I scanned the hordes of Filipinos chatting happily at the arrival hall of the Ninoy Aquino International Airport, looking anxiously for my name on a placard, but finding none.  For the next hour and a half, I walked up and down the arrival hall several times, lugging my 25-kg luggage along, at the end of which I decided that my supervisor, Mr Kevin Chee, must have forgotten all about me and my arrival.
 
That was my first day in the Philippines.
 
Despite this inauspicious start, the timing could not have been better for me to perform my professional attachment in the Philippines.  The Keppel Group acquired a local thrift bank, formerly known as Monte de Piedad Savings Bank that had collapsed and had a bank run a week before the professional attachment was supposed to start.  Upon my arrival, instead of performing the assignment that was stated in my training programme, I was assigned to the bank to help out in performing a diligence audit.  It was really good exposure for me because it is not often that one gets to be involved in turning a bank around from being in the red.
 
It was a bonus for me when I realised that there was a group of Singaporeans from Keppel working on the job as well.  Working together with them as a team did help to eliminate some of my homesickness.  All of us worked hard, putting in twelve hours of work every weekday and six hours on Saturdays.  We were even working on Philippines’ Independence Day, a public holiday!
 
During the eight weeks of attachment, I looked into the various types of loans that were given out by the bank, for example, jewellery loans, real estate loans and so on.  I tried to understand the nature of these loans and the accounting procedures for such loans because some of these loans are not given out by banks in Singapore.  For example, several of the loans given out by the bank were totally clean loans, something normally unheard of in Singapore.
 
I was also involved in the treasury operations of the bank, analysing the manager’s checks that were issued by the bank and determining the amount of cash inflows and outflows for certain departments of the bank.  I had the opportunity to perform a visual audit and to observe an inventory stocktake too (a case of textbook theory being experienced firsthand).
 
Things get done much slower in the Philippines, due to the fact that the people here have a more relaxed attitude towards work and that a lot of procedures are still being done manually.  There is no networking of the computer at all in the bank; only stand-alone personal computers are available.  Thus the computer system does not provide much help in generating the reports that we need.
 
The locals speak English with a very different accent.  And they use different terms to describe certain things.  For example, I had problems finding a restroom because there are only comfort rooms in the Philippines.  The locals will always end every sentence with a ‘Yes, Ma’am.’ I have become more patient and understanding even as I realise that all these are part of being in another different culture. My Singaporean counterparts and I always had a good laugh when we recounted the experiences that we had in communicating with the locals.
 
Accommodation was provided by the company and I had the luxury of staying in a three-bedroom apartment all by myself.  Because of the heavy traffic conditions in Manila, there was a driver to fetch me to and from work.
 
There were opportunities for me to sample the local food and Filipinos like to cook food in their own ways.  They have things like snails cooked in coconut juice, which are so different from what we can get in Singapore.  The diet here consists mainly of rice and deep fried meat; vegetables and noodles are rare.  It took me a lot of courage to eat the ‘baluk’, which is the one-day foetus of a half developed duck!
 
The staff working at the bank were nice enough to take me out to visit places of interest in the Philippines.  I went to tourists’ places of interest like the Nayong Filipino, where there are man-made replicas of famous places in the Philippines, and the Enchanted Kingdom which is the local version of Disneyland.
 
An unique experience that I had was being caught in a flood that came during the fourth week of the attachment.  There were thunderstorms and it was raining cats and dogs everywhere.  There was water in the low lying areas and I could see that houses were half submerged in muddy rainwater.  Vehicles were stuck in the middle of the road, unable to move.  A holiday was declared because a lot of people could not get to their work place at all.
 
I have learnt to be really independent during this trip.  I was all alone there and night time could be pretty lonely.  I spent those nights in the apartment reading the books that I had brought or doing some cross-stitch.  I have also come to realise how important my family is to me.  I would encourage everyone who has the opportunity to go overseas for his/her attachment to grab it; it is an experience that money cannot buy.
 
I want to express my heartfelt gratitude to my supervisor in the Philippines, Mr Kevin Chee, for his hospitality; my NTU supervisor, Dr Ashish Lall for his care and concern;  and Keppel Group Human Resource Manager, Mrs Teo Khai Yang, for giving me the opportunity to perform my professional attachment overseas.  I want to thank the staff at OPA too for the help that they had rendered.