Talking about haciendas, here’s a real one, in Spain. With horses up close. Perfect for the New Year of the Horse, init? 马年大吉！龙马精神！身体健康！步步高升！Hah, didn’t know I could blurt out these Chinese New Year greetings, eh?!? That’s what you’d learn when you get involved enough with the culture… a benefit in working for a Chinese company! But I actually already know the Cantonese version of them when I was in Malaysia. (Literally, they mean… Horse Year Big Luck! Dragon Horse Vigour! Body Healthy! Step-Step High Rise!)
Most of these photos are compliments of IPMA, the International Project Management Association. They’re mainly from the IPMA Global Awards Gala 2023, which was a black-tie event held in the Hacienda Azahares, near Seville, Spain in Sep 2023. The IPMA Global Awards are an annual function organized by the IPMA that celebrates and gives out awards for achievements in Project Management. Our company participated in the awards in 2023, and 2 of our company’s projects were finalists in the category of Large & Mega-Sized Projects.
As luck would have it, the awards ceremony was held in Spain, and most of my colleagues (who’re Chinese, Egyptians, Indians, etc), including my bosses, needed a Schengen Visa, to attend. And yours truly, being a Malaysian, ahem, could just fly straight there!!! (Schengen Visas, for some inexplicable reason, takes months to apply, here in the UAE!!! Maybe, it’s just because there’re too many rich people from the difficult passport countries here wanting to visit Europe…) And so, there I was, with a British employee of our company, to represent the Company in 2 Projects which we had no involvement in at all! And We WON! Gold & Silver! Applause! Applause!
Andrew Battershill (the Project Manager of our company’s NEOM Tunnel Project), and yours truly, holding our ‘awards’!
Dinner at the Ballroom of the Hacienda Azahares, Seville, Spain, Sep 2023. (Trivia: All the IPMA photos above featured yours truly… Can you spot me??)
What’s Spain, without a flamenco performance?!?
The IPMA Global Awards group photo, Sep 2023
It’s not all party & play, by the way. We also have to do some work. Learn about the Projects and explain how our company accomplished them! At the Torre Sevilla, Seville, Spain
A group photo for the IPMA Global Awards presentation at the Torre Sevilla (or the Seville Tower in English), the tallest building in Seville, …in the whole of Andalusia, actually! From the left, an Iranian delegate; my colleague Andrew Battershill; yours truly; Dr Raymond Young from the IPMA; and a delegate from Kazakhstan
A view from my hotel room, the Eurostars Torre Sevilla…
In front of the Hotel Vincci at the Plaza de Molviedro, another hotel which I stayed in Seville on the 3 nights that we were there… (Eurostars was fully booked for one of the nights). I prefer the Vincci actually. It’s closer to the older (and nicer, to me) part of town, a mere 10-minutes’ walk to the Seville Cathedral.
That’s all for today. For the Chinese and those celebrating the New Year, Happy New Year! Hope you have a joyous reunion. For those who’re fasting, have a fulfilling Ramadan! (Or Lent, for the fasting Christians).
No comments:
Post a Comment