Intercultural Behaviour

This is my personal experience in last academic year.

I was a new member of a new committee in an organization. In the first committee meeting, I was quite surprised that all other members are from India. At first I was feeling very uncomfortable because it was the first time I find myself to engage in such a situation - meeting with strangers from very distinct cultural background. But I had managed to convince myself to relax and go with the flow.

During the meeting, all of them were involved actively in the discussion and tend to speak very fast. They seemed aggressive and would not hesitate to voice up their opinions and ask questions. Being in such an unusual situation, I started worrying about their viewpoints on me. Are they going to think that I am not contributing to the discussion if I keep quiet? How should I interrupt so that I can voice up my idea to them?

As the meeting went on, I started getting use to the atmosphere and ready to contribute to their discussion. But then, when I was talking about my opinions, the chairperson of the meeting would only glance at me and then quickly turned away to continue with other things with the rest of the members without waiting me to finish my words. As this went on and repeating many times, I became very disappointed and even started thinking about quitting the committee. To me, it is very embarrassing to encounter such a situation and very rude for someone to do that. However, I managed to not to show my disappointment and anger to them and then waited for the meeting to end.

This is a very unforgettable event because I have never experienced so much disrespect in my life before. Nonetheless, I also learnt from this incident that it is very important to be mentally prepared for this globalized world and its cultural diversity.

Biodata

This is the biodata which i would like to put into my resume, I have tried to keep it as short as possible.

My apology for not delivering this blog post on time.

I strongly believe that environment needs not be sacrificed for economic growth. Being an environmental engineering undergraduate, it’s my responsibility to help business to minimize their impact on the environment, as well as to create a sustainable energy future. My expertise in pollution management and biofuel will help Shell to achieve its goal of responsible energy. The missions would be challenging. However, they are also what excite me to strive harder.

Job Application Letter

September 1, 2009

Human Resource Manager,

Shell

Singapore

Dear Sir/Madam,

I am writing to introduce myself and express my interest to participate in the internship program offered by Shell Singapore. I learnt about this opportunity through the Shell Singapore website and the program overview has impressed me.

Being the third year Environmental Engineering undergraduate in National University of Singapore (NUS), I have completed several fundamental modules from both Civil and Environmental Engineering disciplines such as Environmental Processes, Construction Project Management and Water Science and Technology. Throughout the studies, I had gained a deep insight into numerous pollution and environmental issues related to petroleum industry and their possible solutions.

As the Events Director of NUS Students Union Students Against Violation of the Earth (SAVE), my responsibility is to oversee and coordinate SAVE’s events. SAVE’s past event included Green Carnival, Earth Hour Celebration, and more than 3 environmental seminars and conferences. This position has provided me numerous opportunities to improve my leadership and communication skills. Moreover, I take pleasure in working in SAVE with people from various cultures such as Vietnam and India. Besides taking part in organizational co-curriculum activities, I also enjoyed taking part in voluntary work under NUS Voluntary Action Club. Experiences gained through voluntary work in hospital and moral welfare home was indeed precious and it always reminded me on how fortunate I am. On top of that, I was the project director for 1 Degree Up in SAVE in my first year of study. 1 Degree Up is a project that aims to promote awareness on energy conservation in NUS, as well as work with the school authorities for the implementation of environmental policy. One of the policies that we had successfully implemented is setting lecture theaters’ air conditioning at 25 degrees Celsius.

A career at Shell Singapore will provide me with opportunity to prove myself in the dynamic and challenging working environment. The company’s focus on reducing carbon and pollutants level emission further motivates me to join the organization. Hence I believe that given a chance I could contribute and succeed at Shell internship program.

I would welcome an opportunity to discuss my qualifications with you. I can be reached at the number and email address indicated below. I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours Sincerely,

XXXXXXX

#C-226, Ridge View Residence

25, Lower Kent Ridge Road,

Singapore 119081

Ph: +65 82635128

Email: tchon88@gmail.com

Climate Crisis Symposium

I was the event coordinator for last Saturday Climate Crisis Symposium organised by NUSSU SAVE, Students Against Violation of the Earth. Before that, i did not antipate myself to gain any useful or new insights. Being an environmentally conscious person, i knew that climate crisis was real. I understood how individual effort can eventually help us in this man-made crisis. However, i had somehow getting very bored with this kind of seminar/talk because I personally felt that their purposes were to educate or convince those who were not environmentally conscious. Of course, it was proven that I was wrong.

Let's come back to talk about the sympsium. The attendance on that day were quite disappointing, LT27 which can accommodate about 350 people was only half-filled. I sympathized and understood the disappointment of the organisers, Ting Ting and Wei Tao. They had spent more than 2 months with huge effort preparing for this symposium. For me, i was not even care about the attendance until i finished listened to the insightful "An Inconvenient Truth" talk by Mr Tony Boatman.

Tony has been personally trained by Mr Gore (http://www.algore.com/, in case you wonder who Gore is) and is the only person in South East Asia fully accredited to deliver the presentation and its scientific content. His presentation style was similar to Al Gore's presentation in his An Inconvenient Truth movie and it was really great.

During the presentation, Tony had reminded me a potential catastrophe resulted from global temperature rise which I had long forgotten. The catastrophe would be the melting of Himalayan Glacier, which fed seven of the world’s largest rivers and provided water to 40 percent of the global population, including China and India. It had appeared that people would enjoy the huge outflow of water for the first few years. But could you imagine the situation after the Glacier had completely melted? What would happen to the 2 most populated countries? When this actually happened, it's impossible for us to sit on the sidelines.

Other than that, Mr Tony also mentioned several key environmental issues which the world is facing, as well as the possible solutions. Too bad I would not be able to share them with everybody.

In summary, the aim of this post is to share this small piece of information to everyone. And also to express my disappointment with the symposium's attendance. Otherwise, more people would able to know the urgency of our climate crisis. Of course,this is not the only environmental crisis which we should pay attention to. Let's join our fight against climate change!

Note:

If you wish to learn more about climate change, you may want to attend Green Carnival organised by NUSSU SAVE next week. It is on 7th and 8th September, from 10-4pm, at Central Forum