Last week, I had the opportunity to attend the Asia ORC Roundtable meeting at Westin Langkawi, Kedah from the 24-25 Oct 2008. ORC Worldwide is a consulting organisation specialising in international mobility and expatriates compensation and benefits. It has its offices in several locations; Chicago, Dallas, Washington, Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco in the USA; London, Munich and Paris in Europe; Melbourne and Wellington in Oceania; Singapore, Tokyo and Dubai in Asia. It has more than 40 member companies in Asia and 18 member companies participated in this meeting.
This is the first time that I had the opportunity to attend this meeting. However, I found that the setting of the meeting is like any other consulting conferences, it has several presentation topics by ORC and invited speakers from the member companies. The topics on Middle East's Workforce Management Trends/Issues had my interest but the gist of the presentation was mainly on Dubai's industrialisation and modernisation, where the speaker is based. My scope of coverage exceeds Dubai i.e. from Libya, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and include the Globally Embargoed Countries, these were however not given adequate focus. The discussions around the table at the end of the meeting were also a normal setting for this kind of meetings and an interest to me as well. The questions posted were mainly on international mobility policy and process where the member companies would openly share their companies' policy and practices.
From my overall observation, the networking that I see during the meeting was not obvious. I saw that the member companies from each country would flock together. As Singaporean member companies dominated the meeting, it was very obvious that they were the most prominent grouping, hence Malaysian and the Philippines member companies were not included in most of the off meeting activities such as dinner and tea break. ORC also had its own preferred member companies and this also did not contribute well to the overall networking opportunities.
Other than that, I enjoyed my short 3 days 2 nights stay in Langkawi (the four photographs at the top of this posting were taken within the Westin Langkawi area). The Westin Langkawi ambiance was splendid and I enjoyed my stay there, however they could do better with their food and beverages section. I did a little bit of shopping and discovered that the famous Langkawi shopping area along Kuah town was not as before. Along the Hj Ismail Group supermarkets, there were very few shops left. I am not sure where these shops were relocated but it was obvious that the shops were no longer located in Langkawi.
I had a chance to savour the seafood of Langkawi at Shrimpz Restaurant (refer to the above two photographs). My colleagues and I had buttered prawns, steamed shrimp Mantis, grilled lobsters, Garoupa steamed with Asam and vegetables for dinner. It was a splendid dinner, richly spread and delicious. The seafood were alive when I selected them and I could taste the freshness when I ate them. I would recommend all Langkawi visitors to give it a visit and taste the Langkawi splendid seafood.
On Friday while my colleagues and two of my new networks from a member companies had lunch at Wan Thai Restaurant on the way to the Langkawi International Airport to catch our flight back to Kuala Lumpur. The restaurant's concept is authentic Thai cuisine and I would agree that it has fulfilled it splendidly. The food was tasty and the price is affordable, we had ala carte lunch of 1 large and 1 medium Wan Thai shrimps, shrimps Tom Yam in coconut, steamed Siakap and steamed vegetables.
My best wishes to Langkawi and its people, may it continue to prosper and develop further in the future.
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