Random musings

Apart from studying, my mind had been in Europe for most of the past two weeks. Firstly, there was one flight that wiped out a country's most influential. And then suddenly, all metal birds are grounded. Bad year for aviation?

Fine, I will truthfully admit my mind had never really left Europe since my SEP. I missed flying (I took 3 stopovers to return home). I missed Trondheim so much and talked about Europe so frequently I am starting to irritate myself. I blame the hot and humid weather, the unpredictable downpours, the overloaded modules, the distance NUS is from Tampines, the light and noise pollution, and the busy city life.

As a parting post, I want to share bits and pieces of my most glorious days of SEP. If anyone reading this is still considering to go for exchange: JUST GO! It will be the best decision you can ever make. Take my word for it.

This is NTNU, Trondheim. Gløshaugen campus. Old buildings with hundreds of years of history in them. Houses the engineering and science faculties. However due to unforeseen circumstances (the biology department did not give me any modules), I had no classes here. I went for lessons in the medicine campus instead.


Dragvoll campus. A cluster of 4,5-storied buildings on a small hill. We froze ourselves on the open fields nearby trying to see the Leonid meteor showers.


And this is how a Science library should look:


Blue sky, white clouds, deep fjords, Autumn time, mountains = hiking trip.


1001 things to do before I die: glacier hike. Damn it was tough! They provided a shoe strap-on that had metal spikes; so every step I took I had to kick hard to 'stab' the ice. If not I could slide off the ice and pull the whole string of people down since we were roped together.


The first snows were expected in October, but this only happened in December. This is the view from my room, which was approximately 12 square meters big. That is like...2 PGP rooms? I would give everything to wake up to this view everyday:


Last place I want to showcase before I divulge too much about myself: Warsaw. It is such an unbelievably beautiful place. The sad kind of beautiful. How did this city pull through what happened 70 years ago? The Russian Wedding Cake still stands strong (and aesthetic-wise, pretty, in my opinion). Their central station is extremely communist-style; beside it stands a brand new, modern shopping mall. On one end, Nowy Świat (New World Street) houses high-end shops rebuilt in neoclassical style. On the other end, the street runs through residential areas typical of the Eastern Bloc. Ah that's some mixed feeling.






The Presidential Palace. I did not know what this building was at that time since there was barely any marking. But I knew it was some place important because it had the Polish flag, EU flag and NATO flag flying. I was really saddened by the plane crash two weeks ago even though it had nothing to do with my life. Either I am too sentimental, or I have gone mad.


University of Warsaw:


Holy Cross Church on Krakowskie Przedmieście (street name), which houses Chopin's heart:


Singaporeans in front of the Copernicus Monument:


And finally, I want to share that the best reward you can get from an exchange is friendship. We had a Pole to lead us around in Warsaw! He was an exchange student at NTNU too. =)


From Warsaw, my friends went to Krakow and Auschwitz. I didn't.

P.S. If anyone would like some unconventional Europe tour recommendations, I could help with Warsaw, Riga, Tallinn, Helsinki, Norway and Sweden. =)) Study hard everyone!

ES2007S. Probably the most enjoyable module ever.

Alright, this post title is a little exaggerated, but I hope it gets my point across that I really liked attending this class. Many thanks to everyone involved because you are the reason class time was enjoyable. It was not a concern that we were not choosing our own project groups; I enrolled this class alone anyway. But I am glad I made friends along the way. Special mention to Geraldine, See Chai and Mc hot fudge sundae for making this module and the project memorable.

The best part of this module was that it helped me put the importance of soft skills into perspective. Day in and day out we utilize many of these skills covered in class without realizing its significance. To grow up in Singapore is already an advantage in intercultural and language aspects. Interpersonal skills: I must be doing something right if I have friends that we can call each other for the most absurd reasons. And since my project group did not implode, we must all be doing it right too! This has turned out to be a self-discovery trip.

I mentioned job search associated skills as one of my top priorities in taking this module, and now, I can consider that mission accomplished. With our classroom preparations I walked out of my latest interview confident and happy with myself. And that is one very good feeling. (Whether it is successful or not, that is another matter.)

With this post marks the end of ES2007S, but transferring the soft skills to my life is just the beginning of my journey to be a well-versed and tactful person. Communication is an art I have yet to perfect. Like a mad scientist, I shall persevere in its experimentation.

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P.S. Regarding the short discussion on Thursday about multitasking; I drafted this entry while watching cars fly on a rainy Shanghai circuit. I may be generalizing but I think we (this generation of ‘kids’) spent most of our life multitasking. Why not make full use of our access to technology? I could watch an episode of House while writing a few notes on Notepad on the train ride to school! Studying + music (and sometimes + dinner). Work + Facebook + YouTube. How is it ever possible we survive a non-multitasking iPad?!!

Reflection on OP

Firstly I must apologize it took me some time to fix up this reflection blog post. I suppose after a good rest (read: service my sleep debt) I would be able to better analyse my performance. Geraldine & See Chai, you two really are efficient tough cookies. After all, we had been so sleep deprived!

Preparation: something we can never get enough of
Like true blue scientists, I think that we got carried away with the research and details. We had so much information it was tough to cut down; everything seemed too important! Our original presentation could have easily stretched until half-time of a football match but we wanted to
keep it below twenty. (It would really be ideal since audience tend to lose concentration beyond 20 minutes according to one of my professors. Infectious disease prof if I remember correctly.)

It was quite late before we decided to strip down to just one specific course of action and that caused a substantial revamp in Geraldine's and See Chai's parts. In a rough count, I think we spent around 50 man hours together for this oral presentation! Wow!

Delivery
I really should have thrown away my notes (I certainly do not mean my E71). Even at the point as I was loading the slides, I was still undecided whether to have my notes on hand or not. Will I forget the next point? Will I miss the important keyword? Needless to say, what I thought was a lifebuoy became my plummet.

I felt better prepared than the previous peer teaching session. Slightly more confident in speaking to an audience. I was not as nervous; but I am not sure if I was speaking too fast or monotonous. Was I?

And somehow I began to paraphrase my script on the spot! Oh man!

Slides
Design and visual appeal is really subjective and dependent on personal taste. I guess what we had to do was to make it as general and widely acceptable as possible. Our idea was to use one main phrase to bring out the keypoint and leave the rest of the details for verbal. I wish my news articles had provided greater impact than they did.

These are probably the 'cleanest' slides I have ever done. Minimalistic, sleek and simple. I was a habitual user of cliche powerpoint templates (with Verve in greyscale as my favorite) but I guess it will be white on black from now on.

Personally, I was hesitant about the extensive references to Reynolds' style. I hate to see our slides lose our "personal touch" by trying too hard to look like his. It makes little difference from using cliche powerpoint templates! The same goes for slides with the data in percentages and nothing else. It does not work for me to have the visual impact but a nondescript speech. "Yeah I remember there was something at 50%...but what was that 'something'...I cannot recall."

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On a side note, here are some points I found to be important:

1. Minimalism
1. KISS principle ("keep it simple and stupid" or "keep it simple, stupid!", whichever way you wish to read it as)
1. Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler - A. Einstein

Alright. Sorry for failing math but there is just one point actually.