The End of an Adventure

My internship at Innoverz Ltd. has officially concluded. After a long, seemingly never-ending flight, I have arrived back on Canadian Soil. I have finished up my two projects and reviewed them with my bosses at a meeting last week. I had a meeting on my "official" last day with Danny and Tanky, to explain how to utilize the accounting system and where to find specific features. This was very important as I have almost completely redesigned the system since our last meeting. Many features needed to be adjusted or completely changed to meet the requirements given to me.

Lunch with Innoverz. Ltd.

On Wednesday the whole company went for lunch at a restaurant in Science Park, as a farewell lunch. After my afternoon meeting with Danny and Tanky, we biked to Tai Po and had dinner at a local restaurant. I tried many new, interesting foods including frog and cow intestine. Surprisingly, it tasted really good! After dinner, Danny showed me around Tsim Sha Tsui. There was an amazing view from a restaurant we went to. He also showed me the Hong Kong shoreline and the Avenue of Stars, which is similar to Hollywood's Walk of Fame.

 

View of Hong Kong

 

In the morning I met Elice at the office to have a quick meeting. We essentially went over the same items that I had discussed with Danny and Tanky the day before, but I highlighted some features that would be more useful for her specifically. We intended to meet up again that evening so we could hang out outside of work before I left, but a level eight typhoon hit Hong Kong and most of the city was closed. 

Avenue of Stars - Jet Li's Star & Handprints

Earlier in the week I visited Victoria's Peak, which had an opposite view of Hong Kong than the image I posted above from Tsim Sha Tsui. It was incredibly beautiful at night to see the city lit up. Unfortunately since it is such a major tourist attraction, there were huge lineups to get to the top of the mountain and to return to the city. By the time we got to the top and looked around, most of the stores had closed for the night.

My Office

This concludes my Hong Kong adventure and my internship at Innoverz. Ltd.

 

The "SARS-Free" Beach

Throughout the week I have been working on my existing projects. The accounting system has been progressing smoothly. Although I have had a few issues finding a way to track outstanding invoices, I think I have found a solution that appears to be working so far. The system appears to meet almost every requirement asked of me at my last meeting. We will be having a meeting soon to review it and make sure it meets all of the criteria and their needs.

Shek-O Beach

PopUp Table has been doing very well so far. In the first three days, there were over 30,000 downloads. However this number is a little understated because the number was delayed by the Apple store. However, during the launch day there was a problem with the server that delayed sales. Having information like this from the product launch has been helping me in creating my presentation. It’s always good to have concrete numbers that prove you have a large interest and existing customer base. This way you can show that it’s not just in theory that your people will pay money for your product; they already have.

Shek-O Beach 

Outside of the office, last weekend we went to Shek-O Beach. It is a beach on the outskirts of Hong Kong in the country. We were told that it became popular during the SARS epidemic, there was a rumour that the beach was SARS-free and healthy. Since then, it has become a much more popular beach for locals to visit.

Night out with Danny

We also went out this weekend with some of our bosses. They hung out with us around town on Friday night. On Saturday, my boss Danny took us to a very local karaoke place. It was pretty cool to see the difference between the local hang out places and the tourist ones that I had previously seen. During the week we mostly just did some shopping in markets around the city.  

Karaoke Place

Shanghai & PopUp Table's Official Launch

Popup Table - #1!

Our new product, PopUp Table launched this week on the Apple store, as well as our website http://www.popup-table.com/html/index.php. PopUp Table is a mobile application that allows users to receive discounts of at least 35% off at hotel restaurants in Hong Kong. Yesterday, we had many different people from various Hong Kong press companies coming in to talk about the app. You can see my office in this particular interview http://hk.dv.nextmedia.com/actionnews/local/20120803/16572012/16572643, however I was having lunch so was not at my desk.

Our Hotel In Shanhai

It's really cool seeing how fast the app is growing, in real time. This is especially true with the number of fans on our Facebook page. We have also become the #1 free food and beverage app on the Apple store in just a few short days! We’ve surpassed Openrice, which is a very large, popular company for finding restaurants in Hong Kong.

Shanghai Food- AKA The Best Food Ever

Although I'm not studying marketing, it is still important, especially for accountants, to understand the other areas of the business. This internship is giving me a really good insight in to the functions of IT and marketing departments, something I am sure will be useful later in my career. It's also making me better understand which area of accounting I'd like to go into further into my career. I really enjoy assisting small businesses grow. 

"The Bund" - Shanghai

I had taken some time off at the beginning of this week to visit Shanghai. It reminded me a lot of Toronto, but had some really cool traditional areas with interesting gifts and architecture. It was especially pretty in the evening. It was similar to Hong Kong in some ways, but the language is different (Mandarin instead of Cantonese) and hardly anyone spoke English. This made getting around the city more difficult, but we managed! Our flight to Shanghai was delayed over 10 hours! We spent all day Friday at the Hong Kong airport, and didn’t arrive in Shanghai until 5am!

Cutest Fish Ever! At the Aquarium

Despite the late landing, we still had tonnes of fun; especially at the aquarium. All the fish were really cool especially the jellyfish and one fish that looked like a dragon fruit. Their aquarium had the world’s longest under-tank tunnel.