Goodbye, Au Revoir, Sayonara...

It is always sad to say goodbye but this is life and we must continue on our journey...

I never used to blog before even though I have read lots of blogs concerning soccer and formula 1 reviews as well as blogs of movie stars. I was always hesitant to blog because I did not want the entire world to know what is happening in my life. However, upon writing some posts in the ES2007S module, I must say that blogging is cool. It is a good way to interact with other people. I realise that this a good way to keep in touch with friends that I seldom meet due to the hectic schedule. It can lead to discussions on topics that are sometimes controversial and people find awkward to discuss freely in person.

Compared to my other modules for NUS where you only study to get good grades and later you do not remember half of the syllabus, ES2007S is definitely not one of them. I feel that most of the stuffs I have learned in this module will benefit me for the rest of my career. From now on, I practice active listening to avoid any misunderstandings that may arise. I have also learned a lot about the non-verbal aspects of communication and how this affects our way of communicating. In this globalised world, we have to interact with people of different racial background and the way how to do so is vital to avoid any form of conflicts. This is the part that I am really interested in this module. I do not think I have mastered the adoption of the 7Cs in our writing process, but I will definitely learn more about it in the future and try to avoid silly mistakes. The way the job interview was conducted in the class was very good as our mistakes were highlighted.

On a conclusive note, I must say this module has helped me to improve my communication skills. I will definitely miss this class when I graduate this semester. I would like to thank Terry for being a great blogging buddy and for highlighting a lot of my mistakes.Hat’s off to Brad who has been an awesome teacher. Hope you continue with the great job you are doing.

God Bless,
Yuvraj

My Oral Presentation

Overall, I was satisfied with the presentation given our time limit. I must say doing the report as well as presentation by 2 person was quite tough. We put in a lot of effort in producing a nice work.

I was quite sad because I think most of class could not understand the contrast I was making between the Senoko Power Plant and the Senoko Incinerator in my introduction. I should have explained it in a clearer way as I believe that the comparison was important to explain the high amount of wastes in Singapore.

I do not know if others have encountered the same problem as me. Being the first speaker, I was quite disturbed whenever someone was opening the door to come in as they were late. I lost concentration but appreciated the fact that the latecomers were making an effort to be as quiet as possible.

I always have a tendency a move a lot during conducting a presentation. I tried to minimize it this time, but I do not know to what extent I was successful. In the my last slide, where it shows the old man riding a bicycle in Singapore, I could not explain it properly in respect to our context.

I think there were some times when I paused and tried to look at my notes. Maybe I should have practiced more.

Lastly I would like to say that the slides could have been improved. I did not have my laptop for the week-end as it crashed on Friday and I had to send it for repairs. Even though, I would like to thank Annie for doing the whole compilation.

Biodata

My name is Aurisinkala Appadoo Yuvraj. I’m a final year student from the National University of Singapore, majoring in Bachelor of Engineering Mechanical Engineering. I will be graduating in May 2009. Last year, in January till July, I went on Student Exchange Programme (SEP) in France at the Institut National des Sciences Appliquées de Lyon (INSA Lyon) where I was in the Mechanical Engineering Development Department. The modules that I took in NUS and INSA Lyon has developed my technical skills in this field of study and helped me acquire critical way of thinking.

Besides the heavy workload at NUS, I was actively involved in curricular activities. I was one of the founding members of the Mauritian Students’ Group at NUS (MSG NUS). Furthermore, I held the position of Vice-Chairperson which equipped me with organisational and leadership skills. Moreover, I was the Project Director of events organised by the MSG NUS, where I had to look for sponsors and liaised with Mauritian Consulate in Singapore. This precious experience has helped me acquired negotiation skills as well as interaction with people. Due to my background, I am fluent in written and spoken French. I can also speak Creole, a dialect in Mauritius and understand Hindi. In addition to this, I did an Internship in an Engineering firm in Mauritius and worked in the Hotel Industry where I dealt with a lot of people. This enhanced my interpersonal and communication skills.
I enjoy travelling as I have been to various regions in France, London and around South-East Asia. I have wide range of interests which include soccer, swimming, playing table-tennis, fishing and reading magazines.

Italians - Non-Verbal Communication

The non-verbal communication is one of the aspects of communication that has always intrigued me. It is fascinating to note that each culture has a special meaning to the appearance, body gestures, face and eye contact. Hand signals are used in various fields, for instance commodities brokers on the floor of the stock exchange have a highly codified set of hand signals to communicate. In sports, referees, players, and managers all have their own non-verbal way of talking to each other, whether it's signalling a penalty in soccer, motioning to a teammate, or repositioning a player.
From the comedy show of Russell Peters, I found out that the Italians are the people who use their hands the most in communicating. If you speak Italian without using your hands, no matter how good your Italian is, they will think it lacks sense. It is claimed that most of them even express themselves with the hands when speaking on the phone. This is indeed hilarious. Italians use body language and hand gestures to punctuate an expression and give it shading that the word or phrase itself lacks. There is one video from ‘YouTube’ that I found out was really fun and would like to share with you.
There is one hand motion in Italian that means, ‘what the f**k’ and the same one in the Indian culture means, ‘I’m hungry’. Now imagine you are in Italy and one hungry Indian guy enters an Italian restaurant and demonstrate this hand motion. How would you deal with this situation?

Post 4: Evaluating Intercultural Behaviour

This incident took place during my Student Exchange Programme (SEP) in France, last February. I must say since I studied French in my high school back in Mauritius, I did not have a lot of trouble interacting with the locals. Furthermore, I had some friends from NUS who came with me, they went for an immersion programme beforehand to familiarise themselves and improve their French. When I came later, they helped me a lot and we went to visit around together. I met some other Singaporeans and some Chinese students who were from NTU. From the time they came, they were always hanging out among themselves. Sometimes I joined them for dinner but I was quite bored as most of the time they talk in Chinese and I never understood what was happening. I discontinued to eat with them and preferred to hang out with my other friends from Brazil and Mexico who were also on SEP. Then one day, one of the Singaporean guys from NTU approached me and told me that I had changed a lot and become more ‘french’. Like the way I greet them with a handshake or even that I do not speak in English with them and rather talk in French to show off. I was very pissed off at that moment but preferred to remain silent and walked away. I made as if nothing happened and continued to enjoy my stay. Later I related it to a very good Singaporean friend of mine who was also with me on SEP and he told me that he also did not like the attitude of that guy.
Sometimes I wonder, I have stayed in Singapore for 3 years and yet not encountered such a problem. It was maybe to the way I adapted myself here but back in France I was behaving differently due to the more familiar language and culture.

Post 3: Correspondence Critique

Dear All,

As most of you have suggested, the continual assessment 1 will be held on Feb. 20th (Friday), from 4.10-4.45 PM. The topic to be tested will be reciprocating compressor, especially two stage reciprocating compressor.

Yesterday, some of you also proposed a very good question, because of the slip effect, less power is required to deliver the same amount of fluid, it seems better for us to design a greater slip effect. Of course, the answer is not so simple. According to the equation 1.2, we can see, a less power means a lower compression ratio, for the extreme case, no power means no pressure rise. Evidently, it is not we hope to see. Sorry, I did not thought about it.

Regads!
XXXXX


This is an e-mail I received from a lecturer in NUS. He is a visiting professor and I must say he is a very good one in his field of study. His correspondence with us was about some technical aspects discussed in the tutorials and I believe that it has some shortcomings in his written communication skills.

First of all, he is not consistent with his tenses. He started to use the past tense and then shifts to the present tense. A flagrant mistake that he makes is ‘I did not thought’, this shows carelessness on his part. This could be the result of time factor as he was in a rush to send the mail and did not review it.

Next is the vocabulary issue, the word ‘Regards’ is written as ‘Regads’. This is an unacceptable mistake to make as it shows poor vocabulary skills and gives a bad impression for anyone reading this mail. Furthermore, quoting his phrase, ‘proposed a very good question’, I personally think that the verb ‘proposed’ is not the correct one in this context. Maybe he could simply put ‘asked’, as ‘proposed’ is used for ideas rather than questions.

In addition to this, his punctuations have some problems. Normally after the salutation close, we use either a comma or no punctuation but definitely not an exclamation mark. In his second paragraph, the first sentence is too long. He should have reduced it concisely and explained the technical aspects clearly.

Post 2: Interpersonal conflict

Interpersonal conflicts are part and parcel of our daily lives. For myself, I have encountered many such conflicts with my parents and friends but have always found a way to deal with it. However, one such conflict that happened one year ago is still fresh and vivid in my mind as I failed to resolve the situation.

It took place during an Engineering Professionalism module where I am required to do a group project and a presentation. In my group, there were two of my friends and another guy who we were unfamiliar with. On the first day itself, I found out something strange with his e-mail address- his NUS mail was unlike us with the typical ‘U05.....’. As I was the group leader, I sent everyone mails for our first group meeting and to our utmost surprise he did not turn up. I phoned him but he did not respond to my calls. In the next class, I asked him what happened and he told me he could not make it as he was very busy. I told him what we discussed in the meeting and gave him his share of work which had to be submitted in one week’s time. To our amazement, he did not submit anything. My group mates were very angry and wanted to report him to the tutor. I could not decide what to do as I did not want him to have bad grades because of us. However, due to the pressure from my other friends, I reported him.

Sometime later, I approached him and talked for a while. I found out that he matriculated in the year 2002, and it was supposed to be his last semester. He took 2 year leave as he suffered from a depression probably caused by terrible second year result. He was pressurised by the university officials as well as his parents to complete his degree. In addition, he had constant fights with her mother. I felt very sorry for him and realised I should not have report the matter to the tutor.

Therefore, my dear friends what should have been done to deal with this kind of problem?

Post 1 - Effective Communication Skills:

Among other skills that are inborn, I would say that communication skills are not one of them. As an engineering student, I would say that we are not exposed very much to this skill in NUS, though some courses like Human resources are meant for us to interact and communicate well. In my opinion, to communicate effectively is a vital aspect of an engineer since even though you are very good in the technical areas, you need communication skills to explain to people so that they can better understand it.

From my personal experience that I have encountered when I was the Vice-Chairperson of a committee, I found out that communicating effectively indeed helps to resolve a lot of conflicts. Last week, I was a victim of bad communication. I had to give an oral presentation for my final year project and later there was a series of Q&A with my examiner and I could not understand his accent. I had no idea what his questions were and I was quite resilient to ask him to repeat for the third time. At the end I did not answer and I’m sure he must have had a bad impression of me.

I strongly believe that being an effective communicator is an important asset of being of a great leader. Let us take the example of Mr Obama; the way he delivers his speech is very good and this inspires a lot of people especially the youth.

Lastly communicating effectively helps a lot when you are in a foreign country to mingle with the locals and hence learn more about their cultures and values.

Mauritius - a paradise island...

For my first post I'll talk a bit about Mauritius. For the 3 years that I stayed in Singapore, I realised many people do not know about Mauritius. When some confuse it with Malaysia, I got a strange response once - which part of India is it found!!! seriously this cannot be true...Ok it's time to explain a bit...

Mark Twain once quoted "From one citizen you gather the idea that Mauritius was made first, and then heaven; and that heaven was copied after Mauritius"

Mauritius is a volcanic island in the Indian Ocean, it is known for its beautiful beaches. It is a multiracial country where Asians, Europeans and Africans blend together.

• Population: 1.3 million (UN, 2008)
• Capital and largest city: Port Louis
• Area: 2,040 sq km (788 sq miles)
• Major languages: English, French (both official), Creole, Indian languages
• Major religions: Hinduism, Christianity, Islam.

Mauritius was uninhabited when the Dutch took possession in 1598. Abandoned in 1710, it was taken over by the French in 1715 and seized by the British in 1810. In 1968, Mauritius got its Independance.

The island of Mauritius is renowned for having been the only known home of the dodo.

The sega is the local dance, I'll elaborate on this dance in my later posts...