Reflection on Group Project

Hi everyone,

its finally the end of the semester and i really appreciate all that i learnt and the friends i made during class. Thank you for all you kind feedbacks and Intriguing topics during lessons.

Now to go back on track. Our group on Improving the recycling rate in Singapore chose Wiki as our collaborative platform. We chose this because during our peer teaching session, both me and yicun was teaching on wiki. During preparation for our peer teaching, we have explored most of the functionalities which we feel that it would be good for our Group project.

Wiki have saved me the trouble of sending long winded emails, to keep track of all the different versions that i might receive individually form each of my team member and its much more easy to edit than to use Microsoft word for our proposal.

If a proposal presentation was as simple as POP, then using wiki is as simple as AES, Access project through Wiki, edit anything you like and finally save it and its done. I could even leave a comment, change the title in order to inform my teammates which are the areas i edited. Which solves the problem which yicun mentioned in his post.

Basically Wiki is just like a internet folder. For example when we split our work for the proposal, each of our parts we just simply dump it into that folder and when we need it we retrieved it and then join it together to finalise the project.

However one minor problem is that you need to remember to check it often for updates done by your teammates. Although it have a notification option for and changes made, it sends the notifications over to my NUS email which i do not access often.

In conclusion, i would definitely use Wiki for my future projects and to recommend it to my friends.

Reflection on Oral Presentation

Behind the Scenes

After the dry-run presentation, my group received a lot of comments from our friendly teacher and friends. Some of the major one was most of us had minimum or no eye contact. This was because our group did not have a meeting to practice as a group and to tie down lose ends as a whole. Most of us just did the rehearsing on our own.

As for myself, i did not do much preparation; i only wrote our my script without even rereading it. Then came the dry-run, as i did not rehearse my own speech, it turned out really bad. I was nervous throughout the presentation, tried to refer to my script but was too messy to find my points within an instance, therefore i gave up my script entirely and decided to depend on my memory. It ended up having myself being a bill collector with the A4 size paper hanging right in front of my chest.

After learning our lesson, we decided to practice more as a group so that we could link each other's part better and to get comments on own parts. My team mate Huang Huan mentioned a very important point for my part. She said that my part of conclusion should be convincing and not a 'closing speech' type of presentation. It really woke me up and i brainstormed to finally produce the work that i presented on the official day.

On Stage

My team mates did very well during the actual run. They sounded confident and had very good eye contact. They managed to deliver the information well to the audience. As for myself, i felt more calm and even though i was rather nervous during the start of my part, i managed to get things under control and delivered a rather satisfactory conclusion which tied things down with all the parts that my team mate covered.

Off Stage

We received rather good feedbacks and thank you very much for them. I feel that i can deliver a good presentation from now on. It was really as simple as POP!

P.S Charles and Xiuxian, sorry for the rather negative feedback, just wanted to let you be aware of the points so that you can improve even further than you have.

Fostering Intercultural Communication

Being a free thinker, I tend to make friends from all across religions and cultures.

Therefore in order to really understand them well, fostering good inter-cultural

communication is very important. Even a simple handshake can mean very

differently to people of different cultures, sometimes tensions and conflict might

even occur.

When I was at the age of five, I entered this Christian child care center due to some

reasons. I did not really merge in well due to the fact that I am not a Christian and

did not really understand their culture at that age. Thus I was always excused from

performing their daily duties, prayers etc, which made me feel being out casted.

Whenever we were having out meals, the other kids always had to say their prayers

and thanking god for their food before they can start their meals. As for me, I could

start without doing anything at a seperate table all by myself. Then there was this

one time when a friend of mine came over and asked me why am I not praying and

eating together with them and this excited all the other kids and everyone starting

asking and made the situation out of control. I felt so embarrassed and did not know

how to answer them. Therefore I ran to a corner and hide behind one of the cabinets.

Luckily there was this teacher who was very loving and kind to me slowly explained to

me what exactly were they doing and even suggested me to try the prayers before

meals out together with them. At that time I was really shy and couldn't reject, simply

nodded my head. so from then on, I learnt all about daily practices of Christians with

the help from this teacher who i became close to and lived out my two years as a

Christian.

Being able to understand my peers at my child care center have helped me make

a lot of friends and even helped me escaped the fate of being out casted in what ever I

do in school. Therefore when dealing with different people from different culture, by

being sensitive and respectful would help greatly in understanding each other. And

only by understanding each other can any two become friends.

Cover Letter

98 Commonwealth Crescent

#05-44

Singapore 140098

9^th February 2011

Mr. P. John

HR Manager

MyCube

47 Duxton Road

Singapore 089511

Dear Mr. John,

Customer Service Manager, Job Reference No. 262050

I am enclosing my CV in response to your advertisement for the above post which appeared in JobsCentral on 7^th February 2011.

I have recently graduated from the National University of Singapore with an Honours degree in Computer Engineering. I held a number of leadership positions up till date and had a few years of customer service experience during my course of duty. In Secondary four, I held the position of President of Information Technology (IT) Club which manages a team of 30 students in various disciplines. During my junior college days, being one of the in-charge of a store in school helped me to gain a lot of hands on experience on store management.

Even in the Army, I was appointed two major positions throughout my course of service, namely Document Specialist, followed by a promotion to Medic Supervisor. Document specialist leads a team of 5 medics in charge of documentation and is considered to be one of the largest departments in the medical centre. Medic Supervisor receives direct command from senior medic and supervises all medics working in the medical centre. My duty includes; planning of duty, liaising with all departments and units within two army camps under the commando formation, answering complaints and requests and every other area which ensured the smooth operation of the medical centre. I learnt to be self-motivated, as I had to work with stress given by both my subordinates and boss, in order to ensure a good working environment.

In my current part time job, I was placed in charge of customer relations, which deals with answering any enquires, dealing with complaints, submitting appeals for taxi license trainees to Land Transport Authority (LTA) and invigilating taxi license examinations. This further proves my responsibility as it deals with working with an external government department.

After reading requirements of the job, I believe that I have the necessary leadership, customer relations and planning / scheduling skills to perform well in it and would not let the company down. I hope that my application would be considered and I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Yours Sincerely,

Mr. Teo Jun Wen Malcolm

Links!!!

resume jobAD

Resolving Interpersonal Conflict

I still remember two semesters back, I had to work in assigned groups for my computer language coding module on C++. The module basically has like weekly deadlines for a series of mini projects which we must put together to form a final program.

It was a three men team, with the other two from India. As I was not able to fully comprehend their English, we decided to communicate through emails after the initial meeting. Mr. A was assigned as the leader and it was decided that we would send our part of codes to him after we have completed so that he would be able to join them together and submit the final copy.

However, after the first submission, Mr. A went missing, that is all my emails that I sent him had no reply, calling him directed me to his voicemail. So I decided to start the project with Mr. B instead and get the ball rolling. We split the project into two parts with each of us doing our own part and sent each other our codes for peer marking.

As the deadline drew near, to my surprise, I realised that he was unable to perform the task given to him due to unknown reasons. so I had to take over his part as well and complete the project on my own. The funny thing is, it seems that Mr. A's email account is only active when the deadline draws near. Just before I was going to send him my final copy of the code, he replied my mail and asked me where is the code? I held back my emotions and did as he asked.

This carried on all the way till recess week, with about five weeks of solo work. It was during this recess week that I had to leave Singapore for various reasons for a couple of days and the mini projects did not stop coming. Therefore I sent out emails pleading them to complete the project to their best ability before I left.

When I came back, to my surprise nothing was done and the reason they gave was as follows:

Mr. A : No time for it, My Co-Curriculum Activities(CCA) took up all of my time.

Mr. B : Sorry I tried but I do not know how to do.

It was like the day before the deadline and nothing was done. I could no longer hold back my anger and I gave Mr. A a sentence, "So you came to Singapore to do CCA?" Immediately my hand phone rang and all I heard was "!$#@%@%*", therefore I ignored him and hang up the call.

My question is : How would you resolve this conflict, taking into considerations of the time-limit, complexity of the project and a constanly ringing hand phone?

P.S !$#@%@% is some vulgar language which I do not understand. Thank You.

I believe that most of us had experienced many cases of miscommunication,

that is the message we were trying to pass on to others ended up having its

meaning or content distorted. A typical example would be games that we

have played before like using hand signals or verbal means to pass a simple

word or sentence down the row and the final person have to say out loud the

message he received. Most of the time, as the number of people down the row

increases, the message being passed ended up being more distorted, where a

simple word like annihilation would end up changing to an apple.

To me, effective communication is defined as being able to get messages

across as well as receiving information with as little distortion as possible at

the same time. It is important to me because as an undergraduate and even

after i start working, teamwork is important and with teamwork lies

communication. With effective communication, efficiency in any projects and

presentations would be greatly increased. When efficiency increases, work

quality and the time spent on it would increase as well.

Living in a stressful environment since young, I realised that being efficient

in anything i do is vital in order to blend into our society. On the other hand,

showing any signs of inefficiency, even a slight one would lead to adverse

consequences. That is why effective communication is so important to people

striving to be successful in life, as no human being can survive on his own;

teamwork is essential and so is effective communication.