Week 4 - Hari Raya

This week has only four days as Monday is a holiday and hence NO WORK!!! This week is more of the out-of-office activities as Mr Chan introduce me to more sites and brought me to a piece of land that may have the potential to buy and develop. We also went to look at commercial building at Shenton Way.

I'm starting to like out-of-office as Mr Chan would treat us to lunch and this is a great way to move away from the canteen we had at our building :D We always had good food at either famous hawker or restaurant.

This is the GB building that we had went to view at Shenton Way. It is a 26-storey commercial building with 3 level of basement carpark. Although the carpark is run-down, the office itself is fantastic on every floor with different design and giving a totally different feeling when you are there.

This is the photo i had taken on the 20th storey. The view is marvelous and i really hope i can have one of this i the future.

After getting back at the office, i was instructed to do a feasibility study on this office building and was then analyze by Mr Chan. Mr Chan corrected some of the calculation errors and also added some other factors which makes the study more accurate. I had realized that what we learnt in school is sufficient but it may differ as you work in different field of work. And for every field there is terms that is commonly used and you need to know them so that you can converse well and effectively. For example, when talking to agents we need to know terms like psf (Per Square Foot) / gfa (Gross Floor Area) and to contractor PU (Polyurethane)/ pw (Pipe Work).

*I'm starting to like development and is looking towards next Monday :D

Payday :D

Just gotten my pro-rated pay for this month. Nothing to describe how good it is to get half a month pay that is equivalent to a month pay when working part-time during school terms.

This week is research week, the topic is grouting. For people who do not know what is grouting, it is basically a construction material to embed in wall and fill the cracks. It may sound simple but it is not. The PDF file that I had referred to is ninety-one pages long article. The following is the cover page of this article and its origin;

The origin of this article is just amazing, USA (Department of Defence).

The main content of this article highlights three areas; which is the types of grout, grouting method, and grouting equipment. I had briefly read through the types of grout and grouting method as it is required for me to have some background knowledge before i head down to meet the contractors.

At site, the waterproofing specialist took some photos of the affected areas and briefly informed me of the method of solving this issue. Since i had some knowledge beforehand, i am able to ask why they are using certain grout (e.g. Polyurenthane) instead of another (e.g. Epoxy). From their explanation i am able to understand better and also aware of the nature of different grout to be used in different situation.

Overall, i am satisfy with my performance for this week and hopefully Mr Chan is glad with my performance too :D Hope to do better than the "B" i had gotten last week...

2nd Week of Internship

Generally I will rate this week's productivity as satisfactory. I had met new people and learnt new things. Mr Chan also brought us to lunch on Wednesday.

The lunch makes me so bloated that I don't have to had my dinner. We went to Ang Mo Kio Ave 5 to eat western food. "Aston" had an outlet in the coffeeshop and I ordered double chicken for my lunch. The bloated part came in when Ms Lily split half of her plate's chicken to me and the baked potatoe.

The real reason why we came to the coffeeshop is because an agent introduce and wanted us to buy over this coffeeshop. Mr Chan told me that the company can never prosper if we just stick to buying land to develop and sell. Rental from commercial building or coffeeshop can sometime be an alternative when the residential market is quiet.

Knowing the plan to explore into coffeeshop, I started studying the operation of coffeeshop and get some information from my relatives and friends that knows this market. I also drafted a feasibility study report on this particular coffeeshop with its proposed price. The only factor now is the lease period of this coffeeshop. Normally the coffeeshop lease period is the same as the HDB building it is under. Hence knowing that the building left 60 years, the profit margin greatly reduced as compared to 99 years lease for new buildings. Ultimately Mr Chan still put this into consideration as it is feasible with a lower return of investment.

I had decided to write an entry every week instead of the usual day by day. This is because is it too tiring to blog after work and it will affect the next day work attention. I hope the school will understand and pardon me on this change. For every week's entry I will highlight one task that is most engaging or interesting. I will also blog my unpleasant encounter if I ever encounter one.

Stay tuned and look forward to my next entry :D