Reflection on My Group Project

My group mates for the proposal are Huang Huan, Malcolm, and Yi Cun.

The deciding stage of our proposal was a bit confusing for me since I have not much idea on what areas for improvements in Singapore. Luckily, we have two Singaporeans in our group who knows better on what improvements are needed. Malcolm came up with the explanation about the current issues on the waste problems in Singapore which we found interesting. Eventually, we decided to work on "Improving Recycling Rate in Singapore."

The discussion for our written proposal was mainly during the meeting in the class. Initially, we would like to conduct an interview with one of the Environmental Engineering professor to gather ideas and feedback on this issue. However, due to the time constraint and no response from the professor, we finally decided to base our proposal on the survey result and secondary information. 

Our group project relied a lot on the use of wiki.nus. Honestly, it was a bit awkward for me when I used it for the first time. However, as our project progress, I am more used to it. It is quite convenient because we can create new pages on what we have discovered and leave comment at the same time. Furthermore, we can retrieve the changes of the page by other users, which is unlikely to be done in google docs. However, I am not sure whether changes made by two people at the same time in wiki would cause an overlapping content,which is not the case for google docs since we can know who are editing at the same time as us. The minor changes of our presentation slides was also discussed through wiki by uploading the new file and leave comment to alert others of the change we had made. This method is better rather than spamming others' inbox which sometimes may end up to be missed out by the recipients.

Overall, it has been an enjoyable journey working with Malcolm, Yi Cun and Huang Huan. They have been very helpful and cooperative. We even meet up to rehearse our line together for the oral presentation which I think really worth it. Besides that, the use of wiki has saved us a lot of time since it reduces the amount of time needed for our meeting.

Thank you for your cooperation and help for the accomplishment of our project. I hope we can work together again in the future. :)

I wish you all the best for your final exam! :)

Reflection on Oral Presentation

Preparation

During our group's slide preparation, I was appointed to be the first speaker. At first, I was a bit hesitant to take up the role since Mrs.Radhika told us that the first and last speaker have the most important role and I was afraid that I will ruin the presentation if I didn't do well. However, I decided to take up the role in the end since my group mates knew the other parts better than I am and I also understand my part better.

We didn't rehearse together before our dry-run presentation and decided that we rehearse on our own. However, after the feedback received from the dry-run presentation, we decided that we need to have a rehearsal together before the actual presentation. During the rehearsal, we took particular attention in our timings as well as the important points that we want to emphasize so that it can convince the audience on our proposal. Aside from that, I also spent a lot of time doing rehearsals on my own, with the mirror as my main assistance. It helps me a lot in building my confidence and improving the appropriate expressions.

Delivery


My presentation would have been better if I could slow down my pace and take some pauses as suggested by Mrs. Radhika and my fellow classmates. Nevertheless, I felt that I could managed my pace better and presented my content in a more organized way than in the dry-run. In fact, I had cut a lot of less important parts in the actual presentation so that I didn't have to rush over the content and finished my presentation on time. Besides that, I think I have to practise for a better pronounciation as sometimes I realised that I pronounce some words wrongly.

Use of slideware

Overall, I believe that our group have tried our best to produce an effective powerpoint slides. We managed to make good use of the animation to help us in presenting our points. Besides that, we also make use of it to highlight certain important parts, for example, the figures in the statistics provided in our slides. We also included some interactive images related to the content of our slides to make the slides more lively and attractive. The use of the wireless presenter has also helped us to manage our slides well.

Comments on other groups:

For Sin Wei, Li Koon and Seng Leng's group, I believe that you have done much better than the dry-run. Your group had a better organization of the contents and a more organized and attractive slides than before. Each of you also has a better understanding of the content and more confident than before.

For Xiu Xian, Charles and Ying Hui's group, you have done better than the dry-run. I could see that each of you have a better slides coordination with what you presented. Your group also had a better confidence during the presentation  even though I could still notice some nervousness for some of your group members. Nevertheless, you have done a wonderful presentation.

In conclusion, I have learned a lot from these oral presentations. I really appreciate the feedback from our tutors and friends. It really helps me understand which part I need to work on for further improvements. As the proverb says "Practice makes perfect", I believe that we can improve our shortcomings by keep on practising.

Fostering Intercultural Communication

When we talk about intercultural communication, it involves interaction among people from different cultural backgrounds. The cultural differences may occur due to differences in living regions, beliefs, point of views, language used or even ethnicity. Frequently, intercultural communication may end up with a conflict if both parties do not understand each others well.

Two years ago, I visited China with my family and relatives for a holiday trip. We went there through the travel agency and were guided by several local tour guides during our trip there. The tour guides told us a lot of interesting stories about the cities that we visited. They also told us about basic courtesies that we should take note when we are there. One of the interesting facts was that they have different interpretation for certain way of addressing people. For example, when we want to address a lady with " Miss", we shouldn't address them with "小姐" (pronounced as: Xiao Jie), instead we should address them by "小妹" (pronounced as: Xiao Mei). The tour guide told us that the local may regard "小姐" as very rude because they usually refer this  word to mean "prostitute". However, "小妹" is seen as a more appropriate way to address a lady and it shows more respects towards the lady. This is a bit different from Indonesian Chinese who regard "小姐" as an appropriate and most commonly use to address a lady in a more respectful way. It is very good that the tour guide brought up this issue. Otherwise, I couldn't imagine what kind of conflicts that may happened from addressing people wrongly.

In conclusion, it is very important to really understand the culture of the people that we are interacting with. Even people with the same ethnic may have different views in interpreting certain things due to the different regions that they live. Therefore, we need to be tactful when we communicate with people from different cultural background. It is always help by knowing others' culture better.

Application letter

Johan Zhang
21 Prince George’s Park
#08-01 Residence 1, Blk 1, Singapore 118420
Mobile: 84209648
Email: johan.zhang91@gmail.com
February 17, 2011

Mr. Anand Wong
Manager
Human Resource
Mapletree Investments Pte Ltd
1 Maritime Square #13-01, Harbourfront Centre, Singapore 099253

Dear Mr Wong,

My name is Johan Zhang. I am a second year NUS undergraduate majoring in Applied Mathematics and planning to minor in Management. I spoke with you about the Summer Internship position in your company on the networking session at Suit Up:2011!, an event organized by NUS Career Centre. Thank you for your time on that day and I am interested in the Capital and Asset Management area, particularly in the investment and finance-related position.

As an Applied Mathematics major, my interest is in Financial Mathematics and I have taken Financial Mathematics modules to deepen my understanding and interest in this area. I am also keen on modules related to Operations Research and several business modules, ranging from marketing, accounting, and finance. I am confident that my mathematics ability is able to contribute to the best interest of Mapletree.

Aside from my academic activities, I have been actively involved in CCA activities like NUS Buddhist Society. I started as an active subcommittee to help out for events, as a facilitator and joined as a Group Leader in the Dharma Camp 2009. I have been elected as a Dharma Director where my current role is mainly to organize weekly activities. Besides that, I also took part in various annual activities such as Dharma Camp, Buddhism Awareness Week and Meditation Retreat. Therefore, I have gained a lot of exposure in leadership position, activities management, and dealing with different organizations which I believe will contribute to the effectiveness of your company.

Thank you for considering my application, I will be available for internship from 9 May – 29 July 2011. I look forward to hearing from you. Please feel free to contact me through my email address johan.zhang91@gmail.com or mobile phone 84209648.

Yours sincerely,

Johan Zhang

Here is the link for my resume and the description of the company.

Resolving Interpersonal Conflict

Interpersonal conflict can happen anytime. It may occur in our relationship with those whom we just knew or even with those whom we had been very close for a long time. Conflicts may arise due to several reasons. Indeed, there are infinite excuses that people use as their reasons for being involved in the conflict, starting from a very simple to utmost severe mistakes that other parties have done. In some cases, conflicts are unavoidable. However, there are also conflicts which can be prevented. We can prevent conflicts from occuring by analysing the main problem that cause the conflict and try to ask ourself whether it is worth to involve in the conflict.

It was around 6 - 7 years ago, when I was still in my first and second year of Junior High School. I had a classmate who is a boy. He is a diligent, quiet and always paying attention to what the teacher taught. When I was in my first year, I sat on the desk just beside his. I always jotted down important points in my book whenever the teacher mentioned something that is important because some of the points mentioned may turn up in our exams.

The most annoying part of him was that he kept on borrowing my notes and copied down every single things that I jotted down. He continuously keep an eye on me whenever I jotted down notes when he was not able to catch the points mentioned by the teacher. I felt really annoyed with his behavior. The worst part was that he was so reluctant to share information with me, especially when it was regarding the school stuffs.

I was enduring this uneasiness for two years. In my second year, I sat in front of him. However, that time was better since he couldn't interrupt me directly. Sometimes, I just ignored him and tried any ways to avoid communicating with him. He seemed to know my tendency to avoid him at that time. As time went by, he slowly reduced his intense borrowing and looked for another people. Since then, we rarely communicate and there seemed to be a barrier between me and him.

In my third year, I was sitting far apart from where he sat and I was indeed hoping for that. We didn't talk much to each other and I felt better for not being so close to him anymore as I felt he was annoying. I had talked to some of my friends about him and they also had the same problem with him. Only then, I realised that it was not surprising that he was not close to any of the students in my class.

After we finished our Junior High School and continued to the Senior High School, I was not in the same class with him anymore. This gave me such a great relief because I didn't expect the annoying parts to happen again. However, I still saw him around the school and we just uttered a "Hi!" to each other whenever we happened to pass by each other in school.

As for now, when I reminisced those time, I may laugh at myself why should I indulge in such an unimportant conflict. Perhaps, there was a feeling of dislike towards him in the first place or selfishness that led me to have a conflict with him. However, I felt that the strong dislike faded away as time passed by during my Senior High School time.

If you were in my position, what would you had done to resolve the conflict?

EDITED - Effective Communication

Miscommunication

Everyone communicates with different people every day. Sometimes the communication may run smoothly while on certain occasion, the communication may not end up to the way we want it to be. Even worst, it may come to a situation in which both parties eventually seeing one another as enemy. How can these all scenarios happen?

When we talk about relationship with other people, effective communication plays a big role. In simple, effective communication means the ability to communicate our ideas or thoughts clearly to the other parties as well as being able to identify whether they really understand what we are trying to communicate. Besides that, we must also be a good listener and have a good understanding of what the other parties are trying to communicate. The choice of communication channel is crucial in effective communication. Therefore, we need to identify the audience as well as the channel that may work best for an effective communication to happen.

Effective communication has been a major concern for me. I believe that it is very important, be it on maintaining my relationship with family, relatives, friends or even someone whom I just knew. Besides that, I find it useful for me when I need to liaise with different speakers/organizations to invite them to my CCA events. The same goes to the success of an interview as well.

In maintaining my relationship, the first thing I do is to identify the characteristics of the people who I communicate with. I tend to differentiate the way I communicate with people who are easy-going, shy, friendly, or easily irritated. Besides that, I also use different approaches to communicate in different context. For example, we need to differentiate the way we communicate in a meeting (which is in serious mode) and in the conversation during spare time (less tense mode).

Effective communication is also an important element in my CCA. In my CCA, I have the responsibility to invite speakers/organizations to our CCA events. In order to ensure that I get the speakers on time and the activities to run smoothly, I need to do liaising with different speakers. Some speakers are alright with invitation just through email while others might prefer to be called through phone. Sometimes, the speakers even prefer me to meet up them to get things clearer to them. Before liaising with the speakers, I usually consult with seniors from previous committee to get advice on what is the best approach to get different speakers. Furthermore, I also need to apply different approaches to communicate with the speakers since the communication channels and the characteristics of each speakers is different.

Another important application of effective communication is during the interview. I had been to several interviews. Some of them were successful while others were not. I feel that there is a mix ratios between luck and effective communication in a success of an interview. Interviewers might have a bias judgement. However, apart from the luck, I still believe that effective communication is very crucial since it leaves the first impression to the interviewers and will increase our chance of getting through the interview.

The importance of effective communication in the working world is not surprising for me. On the last Thursday of week 2, I was attending an event called Suit-Up 2011! In that event, we were given the opportunity to network with the companies that we might be interested in. As I approached their booth and asked them questions regarding their job qualification, most of them mentioned communication skills as one of their most important criteria. This real scenario shows us that effective communication is very crucial nowadays in getting a job. 

In conclusion, I believe that effective communication is very important in every aspect of my life and this is also one of the reasons that motivate me to keep on improving my communication skills.

First Post !!!

It is 1.24AM. I have just finished creating my blog. I never imagine that I will be blogging some day.
It is not because I like writing so much that I create this blog but I have to.

Why?

I am taking a module called "ES2007S-Professional Communication". Well, this module need us to do blogging as part of the continuous assessment. The class will be starting soon and my first session is on Tuesday. The tutor sent us an email asking us to be prepared for the class and advised us to be familiar with the course in general. She also reminded us to read about the assessment,blogging and wikis. As I read through the file, I realized that sooner or later, I''ll have to create one for myself. I might as well create one before I forget..haha..

I hope this blog will somehow inspire me to write and share with you guys about my life experience or even anything worth to share. Hope that I will improve my writing skills from creating this blog and sorry if my post makes you feel bored. I am still a newbie here..hehe..For this semester, I guess most of my blog posts will be about this module as this is my main purpose of creating the blog. Anyway, I will try my best to post any exciting events that happened.

I guess I have to sleep now. I have 10AM class this morning. Oh noooo...

See you! :)