Team & Leader, The great crumble.

hahah sth really good happened made me wanna take study break and come back here to rant about sth again. This time it’s about the worst project I’ve had since entering university.

In this particular project of mine, we have it all. Failed leadership, poor communication, miscommunication, free rider, weak personnel, wishful thinking, conflicts among members, and needless to say, zero teamwork. You name and the project has it. However, it didn’t really bother me because I knew this was gonna happen at the earlier stage of the project, though I have to admit that I didn’t expect it to be this bad.

In a project, usually people prefer to work on their own and not to have to much collaboration with people (well, at least that’s how it is in my course and all the electives classes I’ve taken). Then at the end of the day, they’ll come together once and for all to integrate what they’ve done individually into the final piece for submission. Well, that only works if your project doesn’t require regular integration and correlation across all sections. When you’re working on a project that equates to a 4AUs subject, that completely doesn’t apply. My current project is a perfect example of that. Well don’t get me wrong here. “Doesn’t apply” here doesn’t mean you won’t get good grade. If you say your sole goal of doing a project is to get good grades then you can stop reading this post.

Scoring should be only be the team’s short term goal and one of the project’s objectives. Learning is however the true aim of it. Again before I could go on, a bunch of people would rebut that we do learn sth. Learn what? Like how to write report? how to design cover page? how to program a software? to make a website? how to apply our lecture into our project? Well honestly, if that’s what each of us would learn every time we do a project, then the idea of project has failed completely. Again, I began to sound like a real smart ass here. I mean who the hell don’t know the potically correct answer that the whole idea of project work is to let us learn about teamwork, leadership, blah blah blah. But what exactly did you learn?

You see, usually when u try asking a person what he learned after completing a project. He’d go, “I learned how to work in team.”, “I learn how to handle leadership.”, “I learn that teamwork is important in life.”  or sth along those lines. This is why I like to listen to real leader talk. If you pay attention to them, real good leader/ team worker they don’t boast about how great a leader they are neither they would say anything about knowing leadership and teamwork. Come on, this is like a small school project that barely simulate anything in a working society. If you say u alrd can learn how to handle teamwork and leadership just by doing a few projects in school. I think that’s pure rubbish.

With that said, there is where I have say that I’m glad to have such a screwed up project. It makes the learning points of the project more obvious and easier to pick up. Imagine if all your projects were to go smoothly and peacefully, you would never really know what could’ve gone wrong, would you? In fact, I spend more time reflecting on the project than doing the project itself. One of the things I asked myself most frequently during the course of this project is “out of all the many causes to the failure of this project, which one would I say is the key cause to everything?” Some people would think that it’s a dumb question because it’s so rethorical. “Isn’t it obvious that it’s failed leadership?” Well that’s the thing. I feel that we are so blinded by the institution teaching and society’s over emphasis on leadership that people automically assume leadership is the key to everything. I mean some people don’t even know why leadership is crucial, and just know that it is. So many people told us so that we agreed to it without condition. Then when you’re put in the a leader position, you’ll start questioning yourself what exactly is important about leadership in a team or an organization? And only when you manage to make it work through your leadership then you have the right to agree that leadership is really the key and is crucial.

Omg! I think I watch too much nigahiga that I start to have ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) also. I just realize I just rambled all over the place and haven’t really made any point. Well my point is…. my project sucks big time!! Teehee!!

Fairness? Equality? Reason? Complain.

It’s really been a long while again. I’ve had so much to write about but time doesn’t gimme the leisure to do so. But sth happened yesterday that I couldn’t resist not ranting away about it.

After a whole day of slaving over my project, I rushed out for dinner and went for IUC meeting. There were 2 agendas for the meeting. 1 is regarding the ragging issue and the other was on the HAS Distance point feedback and suggestion. Due to the late arrival of the president, the 2nd agenda was started first. So yeah the issue is the distance point for international student (which is currently 9 pnt regardless of year of study) maybe changed to 9, 8 and 7 pnt from as we progress in our year of study? What are your thoughts on that?

After the question was raised, a few particular people started throwing their feedback/reason/argument/complain/comment/nonsense/bull crap/waste of time (Yes, literally “/” because everything was mixing up together). You can’t really tell them apart, whether it’s complain, reason, argument or feedback. This is what happens when people use emotion and feeling to speak. I was sitting there close to 3 hrs thinking in my head “what a blardy waste of time, I could be better off slaving over my project right now.” I mean these people were raising an arguments that has already been repeatedly talked about since this issue started 4 or 5 years back. You are just being annoyingly redundant. But haven’t they thought of that? No, because apparently they sounded as if other people are stupid enough not to see the argument until they pointed it out. A few examples of the arguments raised were regarding the Singaporean has home and foreigners has no home, so Singaporean has an alternative and we don’t. Also, this is a distance point so by right, we should have it higher than the Singaporean since we live much further than them. These are the 2 classic ones and there were a bunch of others like renting house/room outside are expensive, exchange rate issue, blah blah… blah blah… Seriously, you’re getting nowhere with these. Then I was like never mind since already wasted my time, I might as well start praying for someone to at least come up with a creative and plausible feedback. Guess what!? Someone did went creative. Creatively bullshit.

He/She said the school should look at it from a financial point of view as in who earns more and who earns less. I was like what!? what the hell? where is that coming from? Well, I could see how she derived that out because well, according to the exchange rate Singapore has more or less the strongest currency in South East Asia, and apparently, he/she believes that it’s a common sense that foreigners’ families are poorer (as in earning less) than the locals’ families. The first factor was reasonable since it’s a fact. But the 2nd, prove that. I mean I’m on her side on the 2nd one since I’m from a middle-class family in a poor country. But the thing is will being poor and having been hanging around with poor international students and “rich” locals prove your common sense? How do you know one are poorer than the other? Because they said so? If I were to take myself as an example again, so far most people who just know me or barely know me assume that I’m one rich ass kid from my country. But how true is that? Well, after the SU side explain that this couldn’t be a valid point since we can’t prove it. He/She accepted it AND went more CREATIVE with the suggestion. He/She said the school should study the financial status of all the students and do a review on it. Seriously!? Did he/she just throw that for the sake of creating argument or he/she have seriously thought about it? I mean if he/she seriously thought this could be done, then I’m speechless. He/she was saying that students gave school their family income and financial status at their disposal so why can’t they just use the information to work this out?………..I was like SERIOUSLY? This is ultimate bullcrap. Maybe he/she did gave hers at the school disposal but not everybody does. It’s easy to say it when we’re poor since we have nothing to lose when it’s reveal that we’re poor. We’d just stay the same or probably gain sth. But how would rich people feel? I mean you can ask yourself a simple question? Why do rich people spend so much money and waste effort to put their money in a bank that promise them highest level of privacy? At the end of the day, even if 99% of the student agreed that their families’ financial information are at the school disposal, there school still can’t conduct the study because of the 1% that doesn’t agree. Man, when they went on lik 1 hour long regarding this financial issue, I was really close to stand up and walk out of the meeting.

Well, that was 1 of it. Then somebody else took on the creativity to a greater height. He/she said now the issue it’s not about who earns more and who earns less. It’s about who’s pays more and who pays less. wow! He started of pointing out the difference between our tuition fee (as in the locals and foreigners). And I couldn’t remember his/her exact wordings but he/she was basically trying to say that if the school wanna treat us equally they should put us in an equal financial ground. That means to say either we should be paying the same amount or the rental outside campus should be as cheap as the ones provide by the campus. That’s like asking Apple to sell ipod at $500 to the rich and only $100 to the poor. Anyway, that isn’t the main problem. The main thing is he/she now trying to involve MOE and Singapore Government into the equation and not just the university. Either he/she is that dumb or he/she has really has no clue that tuition fee/tuition grant and real estate price not under the university’s control. So if you’re aware of that, it really sounds as if he/she is trying ask Singapore to change their policy just for this issue. wow! that’s simply creativity at its best. And I could see that the SU President and Vice President were both -___-” though they are foreigners as well. However, they were polite enough to answer everything politely and not asking he/she to zipped up and f off. I mean foreigners or not, we should be able to see this clearly that money is not part of the equation and that the result they’re looking for in this equation is a “≥” sign and not an “=” sign. You just make a fool of yourself and make all foreigners look stupid by suggesting this.

Finally, I just wanna wrap this up by pointing out a some basic points that we can ask ourselves. First of all, nothing is equal and fair. Otherwise there won’t be people working much harder than the others. In fact the university is being very kind by trying minimize the casualty. If you look at university all over the world, people don’t even have hall to stay at. From there you tell, that the university has every right not to provide us hall, and every right to charge equal to outside rate (just look at how SMU and NUS charge compared to NTU). And when you complain about how expensive is outside rental, please do bear in mind who pay for your education here. The university and Singapore government. What if they tell us that ok, now we don’t pay for your tuition fee, tuition grant, and school fee and pay for your food and rental outside instead. Will you be happy? If you do the math, I don’t think you’d even consider coming to Singapore at all. Ask yourself why are you here? Never use money as an argument to an issue. Local or international alike, there are always people having problem with money. Asking why Singapore charge foreigners more education is like asking why a country charging tourists extra for visiting their attractions. You’re here means you’ve made your choice, informed or not. So live with your choice. Even it it turns out to be a mistake (financially in this case), it’s your fault. You can give 101 reason that the university didn’t explain clearly to you that it’s gonna be like this. But you have to remember that they are but salesman, their job is to sell, doesn’t matter how. It’s your problem after you choose to buy it. That’s why we should appreciate it when they have good customer service.

Man, I can’t believe that I’ve actually wasted 1hr+ ranting on these pointless arguments. But I really do hope that all my friends who end up reading this will not end up being in the same shoe as those people. We are educated people, and the university treat us as educated people. So when they give you opportunity to voice yourself out, you’d do so like an educated person and not simply making a fool of yourself and the community you’re representing. When we’re holding a representative position, it’s not just our individual image is at stake but our community’s. If you think you have nothing better to say, then take the most educated response by shutting up.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009)

My rating:

Finally,  I have a few mins to post about this movie. I was so glad that I managed to catch the movie with my friends in GV Max. Anyway, Transformers 2 is in a way both disappointing and satisfactory for me. It’s disappointing because the storyline is practically crap compared to the first. Apparently it seems that all the effort and budget is focus on the effects and the CGI, which was, well, the very satisfactory part of the movie. So yeah well, if you argue that the movie sucks, I can totally see where you’re coming from. However, I still give 4-star rating to it because it’s definitely 1 of the best $8s I’ve spent in cinema. 2+ hours of non-stop hardcore CG and explosion effects with many more new transformer models and all the latest and coolest US military weaponry!! how can it get any better than this. To top that, they throw in the hot Megan Fox running only hotly (?) to sexify the action (?)… whatever I was saying, it’s simply sexy and awesome. All in all, I’d say forget about the plot and go watch it. Anyway, I think they’re not aiming for Oscar so there’s no need for superb plot.

Google IO 2009 – Site Review

I had the video recording of this event for quite some time which I finally had time to watch it. It’s totally awesome. Almost everything he said is sth new to me. It’s definitely enlightening. If you’re serious and professional web developers for any industry, you should definitely watch this. I can assure you, you’ll thanks me for it. Although I’m not that hardcore as a web developer yet, still this is sth that I definitely should know in my field of study and work.

Nowadays, web development has taken on an unprecedented revolution due to the outburst of giant internet search engines such as Google, Yahoo, MSN. Net surfer no longer want to waste their brain space remembering all the site address because there are just too many of them as time goes by. And their bookmarks only stays at their PC at home. Delicious and Digg is too much work and too troublesome for a non-web-savvy person. It’s so much faster, simpler and more convenient to just Google them out. So what I’m trying get at here is that when you’re developing a site, now you have to take search engine as 1 big part of consideration during planning. At the end of the day, it’s not only about maintaining user on your site but before that you have make more people come to your site. The more users visiting your site, the higher chance you have in converting some of them. So yeah watch it. You’ll definitely learn sth. You can find the video in youtube.

Getting Old, Morning Stroll

It’s really been along while since I blog about myself or my thoughts. Today sth occurred to me and made me feel like blogging about it.

Today I had an early morning appointment with a guy to buy sth from him. So I had to wake up very early, one of the very rare occasion that I get up early I’d say. Anyway, after washing up, I made my way to ATM to withdraw money. Outside, the sky is clear with no cloud and no sun and the cool morning breeze brushes me softly. I couldn’t help it but find myself enjoying the morning stroll with my favorite tunes on from my iPod. When I got back, I was like God, I’m really getting old. Please tell me that youngsters do enjoy morning strolls and not just senior citizens. Hahaha but honestly I don’t really care about that.

Maybe, I should go into rehab and start waking up early and have morning jog instead of midnight jog.

Back Up, Restore, and Migrate Firefox

I came across an article on how to back up for FireFox at PC World just now. This little trick will come in handy for super heavy net surfer and bookmarker peeps like me. So yeah here it goes:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/170016/backup_firefox.html?tk=rss

Wall-E Ending Credits

This is nice. I like it.

FB App: Battle Stations

My rating:

Battle Stations is by far the best Facebook game to date. The only game that I’ve been playing in Facebook for the longest time.  The concept of the game is simple. In the game, you’re a captain of your ship. You started of by picking your class (each class has their own benefits as you progress through the game). Your objective is basically to level up your captain and get resource to build up your ship by buying new ship (stronger or faster ship), buy stronger weapons and ship parts. You can also battle other players’ ship. As you reach high level, you might want to get involved into the more fun part of the game and that is joining a clan where you’ll be having clan war with another clan and stuff like that. Well, it’s a lot more fun than it sounds.

Battle Stations does me a lot of goods and some some bads. First of all, I had fun playing it. I made new friends and meet new people through the game. Through the friends I made in the game, I was able to learn a lot of things and went through a lot things with them. One definite takeaway for me would be that now I can outrightly say that I understand the feeling of those hardcore online gamer. On the down side, the game took away some of time as more as I became more engaged and in the game. Also it took quite a bit of my money. The first online game that I actually spend money on. -_- I hope there won’t be anymore after in the future. All in all, it’s been fun, playing with all your friend. It gives us sth to talk about, sth in common.

12 Rounds (2009)

My rating:

12 Rounds is definitely much better than John Cena’s previous work, The Marine. This is like a more believable version of Die Hard 4 (the only Die Hard, I watched) if you think about it. Detective Fisher, the main character, did not battle the bad guy alone. He’s die hard and yet vulnerable at times which makes him more human I guess. Frankly, I like 12 Rounds type of plot better than Die Hard’s. The type of plot where it makes you predict what will happen next and try to recall what has happened to see what you’ve missed out. Some examples of the movies I loved from this type of plot are Ocean 11, Ocean 13, The Bank Job, The Italian Job, Kiss Kiss Bang etc. I like the twist at the end as well. 12 Rounds is definitely worth watching.

1000 Places to See Before You Die

While I was browsing for things to watch the other day, I came across this Discovery Channel program called 1000 Places To See Before You Die. The show is about a newly wedded couple, who got inspired by the book 1000 Places to See Before You Die, put their lives on hold and go on an all paid 5-month odyssey trip around the world to places recommended in the book. I love this show. If you love traveling or a traveler at heart, you’ll definitely love the show. So far I’ve watched only 2 episodes which is to Hawaii and India and going to watch Alaska and Brazil. And YES!! They also went to Cambodia. I’m trying to get that episode. If you have time, check them out.

Anyway, while watching the show, sth that was said in there got me thinking for awhile. During the episode, it mentioned that visiting the place is like realizing your childhood dream. Then I think why most of the time people relate their incredible experience to childhood. For example, I often hear people say “This really fun it’s like we’re a child once again.” or “this brings back our childhood memory” or stuffs along those lines. That implies that childhood is one of the best time in their lives, if not the best. However, we also often see people negatively regard people who are inconsiderate, hot tempered, insensitive, immature etc.. as “childish”. I found it ironic and the same time, humorous. It’s like they’re saying that “I love childhood but I hate being childish or people who’re childish.” How can you enjoy your childhood if you’re not childish?

So the next time somebody says that you’re childish, you say “Thank you.”