What Has Changed?

As I flip through the newspaper every day these days, I see a lot of bullying cases happening amongst youth, amongst children and amongst school kids. Why is this the case?

I'm curious. When do they have the time to carry out such violence? Isn't school time so packed with classes? Where do they find time to create gangs and groups that could hate each other?

I'm so baflled, and I fear for the future generation. We seem to live amongst extremist these days, you hate a person you kill. And these are students/youths, they're still young and with a lot of opportunities and bright future ahead of them. Why do they pull the plug on their lives like that?

I used to remember school to be so fun. You go to school, you get to see friends, you plan what to eat during reccess with your classmates and schoolmates from different classes and you look forward to extra curricular activities just so that you get to spend even more time with your friends.

I can't seem to understand how children can be so brave and heartless all at the same time, killing one another. Really? Do they not feel anything when they are causing hurt to others? Such inhumane acts at times.

What has changed from our school days many many years back? It's a huge concern, and assurance needs to be given to parents for sending and leaving their kids in school. Family time needs to be practised at home so that parents know if whether or not their kids are ok. Parents need to know who their kids are out with - it may sound suffocating, but discipline is key. They need to grow up knowing what is right and what is wrong.

Bullying should not be tolerated! Feeling so very sad right now that we are living amongst people who can willingly carry out inhumane acts without guilt. In fact I'm scared :((((

Let's strive to be nicer and kinder.

CIMB's TCB Programme = The Complete Banker

I’ve had the privilege of talking to a lot of TCB recruits in CIMB and everytime I have that conversation with them, I feel so nostalgic. The other night as I was packing up to leave an event, a friend of mine came up to me to introduce another friend.

“Alia, this is my friend, he’s a TCB. He's been wanting to meet you”

“TCB? As in the TCB TCB?”

He replied: “Yeah, I’m currently going through my support rotation and am in batch 44”

Homaigod, did I not feel old when he said FOURTY-FOUR. I had started my own TCB programme at CIMB back in 2009 and I was batch 13. THIRTEEN guys, that’s like 31 batches away. I’m so old now, 8 years with the firm with a year and a half off pursuing Masters in London and another few months off to chase after my dream to be a part of a broadway show.

Good times!

If you ask me if I would go through TCB programme  again? A million times over!              

What’s a TCB programme? TCB stands for The Complete Banker – a programme specially tailored by CIMB for fresh graduates wanting to experience and learn all about Investment, Commercial, Retail, basically everything about Banking in CIMB.

It’s a 2 years programme – divided into 2 months of classroom training and 10 months of rotating between 4 departments and another final year of confirming a spot in one department of your choice (if the department is hiring).

To me, the best times were all in the classroom. It was so intense and competitive (coz our batch was the first to have had our Singaporean colleagues in it too and they kept on scoring As for all their exams!!!), they even train you to complete an assignment throughout the night! Can you imagine how much you see your batchmates in a day? Between 11 to 24 hours! Haha! Not, I’m not scaring you, it was indeed the best times I’ve had. The adrenaline rush that comes with the deadlines, the bonding you have with your batchmates (we now travel around for each other’s wedding eventhough some had left the firm) and the mountain-load of knowledge you get from industry players. In the span of 2 months, we sit for 5 exams just to test whether you were listening in all those different classes or not.

*Don’t worry, I failed some too :D

Post 2 months of classroom, we get to request for departments we may be interested in and so I had my 10 months stint in Group Corporate Finance, HR, Preferred Banking and Wholesale Banking Islamic. Work was real, in that 10 months I sometimes had this fear of sending out emails if in case I may misrepresent the company, haha! The good thing about real-life work is that it gives you so much satisfaction knowing “OMG, my team and I was working on that deal” when we see a headline in the papers or even the adrenaline rush knowing that your client has chosen the team to carry out a corporate exercise. Sometimes you get P&C deals that you're bound to not speak to anyone about it, and it's very exciting!

Well sometimes, you get scolded too of course if you do a mistake - but I used to think being scolded was a privilege coz at least now the boss knows you! Weird but true :D

I think one of the more exciting parts was when I was based in CIMB London and was assigned to assist HR in assessing potential TCB recruits studying in UK. Boy was it tough coz I felt like hiring everyone of them! They seem to be as eager as I was when I had my first interview with CIMB, back in London too in 2009. Of course it was a little weird when I had to interview my own Masters classmate from Imperial haha.

I've had many questions about TCB in CIMB, so I hope this post helps a little if not much at all. If not, feel free to drop me an email and I'll be more than happy to answer them :))

 TCB 13

#examstruggleisreal 

You gotta be polite 24 hours

Being in a customer service means you are at customers' service exactly that - 24 hours in a day. You've got to be polite to customers for the entire day, or at least during your shift. Or at least during every minute of face time you have with customers, and especially if customers aren't rude to you.

I totally get it that Sahur is too early a time for some, but it is your amanah towards the job that you've got to do what the job requires you to do - purely because you took up that job, well informed of the nature of the work.

So Aiman and I decided to head to McDonalds for sahur today (something we do every year during Ramadhan, there must be a day when we have those burgers and fries for sahur). There weren't many people at all, and it was about 4.30am. Counter staff was very friendly - explained Sahur menu to us, took our order and completed our transaction.

All these whilst another staff behind here complains non stop and started showing tantrum and knocking appliances loudly etc. LOUDLY. I tend to tell myself that maybe she was tired, she had a bad journey coming to work and 4.30am was a bit too early for her.

But that's it right, you are in customer service. And your shift is at 4.30am. The least you could do is throw tantrum, quietly. I'm sure McDonalds being such a big brand would not subscribe to such behaviours either. A few customers in line were put off by it but thank god for their friendly counter staff.

Hi, my name is Minty

The one thing I don't fancy is when someone calls my name very loudly, especially in public places when I'm surrounded by unknown people. Aiman on the other hand is the kind who likes to call out for me in public, so when we got married we had to come in between. 

When Aiman wants to call out for me, he calls out "Binti" so that people won't know what my name or my father's name is. It has now evolved to become "Minty" - more girly 😂
#starbucksguybelievedus
#publicknowsmeasMINTY