Celebrating Diversity

You've seen the ad, right? - the one with 4 people standing side by side, wearing red shirts and white pants that join up into a Singapore flag. Well, this week our bank is celebrating Diversity and various departments/divisions have to hold parties and competitions to promote Diversity. It's suppose to drum into our heads that Diversity is good, is what makes us strong and powerful. Each person's diverse experiences and knowledge contribute to the success of the bank.

Who better to celebrate diversity than Singaporeans? We are experts at multi-anything! We're a multi-cultural, multi-religion, multi-language, multi-storey carpark society what!!!

So today, our division celebrated our Diversity Day! My sari, bought for CK's farewell (some 3 years ago!) came in handy for the occasion. We were encouraged to come dressed in ethnic costumes. One memo had a little typo(?) in it as it asked us to explore cultural cross-dressing. LOL..

I got up early this morning. I had to tie my sari! After the practice round last night, I had an easier time today. hehe... Even found the pottu still stuck to the ear ring case! Suddenly, I had a surprise phone call from my big boss asking me if I could be the MC for the event! OH NO!! Now I'm nervous! So out the door I went, with nerves of steel (LOL..), to catch the bus to work.. as eyes burned holes in my sari, I kept wondering if I had tied the sari correctly and if the real Indians were judging the way I'd wrapped it.

Anyway... our division consists of 7 departments and 8 countries were represented - Singapore, China, Indonesia, India, Philippines, Malaysia, UK and Australia. Pretty diverse, eh? ;-)

We had a little quiz with 18 questions about the different countries. Winners would get a couple of GV tickets.

There was also a Best Dressed competition, complete with a catwalk for each contestant. As I was the MC and in the committee, I couldn't take part. Too bad cos I would've given them a run for their money - $50 shopping voucher prize!




The Cooking Competition had a nice $200 prize. This was a hot event with participants putting up rather creative dishes!

Rice used to create various dishes:


Singapore Island - represented by Malay/Chinese/Western/Indian 'poh piah'.


Indonesian meal with a huge conical pile of yellow rice


I particularly like the papaya with the funky cut-out's and stuffed with grapes and other fruits inside.


Hopefully we all had a good time and thankfully my sari stayed up the whole day!