Pooi San's Biodata

My name is Wong Pooi San and I am currently a year 3 undergraduate student in National University of Singapore (NUS). I am a student from Faculty of Science, majoring in Life Sciences with concentration of Biomedical Science. I will be graduating in June next year with Bachelor of Science (Honours) and I hope I can enjoy my life and score for good grades for my modules in the remaining one more year in NUS.

I was born in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and I completed my primary, secondary as well as my pre-university education before I was admitted to NUS for my tertiary education. Before coming to Singapore to study, I was quite worried whether I could cope the pressure here. However, after three year of studies in NUS, I am glad that I am can cope the life here and I am satisfy with my academic results as well as my CCA achievements here. I was studying in a Chinese-based school for my primary and secondary education, thus my English is not that proficient. So that's why I took ES2007S to improve my English!!!!=)

I join Red Cross Humanitarian Network - National University of Singapore Chapter (RCHN-NUS Chapter) since two year ago and currently I am the Vice President of this society. As a Vice President, I am responsible to guide and advise my Management Committee members for various activities such as Blood Donation Drive, Charity Bazaar, First Aid Awareness Workshop etc. Besides that, I was the team leader for International Humanitarian Mission Trip to Hunan Province, China to help the mentally disabled orphans in last December. As a team leader, I led 13 volunteers and make final decisions with the advices of President as well as Singapore Red Cross's staff who followed us to China. Before the trip, I was responsible to liaise with the China local contact and Singapore Red Cross for administrative matters as well as chair the weekly meeting with the volunteers.

I find out that we, normal healthy people are very lucky people if compared to those beneficiaries that we helped during the humanitarian trip. Thus, I strongly feel that we shall appreciate the things we have now!=) Besides, through various co-curricular activities that I have participated from year 1 till now, I have gained a lot of experiences and skills such as time management, leadership, teamwork as well as emotional management. I wish these experiences and skills can aid me in my future career.

I wish to become a teacher after the completion of my undergraduate studies as I have the experience as a relief teaches. I hope I can nurture the future generation by teaching them knowledge that I have learned from my education. Besides that, I have a goal which is to involve in oversea humanitarian and volunteer trip once a year to help the beneficiaries as I feel that helping people is meaningful for me!=)

That's all about me!Hope all of you know me more after reading my biodata!=)

Are they still friend???

There is a Chinese saying that we depend on our family members at home while friends are the one we dependent on when we are outside. Thus, friends play important roles in our life as we need them for helps, advices when we have problem etc. However, miscommunication and conflicts often occur between friends and these problems will affect the friendship. I would like to describe a hypothetical scenario that shows conflicts between friends.

The characters involved here are Andy and Mandy. Both of them were in the same society and they were really good friends. They used to stay overnight in clubroom together with other friends to study for examination. They like to flirt with each other and in their friends' eyes, they looked like buddy instead of lover.

Mandy was a very stress person when she was in mist of preparing examination since she had high demand on her result. Andy knew about her stress and encouraged her as well as tried to help her destress during examination period. Mandy felt thankful for Andy's action and was glad that she have a such a good buddy beside her.

However, as time went on, Andy has developed a special feeling toward Mandy. He was struggling at that moment of time whether he should tell Mandy about his feeling. Finally, he made a decision to tell about his special feeling. Thus, on the day Mandy treated Andy for a meal as a thank you treat, he asked Mandy for a date while they were waiting for bus. Mandy was shocked, terrified and uneasy when she heard about it as she only treated Andy as her buddy. So she decided to reject Andy's request to avoid any confusion and told him that it was better to be friends instead of go to further relationship.

From that day onwards, Mandy tried to avoid Andy as she thought it was better for them to not meet or talk to each other. Although sometimes they were accidentally bumped up, there was a weird environment surrounding them. However, after a few weeks, Mandy felt regret as she did not want to lost a good buddy but she did not know how to approach Andy to avoid confusion. So people, what you think Mandy should do??

Intercultural Behaviour.........

Singapore and Malaysia are both multi-racial and culture countries as these two countries consist of three main ethnic groups such as Malays, Chinese and Indians. As different ethnic groups have different traditions, religious and cultures, the possibility of having intercultural problem are quite high as not all people will understand the culture and traditions of all the races. Thus, intercultural behaviours such as lifestyle, eating manner etc can cause problem if people do not understand the traditions and culture of different races. The incident that I would like describe is regarding intercultural behaviour and communication between Malays and Chinese which I heard from my friend.

Universities in Malaysia consist of majority Malays and Chinese students as these two races have a higher percentage in the Malaysia's population. As we know, first year students of all universities in Malaysia are compulsory to stay in accommodation so that they can be trained to be independent. As to enhance the interactions between different races and to minimize the gap between them, the universities has a policy to allocate students from different races to share a room so that they have more time to interact with each other. My friend was a student of one of the universities in Malaysia. During her first year in university, she was allocated to stay with Malays and Indian students. My friend was a student from Chinese school and did not understand much on the traditions and cultures of other races since she seldom have chance to communicate with people from other races during her primary and secondary school. Thus, she was not able to adapt herself to share room with students from other races. She had to communicate with them using Malay or English which was not her usual communication language. Besides that, she could not eat her favourite food which is pork in front of her room mates as there is a rule that not to eat pork in front of Muslim as this is a sin for them.

One of the major incidents that show intercultural behaviour's problem was the Muslim prayers' habit. As we know, Muslims are required to pray five times per day and they have certain direction for their pray. There was one early morning when my friend woke up during their prayer time. She was shocked when she saw her Muslim room mates prayed beside her bed with white clothes and head cover. At first, she was terrified by her room mates because she told she saw a ghost. After a few second, she felt unhappy and uneasy because in Chinese's traditions and culture, only dead person will be prayed by people and it is not a good sign if people pray in front of you. However, she managed to solve this problem by communicating with her Muslims room mate and both of them were adapted to each other's culture well and now they are good friends.

I was only aware about intercultural problems after I heard this story from my friend as my social circle is mainly Chinese since I studied primary school. Intercultural problems need to be solved to avoid miscommunication as well as ethnic groups bias. It is important to understand other races' traditions and cultures as intercultural behaviour cannot be avoided in our future workplace.

Correspondence Critique..........

From:	XXX	Sent:	Tue 2/3/2009 5:07 PM
To:
Cc:
Subject:	ARO position in XXX

XXX(Mr) :: Executive, XXX Undergraduate Program Committee :: National University of Singapore :: c/o XXX Admin Office XXXXXX :: XX-XXXX (DID) :: XX-XXXXXX(Fax) :: XXXXXX@nus.edu.sg (E) :: www.XXXXXX.nus.edu.sg (W)

----- Forwarded Message -----

Assistant Research Officer

An immediate vacancy for Assistant Research officer is available at Plant Systems Biology Group in XXX

Work:
1. Molecular and genetic study on plant stem cell regeneration,

2. Ordering chemicals,

3. Maintenance of laboratory and growth spaces

Requirements:
BSc or higher degree in Biological Sciences or related fields.
Highly-motivated person who is interested in plant developmental biology.
Lab experiences in cloning - design and construction of plasmids, PCR and other basic molecular biology techniques - is essential.
Prior experience in plant sciences is advantageous, but not essential if he/she is enthusiastic about learning plant molecular genetics.

The salary given is commensurable to educational qualifications and working experience of the candidates. Benefits include annual leave, medical and dental benefits, etc.

If you have any inquiry, please contact XXXX@XXX.org.sg.

Interested individuals should send their application, curriculum vitae, and 2 letters of reference to:

Dr. XXXX

Principal Investigator

Plant Systems Biology Group
XXXXX Laboratory Limited

1 Research Link National
University of Singapore Singapore 117604

E XXXX@XXX.org.sg
http://www.XXX.org.sg/itot.asp

This is the e-mail I have received a few weeks ago which is related to the employment of Assistant Research Officer by one of the research laboratory. I think it is a bad example of business correspondence which did not convey the message clearly.

The subject of the e-mail is not clearly stated. People who receive this e-mail may not know the meaning of ARO as this short form can mean other things instead of Assistant Research Officer. Besides that, the e-mail did not state who were the target recipient and this will confuse the recipients as the recipients do not know the purpose of this e-mail.

The opening of this e-mail is considered inappropriate as it consists of the information of the sender. Although it is a forwarded e-mail, the information of sender should be written at the end of this e-mail or before the line forwarded e-mail. In my opinion, the opening of the e-mail should be written in the following way:

“On behalf of XXX Laboratory, I would like to inform you that XXX laboratory is urgently recruiting an assistant research officer. The following are the details and criteria about this position. If you are interested, you can contact XXXX@XXX.org.sg for more information.

With regards,

XXX”

The content of the e-mail is not well written as it did not properly describe the job scope of assistant research officer and this will create confusion to the recipients. Besides that, the requirements for the position was very brief and the grammar used were inappropriate.

Lastly, the closing of the e-mail did not state the person who sent out this e-mail to Mr. XXX, which means that it did not state who the recipient should direct to if there were any queries. Besides that, this e-mail did not state the deadline for the application for the position and this might confuse the recipients.

In conclusion, I think this e-mail is not a good business correspondence and it did not fulfill the 7Cs of writing in effective communication and did not convey the message well to the recipients.