Being among the leaders

Two weeks ago I flew off to Dubai to attend Annual World Takaful Conference with another colleague. I took my family with me because I couldn't bear the thought of leaving my 1 year old baby at home for a week. That's one and the other reason is I was lazy to manage my EBM (expressed breast milk) and to fly the packets back to Malaysia.

I managed to convince my husband to come along with me, and to take care of Iris during my conference which only took about 1 and a half day. Anyway we stayed at the hotel where my conference was held, so no biggie. I even went up during lunch time to help put Iris to nap. Or maybe I wasn't helping hahah.. because before I went up I saw the two was happily watching elmo on you tube. Of course she was happy to see me then I put her to nap, and went back down to my conference. When she woke up about half hour later only to see that I was not around, hubby said she went bananas. Luckily the second half of the day took only about 1.5 hours or so. Don't ask me what hubby did when Iris went bonkers, the most important thing is, THUMBS UP to my husband, for passing the test of being alone with the baby for the whole day.

Anyway, my experience going to the conference was great. There were only few representatives from Malaysian companies, and they were all CEOs, MDs, paling cikai pon Heads of department. I was probably the youngest there, and people pay little attention to me, probably wondering if I was in the wrong course.

 

Before I left my previous job, I was contemplating because I was slowly climbing up the corporate ladder, meeting with regulators, consultants, and other peers, I thought I was losing it all. But I guess, I feel even better now that I am in the supervision line, not only I get to meet the leaders of our Malaysian companies, I get to meet the leaders of multinational companies. What an amazing feeling.

Although I admit it was a bit tiring, trying to act professional and matured altogether, I was kinda proud of myself getting the opportunity to mingle with these great people. And I must tell you something that really made me prouder, women were probably less than 10% of the total attendees, and this malay lady, a managing director from an asset management company in Malaysia, was one of the speaker for the second day. She went up the stage with red kurung modern, so elegant, tak main la black blazer. Tinggi mana pun kita, jangan lupa angkat darjat melayu. chewah.