CAAS TEA SESSION

4th dec, thurs- this morning, i consider myself exceedingly fortunate to be invited to the caas tea session at changi airport, t2. this was my second invitation to a tea session (the first was with dsta during the last term break). before i reached, i was anticipating only graduating students from the various polytechnics. to my surprise, it was a mixture of A levels and polytechnic students. ok, the latter was overwhelmingly outnumbered. i could see stickers with RJCs, HCIs, VJCs pasted on the chest of almost every student. wow. it was only during the 2nd part of the program that i saw students from polytechnics. oh, i saw tian tian from micro-e, i reckon she was the only other person from NP. i counted 3 from RP and 1 from NYP. no idea if SP and TP were invited.

the program started off with the screening of CAAS's corporate video, followed by the opening address by the Director-General, Mr Lim Kim Choon, a retired 2-star general from RSAF. wow. from the way he addressed the crowd, it was apparent he was highly intelligent. however, most of his replies with tinged with bits and pieces of sarcasm. haha. next was the sharing of experiences by two of their overseas scholars. one was from imperial college, uk. the other was from university of california, berkeley. wow.

q & a session was next on the agenda. in my opinion, it was a lengthy q & a session. the panel took over 10 questions (estimation). unsure whether poly grads will lose out to the jc people, i went up to ask a question too. because engineering students from poly will be joining under the specific university engineering scheme, i wondered if one would always stay in the specific engineering division, whether we could venture into other areas (commerical, airport management, air traffic control, etc) within caas. opportunities for job rotation in short. his reply was no, job rotations were necessary to keep us motivated, sharp and filled with experience. the exposure will make us better equipped to deal with challenges ahead.

part 2 of the program was the airport tour. apart from the fact that we were allowed into the usually restricted transit zone (which was pretty cool), the tour was rather lukewarm. my group consisted of 3 other polytechnic students and we didn't really talk to each other. sigh. why must they separate the polytechnics from the jcs? the jc people seemed more lively. the whole program ended at around 2.30pm.

in my heartfelt opinion, caas is really a world-class organisation to work for. imagine having this renowned company for your first job. wow. dsta is also a highly reputable company to be associated with. however if i could choose just one, it would be the former.