First Day at Work in CIMB Research

Today I started my 2 month long internship at CIMB. They put me in the Research Department, to my delight. Having always wished to work in equity research, it was like a dream come true. I found this out in Melb and I was totally hysteric and just overcome with happiness. So now I finally got to realise my dream.

The first day at work wasn't busy at all. Turns out that 80% of the staff was still on year-end holidays. So I was just given many reports to read and find out more about research. Other than that, I got to know many nice people in order:-

Heng Guie - he is the head of economics in the research department. They cover macroeconomic trends in helping their research. Their work is of the highest quality and I am mightily impressed. He was nice to me and gave me work to do when I had nothing to do. He's around his late 40s and has a typical Malaysian Chinese accent.

Julia - she is the senior manager of economics. She was the most friendly person I met there. Turns out that she also did her degree and masters in Melbourne Uni! So we had so much in common, and we even had the same professors! What's more, we found out that we did the same course (BCom) and did the same majors (Econs and Finance). She moved back to KL to work since Melb and have been working in research ever since. She's the type whom can communicate very well with people and is easy going and friendly.

Kelvin, Nigel, Seh Siang, Raymond - The four of them are analysts in the research department. They know so much about industry and I wish I can learn more from them. I wish I could be as good as them one day. They set the standard to which a new analyst should try and achieve. Kelvin, Raymond and Nigel won the best analyst award in malaysia in their respective sectors.

Ireen - She is the closest to my age that I know of. Shes a sweet 20 something year old girl who did her degree in a local uni, did her masters in a UK uni, did a 6 month internship at E&Y, then is undergoing the management trainee program at CIMB with experiences in 4 departments including Private Banking, Business Banking, Corp Fi and Research. Hope to get to know more about her, and maybe we'll be sharing some work.

The people all treated me really nice. Although they tried to scare me out of research by telling me that I have made the wrong choice and everything. It didn't work though. Since Kelvin and Nigel just found out that they were the best in their sectors, they decided to treat us for lunch. Kelvin drove us all the way to Curve and we had lunch in an expensive restaurant. He treated us all. I ordered a Nasi Lemak, the best malaysian dish ever. Then we headed off to Starbucks for a coffee. This was the best company outing ever. All in all, we dined about 3 hours, when we finally headed off to the office again. This normally doesn't happen, only on days like this when there is a reason to celebrate and everyone is quite free.

I enjoyed my first day there. They even gave me my own PC to use and my email which is joshua.ng@cimb.com . Only cimb people can send emails to me though, sorry bout that. They set it that way. And I also love driving to and fro from work. Gives me freedom to use the car. I found that they start work at 7am and finish at 7pm. I hope its not too hectic, but certainly looking forward to it. Raymond already promised to give me some work next week so I can't wait.