post #7: Final Reflection

Sigh, we have finally reached the last post that we are supposed to write for this module. If only this was a module that could span for 2 semester, which is impossible in NUS. I personally have learnt alot from ES2007S- verbal, non-verbal, inter-cultural, interpersonal conflict and many more. I have the the confidence to say that throughout this course, I have not only developed some good personal skills, my thoughts have also matured. In addition, my writing and language skills have also improved. And most importantly, I have made many new friends. For all these I have learned, achieved and attained I am very grateful for it.

Reflecting on my first post, I guess I have achieved some of the goals that I have set out for myself.

The first is to open up and learn how to communicate effectively. Throughout the course, I believe my confidence to speak up and talk properly has grew enormously. The need to contribute to the class and Brad's "pushy-ness" helped me in this aspect. Now, I more comfortable when it comes to contributing and communicating in class. On effective communication, I guess I still have room for improvements. I still have to brush up on my sentence formation and structuring when I talk to people. Even though I may not be an effective communicator as of now, I hope that through constant practice I will improve and move closer to being an effective communicator.

On my interpersonal relationship, peer-to-peer communications and work, they have all greatly improved throughout the duration of the course. There is now less conflicts between friends and work get done more effectively. I hope these skills that I learned from the course will help me even more in my workplace, once i enter into the working world.

Last is on being successful. Even though there is still quite some time before real success can be determined, I believe that that there is some success in my personal development. These successes include making new friends, developing more confidence
and many more. So I guess that there is some degree of success achieved from this course.

The final thing that I want to say is that, Brad, you are one of the best teachers that I have since I started schooling (apart from the marking and grading), and I hope that you will continue with what you are doing now and I really hope to attend more courses that you are conducting. Thank You!

And to all my new found friends, good luck to those graduating and hope that we can meet up soon during the holidays. Thanks!

Cheers,
Keldren

Imperfections make the best impressions

An advertisement that is emphasizing the importance of having a family. It also shows how non-verbal communication such as snoring can effectively bring a message across. Very touching advertisement too. Prepare some tissue paper. =D

Post #6: Keldren's Biodata

My name is Loy Xing Zheng Keldren and I was born in Singapore. I am currently an undergraduate in Faculty of Engineering, majoring in Mechanical Engineering.

Prior to NUS, I attended Catholic High School (primary & secondary) and Tampines Junior College. Since my primary school days I was given the opportunities to develop my leadership skills.

In my primary and secondary school days I was chosen as the treasurer and subject representatives (Chinese, Social Studies)for my class. I bore responsibilities such as managing the class fund and ensuring that all instructions from the teachers were followed and carried out dutifully by the class.

Likewise, I was also given the chance to display my leadership skills during my junior college days. I was chosen as the subject representative(economics) of my class and the quarter master of my CCA Wushu. As a quarter master, I had to organize and make sure that all equipments were kept in order for the club.From these opportunities , I have not only developed my leadership skills but also developed the skills of good organization and interpersonal communication skills.

During my junior college days, I was also given the opportunity to develop my research skills. I was chosen to represent my school in a challenge named the DSO-DSTA challenge where we were supposed to develop a new product that would be beneficial to mankind. We had to plan and research(literature review,experiments interviews, etc.) to find a suitable area where our product can focus on. The challenge taught me the skills such as writing of proposal and laboratory research, but most importantly it taught me the importance of working as a team and how to work as a team.

After junior college, I was enlisted to serve National Service(NS). During NS, I managed to lose 40kgs and attained the rank of corporal, marksmanship and silver for IPPT. All these were possible only through sheer will, fighting spirit and determination that I have developed within myself during NS.

After NS I took up a few part-time administrative jobs. These jobs honed my skills in not only documentation using Microsoft Office, but also liasing with people or companies, publicity and event planning. Moreover, through the part-time jobs I have also developed the skills of organization and proper time management.

Having been in the university for about 2 years, I have not only enhanced my laboratory research skills also but also developed an analytical mind to solve problems- developed through laboratory experiments and research projects. Additionally, through group works and research projects, I have also learnt how to work better as a team. I understood that different people have different beliefs and values, hence in order to work properly as a team properly, I have to understand and make compromises for these differences. In university, I have also learned how to use Solidworks, which is a graphic design application for engineers and I got an A for it. My interest for Solidworks has since grown.

Recently, I have developed strong interests in finance, material sciences and astrophysics. Therefore, I plan to specialize in material science in the later half of my university days.And upon graduation, I hope to find a career which will allow me to embark on the road of researches and explorations with an engineering firm, as I believe it will not only help broaden my horizon but also give me the opportunity to help others with some of my researches. In addition, I also hope to pursue my other interests either through further studies or self-exploration in the future.

Lastly, I hope that the skills I have nurtured, my preferred career path/objectives and interests which I plan to pursue in the future, will help not only in my quest to be a better person, but also people around me.

P.S: Edited after feedbacks from friends =D

Post #5: Hitler - one of the greatest communicator of the 20th century

Adolf Hitler, is most often remembered for his atrocities such as the antagonist responsible for starting the second World War and the massacre of 6 million Jews during the war.

However, not everyone realize that he was actually one of the best practitioner of effective communication in the 20th century. Utilizing his charm and effective communication, Hitler managed to unite the whole of Germany to embark down the road to War.

Here is one of his greatest speeches: Triumph of Will


Look at the way he delivered this speech. He delivered this speech with lots of emotion and passion, as can be seen from his facial expression. In addition, he also effectively made use of body language to help convey his message across.

It is my guess that from the way he delivered his speech, people saw confidence in Hitler. Through Hitler's speech people of Germany found hope and they believed that Hitler was the one to lead Germany to glory.

To date, there are not many people that is able to communicate as effectively as him. The closest we have to date is Barrack Obama. The video below is his inauguration address.


As we can see, there are many similarities between Obama and Hitler, effective use of emotions and body language to bring messages across. Both of them made use of effective communication to make people believe in them, to make people place their hopes on them.

I do hope that through years of practice, I will be able to be as good an effective communicator as them.

Post #4: Evaluating Intercultural Behavior

Before I start the post I have to say that in this post I am not being prejudice or "nationalist". If I offend anyone with this post please let me know thank you. This incident happened to my friend in NUS about 2 to 3 weeks ago.

My friend was in the central library on Saturday rushing his report which was due in a few days time. He has been slogging it out for about 7 hours since 9 am.

At around 4pm, feeling tired he went to the restroom to freshen up. As he was only going to be away for a short duration, he left his laptop and belongings on the table and went to the restroom.

When he returned he realised that his laptop had switched off by itself. He was shocked as it was still switched on when went to the restroom. He then found out what went wrong. The socket that he was using had an extra user and the socket had been turned off so that it could be shared; his lap top's battery was not attached to the laptop when the socket was turned off.

He immediately turned on his laptop to check if his work was still present. To his horror it was no longer there as it has not been saved. Fueled with anger, he went forward to confront the user sharing the socket with him. The user was a Chinese national; my friend, disgusted by the person's action started quarreling with him.

His reason for quarreling with the Chinese national was that, he had not asked the friend of mine if it was possible to share the socket with him. He had assumed that it was fine to just turn off the socket as everyone had batteries within their laptops.

I guess I will leave the confrontation to every one's imagination. After the incident my friend developed a very bad impression of these Chinese nationals, and had to re-type his report.

On first impression, most people will see this as a conflict because of a lack of basic courtesy. However to me I see this incident as an inter-cultural conflict between Chinese nationals and Singaporeans. From my observations and experience, most of the Chinese nationals tend to keep within their own group and they hardly talk to any Singaporeans. Many of never had a chance to immerse themselves into the Singapore culture when they arrived in Singapore. They do not know much of the Singapore and may have assumed that when you require anything from someone, as long as it doesn’t cause any problems for the party it is ok not to ask. I personally have saw quite a few incidents such as this in NUS, such as taking up empty seats of the without asking the first occupant of the bench. Therefore incidents such as this are bound to happen. I guess more interactions between Singaporeans would be a good way to reduce such conflicts.

Personally if I was a foreigner in a country, I would first find out the culture and customs of the country as it would help reduce conflicts and misunderstandings between the locals. Most importantly practice basic courtesy when in doubt. If everyone practices basic courtesy, I guess such conflicts can too be reduced.

Post #3 : Correspondence Critique

I received the following email about a month ago. It was to promote some upcoming events organized by an organization in NUS. The email is as follow (names of the sender and society has been removed):

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Subject-FW: E week event

I am from Nus *********** Society. There are two events this week for FOE and SOC students from our society. Could you please help me to forward the email to your course students. Thank you very much.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Enabling Entrepreneurship on the Web

e27 is proud to bring you "Enabling Entrepreurship on the Web"- an event focused on how you can make use of tools and services online to start your own company or bring your current business to new heights. Featuring speakers from Microsoft who will share their personal entrepreneurship experiences, and the resources available to help entrepreneurs create new age web companies.
Date & Time: Friday, 23 January 2009, 12:00 — 14:00
Location: SOC1 SR4 (level 6 room 12) (opposite Science)
Registration Deadline: Friday, 23 January 2009



An Entrepreneur's Path

Organization: Garag3
Speakers are specially invited to share their experiences on how to start, sustain and grow their business. Don't miss this event if you want some inspiration to start your own business.
Date & Time: Friday, 23 January 2009, 15:00 — 17:00
Location: E3-06-09 NUS Faculty of Engineering
Registration Deadline: Friday, 23 January 2009
Speakers are specially invited to share their experiences on how to start, sustain and grow their business. Don't miss this event if you want some inspiration to start your own business.
Date & Time: Friday, 23 January 2009, 15:00 — 17:00
Location: E3-06-09 NUS Faculty of Engineering
Registration Deadline: Friday, 23 January 2009

************
Hp: ********
Events Executive
The NUS ********** society
www.***.org.sg

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I guess the most obvious flaw to this email is that it is a forwarded email. To me using a forwarded email to get participation from people is very insincere. It lacks the "sincerity" that you would feel when someone approach you for a favour or something. I guess not much can be done as of now as all emails to different faculties have to go through higher authority before they can be decimated. I believe what the forwarder should at least do is to delete the request details at the top of the email. Thereafter, include a salutation and a brief description of the organized events by the organization; at the end of the email, include a proper closing such as "best regards, NAME".

Now for the detail of the email. First, the request email did not include a proper closing with it; Closing such as "yours sincerely" and

Now on the detail of the email. First of all there is a spelling mistake of entrepreneurship. Next the part on "the resources available to help entrepreneurs create new age web companies", is difficult to understand. Did they mean "resources" such as offices, capitals and manpower? Or did they mean grants and help in setting up a company? In addition, what is new age web companies? Most people will not have any idea what is that at all.

Next, there is no detail about how to register for the events. All is there is when and where will the event be held. If one is interested, how is he able to register for it.

Lastly, there is repeated details on the 2nd event. This will result in confusion when reading the email.

In conclusion, this email has not take into consideration the 7Cs of writing when it was written.

Post #2.5: update on post 2

Hey people just an update on post #2. I did what you guys have recommended. I guess it helped in some sense, at least i got her talking to me through smses using the mobile phone. I guess it did help when i apologized before i engage in a conversation with her. She told me there was nothing wrong now and we can remain as friends.

Maybe she has got her problems solved. Now all i can hope for is that it will last that way. Thanks all! =D