Gaijin vs. Japan: Global Training in Malaysia

Hello all,

I am back in Japan and I can't tell you how good a shower feels after 7 hours of flight!
But maybe I should start from the beginning:

Last Wednesday we met at 9 in the morning at Narita Airport to fly to Kuala Lumpur the capital of Malaysia. With 7 hours the flight was surprisingly long and I had time to watch some movies, unfortunately I wasn't really able to sleep. We arrived around 8 in our hotel and everyone was extremely hungry. So we set out in groups first to change or withdraw money (which took an incredibly long time because of the Japanese decision making process, namely standing around for ages not deciding on anything concrete). But we finally moved to the Midvalley Megamall (one of the biggest Malls in the world) joined to our hotel and there had our first Malaysian dinner. And on that day my party period of 8 days began. Of course I mentioned we went to have a training in KL, but about 50% of the experience there was more like a school trip, and that is how everyone behaved on their off time. We drank until 2 in the morning the first day.

Second day, and first day of training we had to get up around 8 to have breakfast (big breakfast buffet with food from all over the world) and then met for our first training session at 9.
I wont go into detail about my training but it was a kind of case study in english with final proposal presentation. We were groups of 5 people everyone with their strong and weak points and we got to know each other in the course of the training. We developed a good dynamic after day 2 and were able to put out high quality results faster than other teams. Even though I don't have trouble with english, like many of my colleagues I learned a lot about brainstorming, creating proposals and so on and I am confident I will be able to use my newly learned skills when I am finally assigned to my first project.

Over the next couple of days it became a routine of getting up early, training until around 7 and then going to dinner and have a party at someones room from 11 usually ending between 2 and 3 thirty (at least for me). The alcohol of my choice became tequila, I managed to be drunk but not too drunk that I would feel bad the next day, actually being used to having 8 hours of sleep I have to say I managed very well over these 10 days only sleeping about 5 every night.

The big highlight of our trip was of course the weekend (which for us was Sunday and Monday). On the first day I went shopping in the mall and to the swimming pool of the hotel. On day number two I tried to squeeze in time for presentation preparation with my team in the morning and afterwards going sightseeing to the most famous places in KL (Batu Caves, Petronas Twin Towers, Central Market and China Town). We were definitely ripped off by some of the taxi drivers we used (a lot of taxis in Malaysia don't have meters, and it is not easy to argue a good price).

The last days of training went by very fast and our final presentation (like our presentations before) was a huge success and we received the Excellence Award! We are still very proud.

Our last day ended with a party and from there we had to leave directly to the airport, we took our flight at 11 and arrived in Tokyo at 7 in the morning. What an experience. Here are some more impressions.