Monday, December 10, 2012

Week 5: Simply "Amazing"!


This was the most amazing week during by whole work placement! Not because it was our county’s national day and we had the 2 days off (Sunday and Monday), but because we were moved to the purchasing & contract section, which was under Mr. Rashid el suwaidi’s supervision.

I went there on Tuesday with Mr.saad who introduced me to him and told him that I will be spending the rest of this week in his department. Mr. Rashid welcomed me in his division and personally taught me everything! He made me sit on his desk, watched over me, and toke me through everything step by step, he explained everything so clearly and made me do almost 35 bills and applications on my own! With him standing right their!  He also quizzed me to make sure that am following with him. During that week, I worked revenue in the morning, and by 10:30 or 11 AM, I used to go to Mr. Rashid's section to work there.

Mr. Rashid is a very organized person; everything in his section is categorized according to something! He taught me how to be organized myself; he started teaching us by words, then showed us an example in real, and finally asked us to try it out by ourselves, then he asked his assistant Mr. Tariq to give us the whole file and to watch us step by step.

 During these 3 days, I learned how to do a large part of the important things in the purchasing & contract section. Now, when someone with a bill walks in, I can easily help him and do the procedures on my own.  We decide to ask Mr.Saad if we could spend more time in this section next week since there is more and now things to learn, hopefully, he will agree and we will be able to spend more time in purchasing.

Week 4: Adopted by " Bassma"!


As for the fourth week, the plan was to work with Ms. Hessa but we did not do anything in the accounts payable area, we were still stuck in revenue counting money and calculating cheques, and every time we ask Ms. Hessa to actually give us work, she says that she’s really busy with more urgent matters and she might give us something to do after 1 or 2 hours!! But even that did not happen! We spend most of the week in revenue.
Also, that was the week of celebrating the national day in the land department, so we helped them decorate. in the last 3 days of the week, we would work in revenue in the morning, and go down to watch the celebrations and the activities of the national day afterwards . we also toke a tour guided by Ms. Bassma who was kind enough to adopt us this week to shows us how does Dubai Land Department  celebrate the national day (Ms. Bassma is in “ Union Spirit” team which is responsible for national day celebrations and activities). On Thursday was the formal actual celebration where everyone in Dubai land department was done working By 10 Am and attended the big celebration! it was a large well organized celebration with lots of traditional activities.

Week 3


For week 3 of my work placement, my initial plan was to spend the entire week working in revenue with Ms.Maryam. But that was not the exact case because Maryam was on leave for that week. She had already told us that she won’t be here a week earlier, so we thought that we were the ones who will do her job until she comes back. Usually our office is not crowded, but for this week it was.

We were surprised to find out that there will be a meeting in the office!  For the entire week! On the first day of the week , Ms. Maitha was not there , (or she was late), usually, if Maryam wasn’t around Maitha is the one who gives us work, but both of them weren’t available . Truth be told , Mr,Saad did asked us to do some of Maryam’s job but he did not trust us with the money and the cheques, he asked the people who work in the cashier to calculate everything and  only give us the cheques to enter in the excel! Though we used to do that every day since we started working her! This really bothered us.

Most of the time, we were just siting their doing nothing, until we decided to do something and literally beg for work! Ms. Hessa who works with Accounts Payables, was kind enough to give some work. She only gave us bills to check and to entire in to the Oracle system, plus we did what we always do, which is working with revenue, Ms. Maitha was the one who toke most of Ms. Maryam’s work and we did the same work we used to do before.

Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Week (2)


For my second week, I was supposed to spend the entire week working with budgets, but that was not the case. I spend 2 days in revenue and the other 2 days in budgeting,. That’s because it’s the end of the year and all the budgeting is almost done, so there was not much to do in that matter. But Ms. Kawthar was super nice and toke me through the whole process again and showed me how she did the budgeting for 2013. Some of the things and terms she used were familiar to me, things I already learned in college, but there were some new financial terms like “master budget” and “budget amendment “ that weren’t so familiar.

Mainly in the 2 days I spent in revenue,  I did the same things I did last week , plus I learned how to do the banks settlement’s which is something I really enjoyed doing. I also learned how to do the sheet for combine cheques.  

One thing I didn’t like about my situation in Dubai land is that there is no space for us to work in, no computers and sometimes no calculators. In the first week, there was always someone absent from the actual employees so I used their desk and their PC. But now that everyone is back; it is hard to find a place work in. most of the work depends on the computers or the calculators, so we sometimes find ourselves with nothing to due to the equipment shortage.  

Also in this week, I noticed that everyone is starting to get used to the idea of me and my friend Noura working there. We were shy at first but once we got to know them they turned out to be really nice and extremely helpful. Mr.saad keeps on asking me when is my mentor coming and all the girls I work with keep on giving notes and information about the things I should put in my project. It is really nice environment to work in.
 
 
This is my plan for the worplacment period

Thursday, November 8, 2012

My first week


This was the first week of my work placement, I work in the finance department of Dubai land Department . I was assigned to this place because the department I work in can offer me an experience that matches my major, which is financial services and banking .at first I was very scared and nervous about my new workplace, but once I arrived there, and got to know everyone things started looking up and all my worries wore gone!




For this week, my main task was to calculate the income of Dubai land for the previous day. My trainer , Ms. Maryam showed me that there is a daily report which  shows exactly how much each employee earned each day, my task is to make sure that all the cash, cheques  and credit card receipts shows the exact amount which is in the system (report), after that, take the cash and deposit it in the cashier. Then, I move to the cheques, I organize all the cheques according to their bank and but every 25 cheque in a excel sheet until I finish all the cheques (the EXCEL requires the following data)
1- Name of the bank
2- Cheque date
3- Cheque number
4- Cheque amount
Afterward, I insert each cheque amount in the (Oracle system) and ensure that the total amount matches the total of the excel sheets.
This was in summery all the things I did in my first week, am really looking forward to my next week so that I can learn more new things.
For now, everything is going very well, the people I work with are nice and the place is comfortable, and hopefully things won’t change until I finish the 5 more weeks I have left.