Internship in Khazanah, KL

It's about time to blog again, I guess, after nearly a month! I hardly have the inspiration or time to blog nowadays because I'm working (hence the title of this post) and I'm generally occupied from 7.30am till 7.30pm. Work time is about 8-9 hours but the extra time is for lunch, travelling, etc.

I'm having a homestay with a kind friend of mine here in KL, for which I'm grateful (it is awfully hard to find a place to rent for 6 weeks as most contracts require 2 months' advance payment) - the house is close enough to an Ampang Line LRT station to make getting around KL easy for me, although not in the case when the LRT system breaks down, which unfortunately, happened 5 days ago. This favour, I will find hard to repay in kind. I take the LRT (Ampang line) 6 stations to Masjid Jamek, and switch to the Kelana Jaya line and go to KLCC. I work at level 33 of Petronas Twin Towers, Tower 2. Bird's eye view of Kuala Lumpur!

I've also learnt to take the LRT pretty well, and there may be plans to introduce a RM36 billion MRT system in KL soon to ease the congestion and dampen Malaysia's record of one of the highest levels of car ownership in the world. I hope this project goes well, because I spent 2 hours in a taxi the other day just getting to the aforementioned friend's house from KL Sentral. The traffic jams are abominable, but better than those in Cairo (more on my Egypt trip in another post).

Anyway, the work environment and human capital at Khazanah, where I'm interning, is first-class. Business wear is mandatory (long-sleeved shirt, tie, suit), but colleagues are friendly and informal. Everyone addresses each other by first names, and there's plenty of friendly banter during work. Although I'm intern, my "colleagues" always invite me for lunch with them. Yesterday, my superior and scholarship coordinator (for the lack of a better or correct term), Puan Suhayati, met myself and 2 other Yayasan Khazanah scholars for lunch. We spoke about Khazanah's recent round of scholarship interviews and tests, and the work culture at Khazanah.

Now, all Khazanah employees get a free Blackberry and 3G services and are required to check their email on the go. However, they are not obligated to reply to emails on Saturdays and Sundays. They get 22 days' leave a year, and unused leave can be forwarded to the next year. You might call it 44 days' leave every 2 years, then. Also, meetings are rather informal - I attended a breakfast meeting at Starbucks the other day! This was so that team members within a department could update each other on things without the bother of office phones ringing or fax machines beeping. Sometimes, however... when people are using Blackberries during meetings, it may be to update Facebook statuses!

The first day I was here, the IT department immediately gave me a HP desktop with a 21-inch screen - it's awesome for Excel spreadsheets and Youtube (which is not, by the way, blocked in Khazanah's computers. Neither is http://www.blogspot.com/ banned, which is why I'm here now. Even more surprisingly, http://www.facebook.com/ is not banned). However most webmail websites are banned, including hotmail. Khazanah happens to be a fan of Facebook, as Puan Suhayati tells me. Also provided was a swivel chair, office phone with a manual (that teaches you how to make conference calls, etc), a three-layer tray with all the stationery that I'll ever need, and a tour of Khazanah's office floors in KLCC. Facility-wise, it's top-class.
I also have a clearance card which can access most of the departments except for the Investment floor.

My work is considered private and confidential so I will not elaborate on the nature of my work here - for otherwise I might find myself named as a defendant in a lawsuit for allegations of insider trading, or some such.

So far, so good; and Khazanah is purported by my colleagues to be one of the best places in Malaysia (or more specifically Kuala Lumpur) to work, especially if you're young and driven. Since I intend to return to Kuching some day, though, I don't know how long I will work here after I serve my bond. I may be rotated to other Khazanah departments or companies under the Khazanah portfolio - especially CIMB since my interest is in finance/economics, and Black Swan theory.

Oh, and I have a holiday reading list of mostly economics books to trawl through. That, the internship, and some Cambridge University Malaysian Society financial issues should keep my holiday occupied.

All told.. I'm taking a break from work for lunch!