of the day was filled with some courses about the company and their projects and I started a couple of (boring but needed) assignments. When I took the grab (local taxi) back to the apartment I was quite happy, but tired, with my first day. But a lot to learn!