The end of a story. The beginning of many.

Dear All,

Time flies.

I ended 3 months internship with Sarawak Oil Palm Berhad (SOPB). There were a lot of wonderful experiences that I gone through and learnt a lot PR practices from my supervisor as well as my executives.

The most enjoyable task that given to me was taking photos during internal and external company’s events. I never used a professional camera to take photos until I entered SOPB. My executive, a professional photographer with more than 8 years experiences, taught me how to use the DSLR camera as well as basic Photoshop skill. He always gives me chances to take photos. These chances explored my communication style as well. As a photographer, I need to stand in front of the public and stay calm in order to take a good photo.

Me behind the DSLR!

Photo taken during Taman LambirJaya Launching

Crowd in the house

Other than photos taking class, I involved in event management as well. Chinese New Year Celebration is the most important festival for Chinese. We organized Chinese New Year and Deepavali Combined Celebrations at our executive chairman’s residence. This was the first time SOPB organized this annual event at his residence and this is a very challenging event for us. We were advised by not doing too grand but not too simple for this event. However, we managed to held this event successfully and a lot of “thumb up” from the participants, especially our top management!

Decoration works in progress

Arranging the food station

Kolam decorations for Chinese New Year and Deepavali Combined Celebration

SOPB annual dinner also held at the end of February. Annual dinner committee team was led by our PR assistant manager. I been assigned a task from him, which was making a 2015 milestones slideshow for the opening of annual dinner! After he expressed the message that needed in the slideshow, I began to prepare the suitable photos to put in the slideshow. Initially I used PowerPoint to compile the photos, but too time consuming. I chose Window Movie Maker then to do the compilation and the video was accepted by them. Until today, I still remember my feeling when I saw my work displayed on the screen and everyone in the hall was watching it.

Screenshot of the Opening Video

February is the busiest month during my internship. Many events in a row and this exercised me the importance of time management as well as teamwork spirit. As a PR practitioner, we always need to expect the unexpected. In this face-pacing industry, none of us knows what will happen tomorrow. Therefore, I bear in my mind that always prepare for challenges. 

Last but not least, some photos during the set up of Chinese New Year decoration to end my blog. 

DIY-ing the decoration item

Hanging the "Tang lung" on the tree

Coloring the "Jing Li Yu"

Figure out how to hang the red cloth on

Final product at the main entrance

"Tang Lung" Tree done as well!

That’s all from me and wish everyone all the best in your future. Thank you and have a great day!

PR Team during the last event - Colour Rush 4.0!

Warmest Regards,

Chung Jia Yiing

17136837 / 7e2a1122

Curtin University Sarawak, Malaysia

Paperworks and Paperworks

Dear all,

Other than Media Monitoring and Festive Decorations, Sarawak Oil Palm Berhad (SOPB) focused on their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Programs as well. As a locally owned business that mainly operated at Sarawak, SOPB put priority on the local communities. They introduced several CSR programs to grow together with local communities, especially areas around planned estates.

The CSR program that I involved during my internship period was named Young Achiever’s Award and Student Adoption Program (namely YAA & SAP). SOPB provided monetary support and non-monetary support (such as school bag and pencil case) to eligible students from the schools that around our estates.

After my executive explained the progresses and requirements of YAA & SAP to me, my first task was updated the detailed list by research the school name, school address and school’s contact person. December was the month that receiving the acknowledge receipts and application forms from the schools. I need to arrange the acknowledge receipts according to the regions as well as alphabets. Other than key in the student details into excel form, my supervisors allowed me to filter the applicants based on my judgment during initial procedure.

Besides that, I also been asked by my supervisor to do research on possible analysts, research their email address and phone number from the website, online documents, banks’ investor relations and their LinkedIn account. This research gave me an opportunity that exercise my judgment on whether the information that I found are updated version or not. 

In my next blog, I will focus more on event planning of SOPB. Stay tuned and have a nice day!

Warmest Regards,

Chung Jia Yiing

17136837 / 7e2a1122

Curtin University Sarawak, Malaysia

So much different form others

Dear all,

I finished my placement at first day of March. I really felt appreciate and grateful that SOPB willing to give me this opportunity to explore public relations practice as well as palm oil industry.

My job scopes are slightly different from others classmates in this blog. Most of my classmates focus on media clippings and various events. I also expected I will have the similar tasks as them.

Our department scans through online media daily but not including offline media such as local newspaper. We only scan through the printed media when we had sent out press release to local press for our events. The local presses that we focused on are Borneo Post, Utusan Borneo and See Hua Daily News. These three presses are having the highest readership coverage in Sarawak.

One of the Borneo Post for media scanning.

The media scanning includes the industry news as well. Initially, we went through the online media and picked the positive industry news for the purpose of sharing to our employees. We sent out the selected industry news and daily motivational quote internally via email in order to boost the motivational level of employee. However, they are now deciding to send out the negative news (such as the market price of palm oil is dropping because of several factors.) to employee because they should aware of every single movement of the industry.

During my internship with SOPB, I been given a task to sort out the documents in the files accordingly. I found out that the year 2015’s newspaper cutting file is not so effective when we want to refer to the old newspaper cutting. 

Some files are waiting to be settle.

I suggested to standardize the format of media clippings rather than just cut and paste the media clippings. My executive agreed and asked me to draft a format out as well as listed out the details needed. I ever did a same thing during Media Relations class so I managed to come out with a format that satisfied by my executive. After he finish amended the format, I started to sort the 2016’s newspaper cutting with the new format.

My media scanning experience is slightly different with others. Looking forward to hear more media scanning methods from this blog.

Warmest Regards,

Chung Jia Yiing

17136837 / 7e2a1122

Curtin University Sarawak, Malaysia

A Challenging Start with SOPB

Dear All,

Hello! My name is Chung Jia Yiing or you guys can just call me Caslyn! I am majoring in Public Relations and Management at Curtin University Sarawak. During my 3 months internship period, I will keep on update my blog together with Sarawak Oil Palm Berhad (SOPB).

As mentioned above, I am working with SOPB, the key player in the Sarawak’s oil palm industry. Since 1968, SOPB expand their business activities to different fields, which closely related to the oil palm. Throughout these few years, SOPB able to stand still as a market leader among their rivalry with the support of efficiency management team.

Figure 1: Sarawak Oil Palm Berhad in the early morning.

The first day of my internship is the final day of my senior, Jaafar. He finished his 20 days internship and pass me his role as a PR intern. After a short introduction, my assistant manager had a quick interview with me. He raised some concerns on me but both of us seems positive to my performance in the future. I really thankful that they are willing to accept me as an intern because I am not familiar with some professional software. However, I believe that I am a fast learner and able to adopt changes in the fast-pacing environment.

Figure 2: My PR Department! 

The first job given to me was to prepare the Christmas’s decoration wordings as Christmas is just around the corner.

Figure 3: The "Christmas" glitter is everywhere!

We took few days to get ready all the decorations and accessories. The photos below show the different decorations at different HQ.

Figure 4: Christmas decorations made up by recycle materials are placed at HQ 1.

Figure 5: Snowball for sale at HQ 2.

Figure 6: A small Christmas tree on my working desk.

Other than involving the set up of decorations, I also involve in SOPB's Corporate Social Responsibility activities, which are Young Achiever Award and Student Adoption Program. SOPB shows their responsibilities by give back to the society. Students with excellent academic performances as well as the extra-curriculum are qualified to deserve their rewards from the company. I had been assigned to do research on the information on schools nearby our estates in order to enhance the usability of our CSR activities. Besides that, I am glad that have an opportunity to learn photography skills from a photographer with more than 8 years’ experience! I am enjoying my time of acquiring image with professional camera. That’s all the first week of my internship with SOPB! 

December is a month of blessing. I wish you all a very merry Christmas!

Warmest Regards,

Chung Jia Yiing

17136837 / 7e2a1122

Curtin University Sarawak, Malaysia