We received some enquiries about why we organize monthly gathering at Tea Joy, so we have sorted them out, and made them into the following FAQs:

Q: Why monthly first Friday gathering?
A:
i) It started about 5-6 years ago, as a simple gathering for alumni to catch up with old friends.
ii) It became a regular event, on first Friday of every month, as it was convenient for people to remember.
iii) The monthly gathering has also become sort of like an "AIESEC clinic", a good avenue for students to seek advice from alumni. Once a month is quite an ok committment from a regular group of alumni. If extra help is needed, individual alumni can meet up with the student group at a seperate session.

Q: Why Tea Joy?
A:
i) venue is central and near MRT
ii) the owner makes space for us every first friday ( he will inform his other regulars not to come on this day)
iii) welcomes us irregardless of whether we have a small group and a massive crowd, ( it has ranged from 1-2 to 30-40)
iv) opens till extra late if we r having a long meeting (occasionally we r there even up till near midnight),
v) charges a nominal $5 for free flow of tea ( their normal minimum spending is $5.50, and no free flow),
vi) allows us to move around the whole shop, taking up almost all tables,
vii) allows us to make a lot of noise (including roll calls),
viii) Game boards are provided. We can even play card mahjong (a fav amongst some trainees)
ix) does not scold us if we bring birthday cake to celebrate people's birthday ( by right, we r not supposed to bring outside food)
In fact, this is not the first owner. This place was formerly another teahouse called Tea Charm by another owner. We managed to secure the deal with Tea Charm, and when Tea Joy took over, we continued to negotiate the same deal.

Q: Why Tea Joy every month?
A: To make it easy for everyone to remember
It has since become such a regular thing that even our overseas friends (former trainees, oversea AIESECers etc) would know where to look for us, if they happen to be in Singapore near first friday of the month.

Q: Why paper cups?
A: We requested for them from the owner, to solve the problem of cup confusion since our people move around a lot, so that you can write your name on your cup. Also, easier to gulp down cold tea (often the preferred choice by AIESECers)
If you want to be served with the traditional small tea cups ( or even the whole tea set so that you can try the traditional tea-making process yourself), that is available upon request too.

Q: I have not had dinner?
A: There are some simple food available at Tea Joy. There is also a huge variety of food outlets nearby for you to choose from.

Q: Why not other places?
A: We have always been exploring and looking out. After all, we don't know if Tea Joy will be there forever ( or whether we will be shooed out one day for being too noisy, haha). However, we haven't been successful in finding a replacement venue.

NOTE: When one of our alumni opened a eatery at Marina Square, we tried alternating between there and Tea Joy for a few months. However response was poor during the non-Tea Joy sessions, and feedback was that people preferred we fix it at Tea Joy every month.

Q: Why not somewhere that have more F&B choice, eg a foodcourt?
A:
i) Most of such places ( eg starbucks, foodcourt) dun have enough seats to accomodate a big group of us on a friday night.
ii) Most of these places (eg fast food restaurant) will shoo us away if many of us dun order anything
iii)Some of these places dun open late
iv) Places like pubs which are quite free n easy, might have minimum spending, which is not cheap. (also,some of our people dun drink)

Q: Why not book a venue that allows us to have the place exclusively?
A: We r unable to guarantee the number of people coming. If too few people, we suffer a huge loss or each person present have to split by a lot.

NOTE: We do this during our Annual Friends-of-AIESEC Meet cum AGM, which we r more or less confident of getting around 50 persons to turn up.

Q: Why not a new place every month?
A: Need more effort to source for venue and more effort in publicity.

NOTE: Once a year, we try something different, that is during Jan/Feb, depending on Chinese New Year.
We will organize a session at a hotel lounge, in replacement of the monthly tea joy gathering. Cost usually range from $9-$25 pax, depending on what drink u order.
We r more certain of numbers during this CNY gathering, coz it is homecoming for alumni who work overseas, so usually we can reserve about 15 seats with the lounge.

Q: I want to organize my own monthly gathering, my own way?
A: Definitely you r welcome! If you want to extend your invitation to all alumni, do email your invite to us at aalumnisg@yahoo.com, and we will help you forward it to our mailing list.