Life without Limbs - Nick Vujicic

I was able to meet this gentleman, Nick Vujicic in Singapore Expo yesterday. He (born December 4, 1982) is a motivational speaker and the director for Life Without Limbs, an organization that is for the physically disabled.

more on
http://www.lifewithoutlimbs.org/

Nick @ Yahoo! Video

Blog Post #7 - Final Reflection

I just cannot believe that we have finally come to the end of this semester. A 3000-point bidden module that I find it is worthwhile since I see myself improving from it despite the heavy workload from this module.

I would like to express my greatest gratitude towards Brad and everyone in the class, especially my project teammates Liang Fu, Kheng Aik and Joyce. I have never ever stayed for an academic project meeting that last me till 11pm in my entire course of my study, that was my first time staying so late for an academic project meeting and yet it was fun and unforgettable.


Thank you to Yuk Lam, Alethea and Kheng Aik for being my interviewers in the mock interview, making me nervous and uneasy.


I have to admit that ES2007S has provided me with a platform to learn to express myself convincingly and professionally in my writing as well as my speech. Additionally, I learnt how to justify an article, a blog or a report based on the 7 Cs principle, namely Courtesy, Correctness, Concreteness, Completeness, Coherence, Conciseness, and Clarity.

The skills builders and exercises in the tutorials have also provided me samples of professional format on resume, cover letter, meeting minutes, meeting agenda and project report which I can use as references in future.

Sky is the limit, this is not the end yet as I believe we still can sharpen our skills based on these basic principles that we learnt from ES2007S.

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Added on 10 November:

By looking back to the first post that I posted and integrating what I have learnt from ES2007S, I learnt how to tactfully minimize/prevent/solve conflicts that arise from misunderstanding based on what I have been taught and practiced in the class.

I will say this is a see-it first principle, is it sounds familiar with the saying, "All people who disagree with me are either ignorant or stupid"? So one day, Bob disagreed with Mark. Mark initially thought it was a communication problem and tried to convince Bob by repeating slowly and loudly. Then he realized that Bob understood, but still disagreed! So, Mark concluded that Bob was stupid!

Bob, on the other hand, listened, tried to understand where Mark was coming from and actually started to see what he was saying. He still disagreed with Mark but he now had more power to better deal with the situation. He did not conclude that Mark was either ignorant or stupid - just different. This strategy to see-it first made the Bob a much more effective leader.

In case you don’t agree then try to 'see-it first' where the other person (by knowing your audience) is coming from before deciding your next steps.

Blog Post #6 - Biodata

Updated 07 Nov 2008
I am final year undergraduate from National University of Singapore majoring in Mechanical Engineering. I like outdoor activities such as sport climbing, kayaking, windsurfing, etc.

I would like to work as an aircraft engineer in aviation industry because I like aircraft and flying. Besides, I like traveling because I like to experience myself in different cultures, different climates and different scenery from different places.

Academically, I have been doing well in engineering design and was awarded the best performance in engineering design module in Ngee Ann Polytechnic. I have involved in several design projects such as Automatic Bean Sprout Root Removal and Harvesting Machine, Vibrating Alarmed Pillow, Low Cost Pick and Place Arm and Microthruster for Unmanned Air Vehicle or Spacecraft.

Sometimes I find myself too wary to take in new ideas and hence it stops me from taking potential ideas that could enhance and improve the results. Therefore, I think I can improve myself by having even solid and complete information for a new idea in advance to minimize the possible risks that may occur afterward.

Blog Post #5 - Reflecting on the Research Project Experience

I have to thank everyone in ES2007S from my group and especially cooperation from my teammates and guidance from Mr. Brad. I am strongly agree that this is really a positive experience for me to learn and to improve myself in terms of communication skill, report writing skill, teamwork, and time management.

In our first meeting, we discussed and filtered the ideas to generate a final idea for our research topic. From that, we came to the final decision to choose the topic of "Green Campus" as our research topic. However, "Green Campus" was too general and hence we made our topic became more precise by focusing our scopes within water and energy related topics. We were not only discussed on our research topic during the meetings, but we also shared the joy of eating snacks. :P

From the report writing, I have learnt citation and quotation of external sources as we had been taught of the serious consequences of plagiarism from Mr. Brad and hence I have properly cited and quoted from the sources and generated a proper APA style references in our research report.

In my opinion, the most tedious job in this report writing was the literature review which i think it was quite time-consuming. Our sources are mainly come from the online journals, online articles, online information, as well as books from our NUS Central Library. It spent me more than 1 week to screen through all these sources to search for related information. It brought me a pair of sore eyes and numb fingers due to long hours "googling".

However, I felt the sense of fulfillment once i could extract all the related information and pass it to my groupmates for further process for our report. Trust, respect, and understanding are the most important elements in our group, we trust each other once we passed the report for further process after one's job was done. We respected and understood one's situation through the whole process which finally led us to the success of our printed finalized report. The coordination between us was so appreciable and this is also one of the key elements in a group work.

During the whole process, our report were always under stringent supervision from Mr. Brad in every ES2007S tutorials. He reviewed each of our draft reports and ensured our mistakes and errors made in the report were minimized by providing his professional and technical advice. From that, we were able to learn from mistakes and we made improvements for our report writing.

Finally it is HERE our printed report to be ready for submission on Monday. Last but not least, i would like to say thank you again to my teammates and Mr. Brad.

Blog Post #4 - Evaluating Intercultural Behavior

My blog is to share how different the Westerners and local people are, based on my own experience and observation.

I used to go jogging in the morning at West Coast Park and see others in the park doing the same as well. Since it was normally at 6.30 am, there were very few joggers around. Those joggers were mainly around middle age, causing me to think the youths have to go to school early during weekdays.

For the sake of easy interpretation, I will make a hypothesis here by assuming the Asian joggers that I met in West Coast Park are Singaporeans and the Western joggers are Westerners. What I would like to share here is from my own experience and it may be true. Undeniably, there are always exceptions.

I have a habit of looking at a jogger’s eyes when he or she is approaching from the opposite direction. The purpose I look at them is to prepare myself to greet them “good morning” as I feel happy meeting someone who like to jog in the same fresh early morning as I. However, from my observation, I shall conclude that the majority of Singaporean joggers will not respond to you or they will deliberately avert their eyes in another direction (at the ground, the tree, the other objects, etc.) while they jog pass me. Whereas for the Westerners, most of them are willing to maintain eye contact with me and greet me in advance or reply to me, making me feel better.

I understand that people have no obligation to reply to me as I was just a stranger to them, but I feel that it would be good and polite to maintain eye contact, or at least reply to me when I greeted them. I shared this with my friends and most of them stated that the reasons may be the other joggers have to rush for work later. There would not be any time to pause and reply to me, or they did not want to affect their breathing during jogging.


For the eye contact, I could explain it by applying the non-verbal gesture that we have learnt from the previous session in class (http://www.csupomona.edu/~tassi/gestures.htm). Asians tend to avoid direct eye contact as they think this is not respectful to others, whereas Westerners think that it is necessary to maintain direct eye contact as it shows your confidence and respect to others.

These are the cultural differences that cause us to be so different in the way of communication. Maybe I should just give my morning greetings to Westerners and a mere head nod to Asians starting from my next jog onwards.

Here to share with you a interesting picture to illutrate the physical differences between races.
http://www.filination.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2006/08/78256645.jpg

The Android demo/presentation by Steve Horowi

A talk from Engineering Director of Google
There are lotsa amazing and interesting function in that phone.
I like most the Compass function at the end of the talk ^^
Share with you here ~

Blog Post #3 - Potential Research Project Topics

(blog post updated on 06 September 2008, 1751pm)

Research Question
What do NUS students think about green campus?

Research Background
Green campus is an idea come from green building, as you may notice that currently Singapore has a trend to develop green buildings in residential housings, commercial buildings as well as industrial factories. (eg. Terminal 3, National Library, Republic Polytechnic etc. )

Building and Construction Authority (BCA) of Singapore has launched a rating system in 2005 to evaluate a building for its environmental impact and performance, namely BCA Green Mark.

Research Introduction
I would like to introduce this green campus concept to NUS for our group to research. There are many ideas and principles that we can apply to our campus and make NUS an energy efficient and water efficient campus. We can raise the awareness among students and staffs in NUS to reuse, recycle and reduce our resources used in order to minimize the impacts to our environment.

It is much easier to start implanting the green concepts to our potential youths in the campus as this is the place where each of us are intensely learning and growing. Green campus is an important concept to let us know the impacts that we will bring to our environment and hence boost the personal responsibility on our own behaviors.

Possible Ideas To Be Implemented
1) Solar Hot Water System For In-Campus Hostels
2) Solar Cell For Electrical Generation
3) Recycling Programme
4) Provision For Use Of NEWater
5) Waterless Urinal
6) Energy Efficient Lighting
7) Sky Garden
8) Sun Shading Features
etc.

** click at the picture to get a better view of it

Reason For Bring Up This Research Topic
To introduce green campus concept in NUS, we have to know that it will not only bring us environmental benefits, but also economic benefits and social benefits. One of the reasons that our tuition fees and hostel fees are on the rise is because the scarcity of resources in Singapore as well as in order countries, we pay more for the same amount of resources we used last time.

Reason For Attitudinal Survey
An attitudinal survey is necessary for this research topic as it involves not only students in NUS, but also lecturers and staffs. A green campus can only be achieved by the efforts of all of us in NUS. It helps to raise the awareness of green campus in NUS and promote the sense of responsibility among us.

References:
Building and Construction Authority of Singapore (http://www.bca.gov.sg/index.html)

sexual harassment problem

A problem that i would like to share here, wonder if any solution for it. I have heard some of my female friends shared their sexual harassment experiences in school, in office, on bus etc.



Many of them dare not to voice it out or react as what i think they should. The consequences are their bosses or colleagues repeatedly offend them which is quite irritating.

These ladies are either afraid of offending their bosses or colleagues which they need to work together in an organization or worry the molesters may counter back verbally in public which will make the situation in to embarrassment.



Well, I can imagine that this is quite embarrassing when everyone stares at you in the public when you voice it out. However, i feel that if these ladies keep retreating while they get molested will only promote and encourage the sexual harassment in an organization. What do you think ?

The only suggestion that i can give to my friends is to be aware and keep a safety distance whenever working together with their bosses or colleagues which is quite tiring since they have to pay extra attentions. I do encourage them to voice it out if this sexual harassment issue happens repeatedly but none of them dare to do so. What are the suggestions that you can give?

One very good example, there was this guy sitting beside a lady in the bus, he stretched his arm widely to read his newspaper which i guess his arm had accidentally (or purposely) touched the lady's body. The lady asked if he can fold his newspaper into half as she was not comfortable to it. However, that "gentleman" countered back verbally with "Why ?!! you think i like to touch your body ? if this is the case, go back and ask your husband help you !!! " The lady cried immediately. The "gentleman" replied her "you can try to send me to the police station if you want !!" before he alighted the bus right.

For us as a passenger, we might not clear what had happened there since we were just able to hear their conversation and made a guess on the situation since the lady did not speak it out. If the lady had spoken it out that she was molested by that "gentleman" then we might able to take proper actions. (by beating him!! just kidding :p)

Any opinion ? suggestion ?

Picasa 3

Ever wonder how to use photoshop to edit your pics?
always forget what you have learnt from the photoshop workshop ?
Find it hard to crack or download the full version of photoshop from internet for free?
here is the picasa 3 beta version that provide enough editing tools for your pics, you can learn it easily from the user-friendly panel !take a look at the clip below ^^

Can't wait for it now?
get a try of picasa 3 from http://picasa.google.com/intl/en_us/

Blog Post #2 - Resolving Interpersonal Conflict

I worked as an assistant engineer 2 years ago. It was the first job in my life after completing 15 years of education in school. I was adopted for a newly set up factory and Mr. Tan was my manager. He used to assign his subordinates to perform “out-of scope” tasks such as floor sweeping, window polishing, photocopying and sorting of documentations, which I felt uncomfortable with since those were not the jobs that I applied for. I started to murmur against my given tasks.

One day, I was assigned the task of receiving and sorting carton boxes in the warehouse. I told him that I felt uncomfortable carrying out all these tedious yet time consuming jobs that were not within my job scopes. He just left without saying a word which showed his ignorance towards his subordinates.

The conflict occurred in a group meeting; a few of us from the engineering division were assigned to clean the factory floor. I was the youngest and the least experienced among the group; I did not understand why the others did not speak out what they really had in mind as they felt uncomfortable with the arrangement as well.

Therefore, I volunteered to be their representative and objected to Mr. Tan’s arrangement in front of everyone, pointing out that we were always assigned non-related jobs which violated the job scopes stated black and white in our contracts. I threatened him that I would report to the HR department for this issue if he still insisted on it. I won this argument since Mr. Tan assigned this job to another division instead. I felt I did nothing wrong since I thought I had the right to strike for what I deserved.

Thereafter, almost everything that I applied which required Mr. Tan’s signature was rejected. I failed to get my leaves approved, I failed to participate in training programmes for further advancement, I failed to be selected for overseas posting, etc. Therefore, I decided to leave the company right after my contract with the factory had expired.
This phenomenon is commonly seen in the workplace; once you have offended someone with a higher rank in an organization, your life is going to be difficult! There are many more examples on conflict-related issues that can be extracted from real workplace such as jealousy from your colleagues and sabotage among your colleagues.

Imagine if you were me in that situation. What would you do?

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Possible solution from me (added @ 2nd September 2008, 23:20pm):

This story was my previous experience with 40% of hypothesis. When I first came to work, what was in my mind were remunerations, policies, contracts, rules and regulations. I omitted the human factor, I was so straightforward to fight for what I thought I deserved for.

If I were to know the consequences, I would have told Mr. Tan nicely to reflect on my concerns instead of pointing him out in the meeting which has embarrassed him. I should try to put myself in his position and say the right thing at the right time. I would have asked around my colleagues for advices and alternatives to solve my problems instead of just blindly complaint on how Mr. Tan treated me.

In an organization, it’s inevitable that someone will be assigned to carry out certain unrelated tasks which are not within his/her job scopes. Personally, I don’t prefer to keep quiet and just do whatever your superior assigned to you, because no one will be happy and perform well under this situation. However, I prefer to voice out my unfair and non-reasonable treatments to my superior directly or indirectly by reasonable reasons and valid points without offending my superior. I hope this will solve my problem, if it doesn’t, I may bring this issue to the next level of management in order to seek further clarifications and solutions. By doing this, you can’t prevent that some people may get hurt, however, in real situation, we can only do our best to minimize the offensive level to others, or else you yourself is the only one who cannot perform your tasks happily and satisfactory.

Blog Post #1 - Effective Communication Skills

Criticizing and judging are both the nature of human beings. Conflict and argument are often the consequences that come after criticizing and judging.

For instance, Jacky tends to judge something which he thinks is unfair; he criticizes someone who had done something bad to him or his friends. He will try his very best to show his anger and dissatisfaction towards that person by sarcasm and poisoned words. However, the results are usually the reverse of what he expected since the person that he judges also try to defend themselves by attacking back with poisoned words as what he has done to them.

What is the result that I want from a conversation? When something bad happened to me, how do I express myself? Do I go from being mute to being a brute? These are some of the questions that you have to ask yourself before you communicate to others effectively.

Sometimes, people will try to act in a reverse way of what they really want since they are totally driven by their negative emotions. For example, John never turned up for the project discussion but he kept criticizing the project during the formal meeting in front of the supervisor. This caused me to scold him by denying all of his contributions in the past, making him quit the project group the following day. This was not what I wanted but I was driven by my anger, and could not retract back what I had said to him.

Therefore, effective communication is a very important skill in our daily lives as we often need to share thoughts, ideas and feelings with one another. So, I’m looking forward to having an effective communication environment in our ES2007S class! ^^