#7

In my first post, I talked about communication as something difficult to master and I hope to understand more about communicating effectively with others. With regards to communications as something difficult to master, it still holds. But with regards to communicating effectively, I definitely learned a lot. Through all the blog posting, resume creation, survey report and the presentation, I am now equipped with so many transferable skills as compared to many other modules I took. Although the learning process was rather tedious and time-consuming, on hindsight, it was worth the while.

Of all the things I learned, I am glad to say that I written communication is the most useful of all. I have always wanted to improve my writing skills but just did not know where to start. Now, after this course, I finally realized where my writing flaws are through the 7Cs of writing. For me, I tend to be incoherent and incomplete in my writing and that was rather evident in my first post. After reading it again, my thoughts are not linked properly and it did not flow like I wish it would. I realised that good writing is when the reader goes "Ohh..." after reading it. When I write, I tend to focus on the big picture and leave out details. After this course, I know that details cannot be left out and one has to be complete in his writting so that the actual meaning is carried across. The fact that I naively assumed that the reader will imply and reach the same conclusion as me is flawed, very flawed. Now, I seemed to be more sensitive to bad writing than I am before! This is good news; I finally know where to start on improving my writing and the next step is to actually practice it on all my written work.

To end this post, I wish to say a great big thank you to the whole class for all the comments in class and to my blog. Kudos to sensei Brad for providing all the insights into our work and teaching us so much through your personal experiences. Lastly, to the 2 angels in my group for being the best teammate ever!

Me, Myself and I

At first, I thought how hard can a 100 word bio data of myself be. In the end, I spent almost 4 hours churning this out...enough said.

I grew up in a city that advocates meritocracy, efficiency and conformity. Those values combined with my education have shaped me into a determined, organized, conscientious and independent individual. I believe in doing things right the first time and constantly refreshing one’s knowledge to keep abreast of our expanding world. Although my dominant traits have the makings of a good researcher, my dream since secondary school, I am still humbly learning from experienced university lecturers now. Eventually I envision myself to be a well-loved researcher cum lecturer who is enthusiastic in pushing the frontiers of life science and imparting valuable knowledge to students. (101 words)

Looking forward to all your comments!

Reflections...

It’s too rushed! This project has been a pain in the ass since it started; every step of the report was done in such a limited amount of time! Probably it’s the way I do things, but I just feel very time-constrained in every step of the project. This module has got to have the most workload as compared to any of the modules I’ve taken so far in NUS.

However, having complained, I have discovered much about the importance of planning workflow through this project. When our group was working on combining each of our parts, I realized that it was tough. The reason being that we did our own parts by ourselves without discussing much with each other. Hence we had a hard time in making sure that our whole essay had the same tone and style. I learned that we could meet up more frequently for short meetings (2-3hrs) to complete a single task instead of having long meetings (>8hrs) to accomplish many tasks simultaneously.

Long meetings tend to exhaust an individual exponentially against time. Thought processes will also be snuffed out by the long hours of excruciating work. Any wonderful ideas will be impeded by the exhaustion leading to a creation of a dull project. Short meetings would be the opposite and gives the individual adequate time to think through a single task. Since exhaustion would not have taken place, it provides additional time frame for the member to think through the task at its own pace.

There are many details that I have picked up in terms of communication in a group. I suppose it’s because of the way this module is structured; we tend to focus more on professionally bringing across our ideas. Through this path, I unknowingly changed the way I bring across ideas and my thought process to my group members. It’s rather difficult to really pinpoint these changes; I jus know it is changed for the better.

All in all, planning an integrated workflow, setting short meetings and some improvement in my communication was what I learned through this report writing. Although I would need more practices of such nature to sharpen my tools, I hope these skills that I have learned will be applicable when I am working in the future.

Blog post 4: Evaluating Intercultural Behaviour

It was 9.40am at Engineering Block 4, as usual I was waiting for Bus C that heads toward science for my 10am class. The wait as usual was long and I took a sit at the bench, listening to songs on my MP3 player. A conversation between a Chinese male in his 40s and Malay male in his 60s broke out. Being the “kay po” “inquisitive” me, i quickly paused my music to spy on their conversation.

*digression* After taking up Bahasa Indo in NUS, i started to cultivate this habit of “actively” listening in on conversations in Malay or Bahasa Indo. My girlfriend says this habit of mine has become an obsession cause I rarely listen to her when Malays or Indonesians are talking.

So the conversation sort of proceeds like this in my weak translation.

Malay Male, in his 60s (MM), in no way am I referring to the great Minister Mentor.
Chinese Male, in his 40s (CM)

CM: In a rather commanding tone, shoulders pulled back and a posture that i feel is abit too straight. His position is too far from MM such that he had to raise his voice a little.

“Sesudah kerja anda selesai di sini, cuci toilet di lantai dua ar” - “After you finish your work here, clean the toilet at level 2”

MM: Head and body turning away from the CM, eyes closed and hands raised up making a sweeping movement.

“ Tak tahu, Tak tahu la” - “Don’t know, don’t know la”

The conversation ended with the MM walking away from the CM towards his store room. The CM walked away without much expression.

This incident shows quite a bit of tension between the both of them and the frustration of the CM not being able to do anything much about this incident is evident. To me, this incident can be dissected into 3 levels though not all are related to intercultural communication. First, a relationship between a supervisor and the worker. Second, is the issue of intercultural tension. Lastly, the issue of age difference.

First, looking at a supervisor and worker level, a worker must follow the instructions of his supervisor so that things can be done. By turning his back on him and making a sweeping movement with his hands shows a strong non-verbal reply to the supervisor. To me, the combination of his non-verbal gestures mean that he does not like the supervisor allocating such tasks to him. Also, the commanding tone, his posture and his distance away from the worker of the supervisor does not help at all.

Next, on the issue of intercultural relationship. From what I have gathered from talking to my Malay friends and Malay taxi drivers, they feel discriminated against by the Chinese. The general consensus is that they feel the average Chinese in Singapore, being more educated and rich, tend to look down on them. With regards to our conflict, I feel that the above statement is sort of a reflection of my previous statement. However, I cannot be sure of this since I am not involved neither do I know the personally. The CM with his condescending way of asking the MM to perform tasks represents a serous issue that has to be solved. This behavior of the Chinese population in Singapore I feel is not adequately addressed by government agencies. I am not implying that the campaigns to promote racial harmony in Singapore is not effective. Giving credits to our government, these campaigns are effective in that it has reduced racial conflicts to a bare minimum but the attitude that I have discussed is not targeted. Actually, through another module “Introduction to Japanese Studies”, I realised that this kind of less violent and more subtle form of racism is also present in Japan. Perhaps this is a recurring problem in Asia which has links to our culture and way of dealing with matters.

Lastly, less evident would be the tension of an elderly being ordered around by a younger person. In Asia or at least the Malay culture, an elderly person should be treated with respect. The younger CM, according to me, did not show much respect for the Malay elder. In my opinion, if the younger male were to get the elder male to do things, he should be more polite and use more courteous words like “please” or “thank you”.

I did not have the chance to talk to both parties and I suppose they would not want to talk about it. Also, I do not feel comfortable giving comments on this event as I do not know the full situation. I just feel that intercultural relationship rank tops on the sensitivity scale. To be able to treat such relationship properly, the least anyone can do is just be courteous even though you might not feel like it. Just be like our Courtesy Lion, always put on a smile!

Sarah Palin, The Large Hadron Collider and The Hackers

The Large Hadron Collider
Sarah Palin
David Kernell, the hacker

Sometimes its difficult to understand a person's non-verbal actions. In our course, we learn methods to decrypt the actions of others based on orthodox reasoning. However there are certain groups of people that do not operate in our sphere of social mechanism. The group that I will be focusing on will be the hackers. Most of the time they hack into high profile systems to gain reputation or mostly just out of fun. It is also not shocking to know that some do it for the monetary gains by selling the hacked information.

Sarah Palin, Governor of Alaska, sends out sensitive information via email to other government agencies on a daily basis. Instead of using the secure government server, she used a web-based Yahoo! email client to send confidential emails. If she had understood the general characteristics of hackers, she would have known she's a sitting duck waiting to be shot. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), capable of exciting a single proton to such a speed that some say a dark hole could be formed when 2 of them struck together, was also hacked by a group of hackers from Greek. According to reports, they were only a hairline away from gaining control of the whole system. The result would be catastrophic according to the engineers from LHC. Similarly, had they thought about what might hackers do to their $8 billion machine, they would have taken precautionary measures to be well protected.

We learn alot on how to present ourselves to others but equally important is how we should receive others. This may make me sound overly paranoid but we should equip ourselves with skills to understand these groups of people as well. Such skills are more of a preempt reaction that provides us with a shield that protects against these people.

*Note: With the incident of Sarah Palin in mind, getting a good password for your senstive accounts is extremely important. Bytes Interactive is a website I chanced upon that provides suggestions for good passwords.

Survey survey survey

Hey peeps!

Our group has done our survey! Please head on to our survey and give us a hand!

Environmentally Sustainable Business Practices

Sustainability: Business context

Background

In America, the U.S. Green Building Council has launched the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating program. This rating program encourages big companies to build their offices such that it can cut down energy usage. Genzyme Corporation’s 12-story headquarters in Massachusetts used 42% less energy and 34% less water than standard buildings of comparable size.

Also, Apple has refined their product design and manufacturing process to produce products that are more energy efficient thereby saving energy as you use the product.

Business Sustainability

From Green Earth campaigns to the recent 10% Energy Challenge to reduce household electricity usage, Singapore has done quite an impressive job in educating the population. However, I feel that such activities focus a lot inculcating individual responsibility of being environmentally healthy. There has not much emphasis on how to apply such habits on a business level. Looking at factories in Beijing, the China government had to halt many smoke bellowing factories from operation just to clear up the air for the Beijing Olympics. If the designers of their factories were more green savvy, this incident would not be necessary. In Singapore’s context, we have regulations in place for companies to be more environmental friendly, however I feel is not known wide enough among the NUS population.

According to the NUS Graduate Employment report 2001, almost 95% of NUS students go on to take up high paying jobs ($30 000 to $40 000 annual income). Their positions can exert certain kind executive influence over their departments (more research and data has to be acquired for this statement to be substantiated). The point is that, if the graduates have sufficient knowledge on this area, they can implement ideas or techniques on sustainability onto processes in the company. Hence, to start educating the undergraduates before they graduate would be a good time frame for them to understand this role.

This leads me to my research topic,

"Do NUS students have adequate knowledge about environmentally techniques for sustaining business."

My objective of the survey is to determine how much of the population in NUS knows about environmentally friendly ideas and techniques for sustaining business. Following which, it is crucial in determining the attitude of students towards this issue. Determining how concerned they are about sustainability in business would allow the relevant bodies to design tailored campaign. The 150-200participants would be undergraduates from any of the 4 major universities in Singapore namely NUS, NTU, SMU and SIM.

This report is targeted at the NUSSU Students Against Violation of the Earth (SAVE) and the Campus Sustainability Committee. (CSC) Hopefully through this report, they will bring in focus the idea of educating NUS students about business sustainability.

Edit of 1st post

Think the 2nd paragraph of my first post was rather unclear. So I edited it abit, hope its clearer now.

Alice and Nicole

Conclusion

Well, thanks for all the comments and inputs. The ending to this story is actually a very sad one. Alice and Nicole did not talk about this incident and no closure to this problem was ever attempted. Jack and Nicole got involved in an accident, Jack survived, Nicole died. This situation has really taught me something deep. Any conflicts be it big or small should be settled asap. This situation could have been resolved if they really really sat down and talked about it. This incident has left Alice very remorseful even up till now.

Story of Alice and Nicole

This problem actually happened to 2 of my best female friends, which I am going to name Alice and Nicole.

Alice and Nicole were best of friends since secondary school. When they were studying in polytechnic, they used to work as waitresses at a restaurant. They enjoyed each other’s company very much and had a good relationship; at least that was what Nicole thought.

There was a guy (I’ll call him Jack) at their workplace that Alice started to fall in love with. Alice liked Jack a lot so she was always talking to him and they often went for supper after work with Nicole. After awhile Alice had the idea that Jack was also into her. However that was not the case, Jack had in fact fallen for Nicole and had started to woo her. (At this point I should clarify that both Jack and Nicole did not know that Alice likes Jack. Also, I am not sure if Jack had done anything to lead Alice into thinking that he likes her.)

The problem comes when Nicole and Jack got together. Alice got so mad at Nicole and started to spread evil rumors about Nicole and even blogged about her snatching away her “boyfriend” Jack. Things got out of hands and news spread to Nicole. Judging by how angry Nicole got, we knew their relationship is hanging by the thread.

What should all the 3 parties do? I wonder if anyone of them could have prevented this from happening.

*Digression

Being a science geek, I was searching through the web for definitions of interpersonal problems and the science of it. Stumbled upon this very interesting paper “Interpersonal Problems and Interpersonal Expectations in Everyday Life”. I read its introduction and discussion and going by the gist of it, this paper is very engaging, but sadly I am not knowledgeable enough to fully comprehend.

First of many

When I was a training sergeant in the army, this particular instructor never fails to instill these two phrases into our heads. “Always take cover” and “Never get exposed to friendly fire”. During one of our training missions, we were confronted by a group of rebels with heavy firepower. In the midst of our tactical advance, I was faced with a dilemma of either taking cover behind a small rock that could barely cover my face, or behind a big tree and risk myself being exposed to friendly fire. Desperate as I am, I made a choice but to my shocking surprise that instructor kicked me in the head.

I guess being in stressful situations can really cloud our decision-making skills. On hindsight, was it really my lousy decision-making skills that got me kicked or was the instructions that were unclear? In my defense, I really think that its the way the instructions was dished out by my instructor. He used 'always' and 'never' in both the phrases signify that either instruction was correct. Using extremities in language has been a taboo and one should avoid that when possible. I was faced with the two phrases that had extreme words in it. Making it difficult for me to make a decision because both phrases are true. I can hide behind both a tree or behind a rock and still be correct, so why did I get punished?

Communication to me is like an evolving virus, the more I understand it, the more complex it becomes. Passing on messages, interpreting ideas, displaying feelings and many more forms of communication have all infected our life. All of us have performed such actions before but I feel not many have fully understood it. I realized many of us have a perception that we are communicating effectively but that’s not usually the case. In a workplace context, the need to comprehend communication becomes even more obvious. The need to pass on message to other colleagues with clarity, presenting winning ideas to merchants and most importantly to convey messages to your boss (pay rise anyone?). Complex as it might be, we have to make sure our arsenal of skills in communication is fully equipped and ready to deploy.

Till now, I still have not fully grasp the idea of effective communication. Hopefully I will understand it soon enough and become a professional at the art of communication.

Oh, by the way, I chose the rock as my cover.

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