Saturday, October 13, 2012

My Life as an Editor in LivingSocial Malaysia - Prelude

One month had gone by since I officially stopped writing as an editor in LivingSocial Malaysia. It's a group buying site started out as Everyday.com.my which was then acquired Ticket Monster (a well-known Korea group buying site), and later LivingSocial from US.

I remember setting my first step into Everyday's office for interview after a friend, KK recommended me the few nights before and that was when I got to know Hannah, KK's colleague back then and later mine too. I kind of hesitated a while before sending in my email for the job application as an editor because I didn't know if I could write, but in the end, I somehow convinced myself in trying as I didn't know where I'd head to after my internship. Besides KK and Hannah, Tammy was the third person I knew as she was the manager who interviewed me. The interview wasn't tough as she was very friendly and it all went on smoothly like 2 friends talking to each other. My unemployment status got lifted off 20 minutes later and I let out a sigh of relief.

On the very day of 13 September 2011, I officially started work and got to know most of my colleagues. Everyone was friendly to each other and still is until the day I left. Hannah, Ai Ling, Chee Ling, Marianne, Faizah, Anfaal, Kyle, Zie, Esther, Dhashene, Si Yuan and Emma were the first batch of people I knew and later joined by Michelle, Ben and Jasmine. The company was then filled with laughter and interesting topics where most of them were related to Kyle (in a good way of course).



I began writing for Food & Beverage and my very first masterpiece in Everyday.com was Andy Noodles & Bistro selling bitter gourd noodle. Tammy kept calling me Andy that time because she got confused over merchant's name as mine. The following week, I started juggling between F&B and Items such as cook wares, gadgets, photo books, phone accessories, and electronics. Finding maps and reviews for deals were quite a challenge at times and not to mention all the Terms & Conditions could be quite confusing, but we could manage them somehow in the end with our magical abilities.

Merchant Advocates (MA) department was a big help. Without them, we would have to deal with Sales team which means nothing but headache for providing us wrong or inadequate amount of information. Thanks to Noel who started the team, Caroline and Gar Yee as they were the longest and most experienced MA to help clarify and to confirm whether the deal could go live and they'll come back to us if there were changes or amendments. I was quite surprised that Juno came in and joined the MA team but left after almost four months later. Joanne joined and changed to research team later and JC came in to replace her, but he also left earlier this year.

There were quite a number of occasions where we'd go celebrate such as Halloween, birthdays and farewells. The first farewell lunch was held in Tony Romas for KK as he finally ended his internship, and he officially joined Everyday.com as a permanent editor in October after a few weeks of much needed break. The second occasion was in TGIF, The Gardens celebrating Halloween where most of us dressed up to get a free drink. I wasn't around during Christmas but we had some fun time in the Secret Santa session. Besides all these fun events, there were some interesting happenings within our own department.

End of KK's internship.
Halloween Party in TGIF 2011.
Ice skating in Sunway Pyramid.
Tammy's note on the whiteboard while she was on a vacation.
Guessed wrongly for Secret Santa, and I had to carry Tammy but it went the other way instead.
Pictures taken from Tammy, KK, Caroline and almost everyone.

To be continued in the next post.