Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Seventh Month Offerings

Aug 13 was the first day of the seventh Lunar month, the month of the Hungry Ghost Festival. (Some links on the stories and beliefs regrading the Hungry Ghost Festival from Wikipedia, Joint Social Service Centre and ChinatownConnection.com.)

Following Cavu tradition, we made some offerings in the evening on that day. This is the second year in which we are doing it as a group at our HQ in KA Centre.

Big boss offering his prayers for the group



Getting the joss sticks lit was quite a challenge on that rather windy evening...





Planting our offerings, in sets of three





The part that everyone was waiting for... burning hell money, fabrics, and other offerings to the ghosts and spirits





Everyone has his/her own style...





Most do it piecemeal...



Some like it big-bang...





As usual, the container was way too small for our generous amount of offerings, and we needed to "stir things up" a little to get the offerings burned thoroughly...



... and to make room for the rest of the offerings



In spite of our efforts, we had to resort to our old trick from last year. Here you see Wendy "accidentally" burning some offerings outside of the fully filled container...



... and Janice joining in the act...



... all for the good cause of helping to maximize the effect of the blessings from our offerings on behalf of the group



May the ghosts and spirits bless the group with another solid year of performance and results!

Saturday, July 14, 2007

FG50 Award Ceremony

With reference to Cavu's winning the 2007 Fastest Growing 50 Award, here are some pictures taken during the award ceremony, which was held on Jun 8, 07 at The Stamford Ballroom, Raffles City Convention Centre.

A sizable turnout of around 300 strong...





Cavu Group Managing Director, our big boss, Vesmond, receiving the award from Dr. Balaji Sadasivan, Senior Minister of State, Ministry of Information, Communications & Arts. We are number 13 out of the list of top 50!



Group pictures of award winners... Vesmond is on the front row, extreme left...

















4 in a Row?

Out of the 50 winners, 2 of them have won this award for 4 consecutive years, which means that these 2 companies have been experiencing superb growth and remained profitable for the past 7 years.

With the leadership of our bosses,
may we all work towards getting Cavu to break this record!

CAVU Celebrates FG50 Award

The Cavu family let their hair down on Jul 13 to celebrate the group's being awarded the prestigious Fastest Growing 50, 2007 Award. (For those who are still not so sure of the significance and magnitude of achievement this award represents, refer to the selection criteria for more details.)

The celebration took place at Wild Rocket, an exquisite restaurant set up and owned by lawyer-turned-chef, Willin Low. It took quite a few of us some time, and many wrong turns, to locate the place. :)

Even though some of us didn't manage to attend, the turnout was strong and we jam-packed the entire dinner area. For those of us who didn't have the chance to move around and say hello...

(Bottom left to right, clockwise) Johnson, James, Evangelynn (blocked by James), Wai Keat, Linda (stepped away), Andy, Chee Keong



(Bottom left to right, clockwise) Josephine, Jenny Chua (blocked by Josephine), Wendy (blocked by Josephine), Teng (blocked by Wendy), Desmond, Cheryl, Jenny Toh, Adeline, Evelyn, Irene



(Bottom left to right, clockwise) Wei Meng (still on his way to Wild Rocket when the photo was taken... hehe), Vesmond (stepped away), Khum Leong (sniffing out his drink? hehe), Pang, Darryl (blocked by Pang), Isaac, Kenny, Andrew, Azmi, Sharon (with her bag on her seat), Wilson (out of camera's view)



(Bottom left to right, clockwise) Jennifer (her pair of hands, hehe), Linda (moving around taking photos), Kow Ya, Janice, Jia Jun, David (blocked by Joe), Joe, Winston, Elizabeth



(Bottom left to right, clockwise) Leonard, Desmond, Ai Wah, Ronald, Peter, Maya, Kee Huat, Alfred, Hui Song (out of camera's view), Anthony (out of camera's view)



(Bottom left to right, clockwise) Angie, Erna, Mar Vin, Joseph (blocked by Mar Vin), Dave (stepped away, performing diligently his MC role), Caroline, Lydia, Joshua, Catherine, Bok)



Vesmond took the opportunity to explain the significance of the award to the group, and thanked us for our effort...





The event won't be the same without Dave's excellent job in mastering the crowd and getting us totally excited and involved throughout the entire evening. He did have to sacrifice his voice though, just because he got us all so hyped up that we nearly drowned him with our noise. The teeny-weeny pair of speakers did not help either...





The evening was not just about food, but lots of fun too. The Rec Club committee came up with a series of games to get everyone to loosen up...

Bingo... Joseph doing his Bingo-lady parade, to everyone's delight and cheers...



Irene, the lady with the lucky touch...



Joseph, inspecting the number with great intensity before passing it over to Dave for announcement...



Everyone scrutinizing their piece of Bingo card as if it were their next six-million-dollar Toto ticket...





Our next game demanded a list of twenty-odd items from each table... Was Desmond trying to take off a piece of his garment?



The Rec Club committee inspecting the bags of submitted items against the required list...



And Joseph seemed to have found something hazardous in one of those bags...



Games will be less fun without prizes and the Rec Club knew that. In fact, they took a page from the show Deal or No Deal and made the awarding of prizes even more interesting. The team with the highest score at the end of the evening got the chance to pick and choose from the six boxes of prizes first, each wrapped up and disguised to prevent anyone from telling their true content. The team with the next highest score got to choose next, and so on and so forth...

So each team sent three representatives to feel, touch, shake, taste -- ok, maybe no tasting -- the boxes however much they wanted before they had to decide on just one...











Cheryl and Sharon even had to break the tie with a round of traditional scissors-paper-stone to sort out the order...



As it turned out, being first to draw was not necessarily a good thing.

Janice's team, with the highest score, drew the box worth $10, the lowest of the lot... We hope they would at least put on those toys to humor us further... hehe





Maya's team, who came in second, drew the next lowest-valued prize... and what were those? Squeegees for stress-relief? Thank you for sifting out another box of riffraff... hehe





Sharon's team, who won the scissors-paper-stone battle, went on to choose the next prize - USB vaccum cleaners... hm, I wonder what they would be used for...

And Cheryl's team, who drew next, got a box of kiddy accessories, complete with mini-milk bottles. Evelyn looked very pleased with the prize...







The grand prize went to Joshua's team, who each got a 1GB thumb drive. Congrats!







Andy's team ended up with the last and the biggest box, which everyone avoided for some reason. But it turned out to be not bad a deal - optical mouse from Logitech. Not bad for a prize left over by everyone... hehe





And here are more pictures of the evening...













and of course, pictures of the food...







Thanks, Rec Club

A big thank you once again to the entire Rec Club committee -- Joseph, Irene, Dave, Leonard, Peng Siong, Linda, Kenny, Johnson & Nasir -- for taking the time and effort to organize the event. We look forward to the next one soon!