A New Year Celebration!

New Year’s comes but once a year, so it’s great to make one memorable.

At PointStar, we celebrate Christmas and New Year. This year we celebrated both together but only after the New Year as many of our colleagues were on leaves during the festive season and the team would rather wait for everyone to return to office so we can celebrate this wonderful New Year together. (Thanks to G Suite, the Google Calendar has allowed us to collaborate on team calendars, so we were able to see everyone’s schedule all in one place!)

Although the celebration was scheduled on the 3th Jan 2017 but I am sure everyone heard about 12 days of Christmas, which starts on Christmas day and ends on the 5th January – also known as Twelfth Night. Everyone at PointStar was encouraged to wear christmassy, either dressed up as Christmas character such as an elf, santa, reindeer, or dressed in Green, Red & White Combo

Our team from JB, Malaysia arrived in the afternoon and while waiting for food, everyone mingled around and were excited about the mini party celebration.

The food finally arrived, and we had these oversized pizzas, cupcakes from the famous Twelves cupcakes and delicious chicken wings from Two Wings @ Timbre+ – they were mouth-watering and simply irresistible!

Oversized Pizzas! And a Ninja?

There is always room for desserts!

Chicken wings and cold beer = Perfect match!

After a sumptuous lunch, we had our Secret Santa gift exchange. Prior to the celebration, bits of paper were put into a box and passed it around for everyone to draw a name, who would be the person they were getting a present for.

A celebration without game wouldn’t be fun so we organised “The Human Christmas Tree Game”. A great game for team bonding and help to spur creative thinking. We divided the teams into four groups with one person being the ‘Christmas tree’ and the others were ‘decorators’. Boxes filled with Christmas decorations were given and the team had 15 minutes to decorate their ‘tree’!

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The Human Christmas Trees

There was so much laughter, lots of photos taken and finally the team with the best ‘tree’ was awarded a prize!

Can you guess the winner?

Whenever PointStar celebrates an occasion, be it Christmas, New Year or Deepavali, everyone in the team participates actively and positively. This is the same when it comes to working as a team because the culture in the company has always encourage employees’ participation. Our team of Cloud Support Specialists and Consultants work together to understand a client’s’ business processes and deliver the right solutions to ensure maximum results possible while keeping the price at a reasonable level. Our team of technical deployment team supports businesses in all phases of implementation while our change management team provides companies with the tools, processes and training to successfully navigate through the change, simplifying the move to the cloud. When the project is completed and our clients are happy, our team celebrates the success.

Other than great teamwork, we do have healthy competition as well, such as Ping Pong. (Yes, we do have a Ping Pong Table at our office!)

Our guys had a little exercise after a heavy lunch!

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This was our little mini celebration and it was great to have one to liven up the very first day of work in the New Year!

Our Indonesia team had their Christmas party on the 23 Dec 2016. Besides the usual Secret Santa gift exchange, there was a special game called the Samyang Challenge (Samyang as in Korean spicy noodles, some called it fire noodles). If you have been watching YouTube, you must have seen the challenge videos that were apparently making the rounds on YouTube.

The spicy noodles were mixed with Bon Cabe. Bon Cabe is a type of chilli powder from Indonesia, which delivers the level of spiciness from 1 to 10. Wow does it sounds like adding fuel to the fire?

Are you up for the challenge?
Not all of them took part but most of them did. The rules of the game was not so simple, other than having to finish the fire noodles, the participants were not allowed to drink during or after the challenge, so only the bravest of men would dare try to take up the challenge.

Are you up for the challenge?

Get ready for the insane competition!

Natanael finished the noodles within 60 seconds. Aiyo, look at that smirking face!

With swelling lips and numbing tongues from the spicy noodles challenge, the team was still very excited for their gift exchange and sang songs to wrap up the day of fun and celebration.

Here’s wishing everyone a very happy and prosperous 2017!