The last leg of the journey
it's been a great journey. Sorry we were late.

shark vs the universe
No title available
No title available
he wasn't even looking at me and he found me
Jules of Nature

JBB: An Artblog!

blake kathryn
will byers stan first human second
I'd rather be in outer space šø
Aqua Utopiaļ½ęµ·ć®åŗć§čØę¶ćē“”ć
tumblr dot com

if i look back, i am lost
KIROKAZE
YOU ARE THE REASON
taylor price

No title available
h
Cosmic Funnies

izzy's playlists!
ojovivo

seen from Malaysia

seen from United States

seen from United States

seen from United States
seen from Argentina
seen from Malaysia

seen from Algeria
seen from United States

seen from United States
seen from Brazil

seen from United States
seen from Pakistan
seen from United States

seen from Australia
seen from United Kingdom
seen from Switzerland

seen from Singapore
seen from Suriname
seen from Argentina
seen from United States
@jakksz
The last leg of the journey
it's been a great journey. Sorry we were late.
Some thoughts about New York
I, along with many of the other SUTD students, went to New York City over the long weekend. I was in poised in anticipation: What would one of the most highly regarded Metropolitan cities in the world, being a melting pot of different people and cultures be like? From Hollywood movies like Spiderman to TV Series like The Apprentice, I pictured New York to be quite a cool, clean and civilized society. That was not like what I saw when I went there. As a comparison to Boston: From the people's facial expressions body language, they seem less happy and less friendly. A deeper vibe I sensed was that they were less soulful and more empty. There were more beggars around, more policeman, more people who didn't behave in very civilised manner, more people having heated verbal exchanges. To jump the gun (in case I forget what I was pondering), I thought perhaps the community in New York is generally more superficial, and that there was a lust for something, some pleasure? Maybe its too extreme to say that. And, I'm not sure how much I should hesitate in makinig these derogatory kind of judgements. I wondered how much the physical landscape would have influenced the behaviour and state of mind and heart of the people there. New York, or Manhattan, rather, was quite a lot more congested/crowded than Boston - both pedestrian and road traffic.
Kenneth
Baby Photos!
Here comes a big difference.
ps. I used to have dimples but they seem to disappear with age.
Aaron signing off
My everythings
-Shinjini
Winter IAP collaboration in a nutshell
This entire winter IAP has been about collaboration and communication of course. The best example I have gotten would be working with my team in the High Speed Robotics Class. Our team consisted of 3 SUTD students and 3 MIT students whom 2 were taking PHDs while another his masters. It was truly a refreshing experience in a dozen ways, first off would be realizing that we have totally no idea what was going on most of the time regarding the main framework that we were introduced to, ROS (Robot Operating System). They had more experience therefore they took the lead and we tried to keep up and help in whatever way we could.
This is a photo of the car that we were working on, with my 2 PHD teammates in the background. Photo taken on 22nd January 3am.
To be honest it wasnāt much of collaboration per se, but the interesting thing I noticed was the 2 PHD students was very comfortable speaking in Chinese, therefore Jiehan and I started to use Chinese when we were working together.
We werenāt contributing much to the project, that was the bottom line, and I understood it well. However taking a step back and looking at it from an outsiderās perspective, this situation was exactly what I faced in previous projects (I wrote about it in my previous essay), but ironically this time myself and others being the ones finding it difficult to fit into a group and the capable few trying hard to find ways to allow us to learn more about the project. With the project coming to an end, I have only tried to contribute whatever I can, which includes manual labor and running around opening doors for the car to navigate.
In this short period of time (less than 24 hours), I have not managed to reflect fully on this and the best course of action both parties could have done, but I believe that this was already close to the optimal solution, whereby all of us who were very unfamiliar to the system have been hanging around them all the time, trying to learn as much as possible even though we do not have the time to try out things ourselves.
Another experience I could briefly write about would be my first course, DIY Radiation Detection Kits. The most fun part of the course would be the building and constructing of the Geiger Counter, and the teamwork comes in during the testing and calibration phase. I was paired up with another PHD student (Cody) and boy was that an uneasy experience. I had a very hard time keeping up and understanding most of the theories as I have never really learnt them before. There were a couple of awkward moments when I had to request my teammate to explain a few things the same concept as I still couldnāt understand what was going on. In the end, Cody stopped working on this testing and calibration purely because he had better things to do and it was not graded for him (I totally understand), so I was left to fend for myself. During one of the days of testing, I was so lost that I didnāt progress in any way and just watched how the other teams did and took notes. I felt really bad in every possible and knew that I had to cool down and just take it one step at a time. So that was what I did and I managed to finish 7 out of 10 lab questions before the deadline and I felt quite proud of that.
Trust me on this, I have only started to notice this trend as I started this paragraph. Notice how both situations mentioned above includes me not fully understanding and thus not able to contribute to a team effort in a technical way. Well, the results of both vary but they are still very similar in a lot of ways. This came about to me that in hindsight, I am actually really enjoying this feeling of being challenged and thrown into the wild to survive, especially so when I am supposed to implement things that I have learnt here in a Competition in Singapore, which requires me to soak in everything as fast as possible and as wide a spectrum as possible too.
This has been great and I am very glad I had a chance to look at all that have happened to me during this IAP in a different perspective and also to remind myself that it is definitely not the end of the world if things donāt go as expected, or even worse with everything going wrong.
PS. I already broke my MIT mug when my whole bag flopped onto the floor while I was packing half asleep, I am very sad about it but this will serve as a reminder to me too.
Aaron signing off
This is a photo of me (in the middle) performing in a play when I was in Kindergarten.
I have vague, but sure memory of it
Kenneth
cross culture collaboration... NOT
That is so nice of you!
One major thing that struck me in America is the huge focus on giving out tips as a form of gratification. Being a local in Singapore, the concept of tipping is very much foreign to me. Back in my country, we do not have the culture of tipping people for their service. I can kind of understand why tipping in Singapore is not a norm.
It is really troublesome.
I get really anxious when it comes to paying the tab. How much should I give? Did I give too little? Was I too generous? Not giving a tip is such a well-known taboo in the States that before I left for Massachusetts, my parents had to remind me so that I wonāt make a scene after having a meal at a restaurant.
However, after being here for almost a month. Iām really getting used to the idea of tipping. After going through the class on giving feedback, I realised that tipping is merely the practical version of a feedback. Depending on how well a waiter/waitress performs his/her job, he/she will receive a proportionate amount of tip. Why do we not extend the same concept when we are working in a team?
Iām not saying that we should start tipping our teammates. There are many other forms of gratification that we can perform such that we can let others know whether they are doing a good job or not. A simple āthank youā or a pat on the shoulder go a long way. Try it today!
-javier
Majority Sucks
Decision making in groups is always really tricky. I mean, as much as we'd like to work with a group of people whose thoughts are completely in line with ours, it's not very feasible, unless you happen to be one of these guys:
So like a good Singaporean, I've always chosen the most efficient method of decision making: democracy! (We love democracy, right?) It's worked because in Singapore we have a tendency to face problems with a "just suck thumb lor" attitude. This may or may not be due to our (patriarchical, as people in the west like to call it) government. Regardless, its an integral part of our culture. That means if the majority agrees to it, even if we don't, we tend to just go with it. Conflict is no good. We avoid conflict. I've known that the majority rules method isn't the best method of going about this, but I'd always thought it was adequate- it sacrificed complete consensus for time-efficiency. It minimised conflict between members (eliminated it, even!) but then we recieved this little graph in CAC class, and I was surprised, because the 'majority rules' method was, to say the least, awful! It didn't do well efficiency-wise(shock!!), neither did it do well in terms of buy-in. I've been thinking about it, and also about what we've learnt in the CAC classes so far, and it makes sense to me now: to decide things by majority vote eliminates conflict, but it also eliminates the opportunity for people to TALK. To give FEEDBACK. The best decisions are decisions that take into consideration the needs and ideas of every team member, not just the majority. Time needs to be invested into the decision making process so that adjustments and concessions(if need be) can be made. "Majority rules" isn't efficient, it's lazy.
Maybe it's time to stop being lazy.
An introverted perspective: Collaboration
An introverted perspective: Collaboration
Shinjini Saha
Ā I have considered myself and have shown the characteristics of an introvert for an incredibly large portion of my life. I am not going to say that my views and experiences reflect those of all introverts, but I go by the rule that the more you know the better. Now, I am under the impression that introverts do not like revealing too much about themselves in a public setting, so my writing a blog post about my experiences would probably be unusual, but useful for us of the introvert race, for letting the world know a bit more about us.
Now collaboration and teamwork has been an incredibly hard thing for me for a really long time. But ever since about a year ago, a semester through my freshman year in college, a couple of things happened that resulted in me re-evaluating my situation (limitations) as an introvert and setting off on a journey of self-exploration to find why it is that I am not as out-going with strangers as I am with my friends. As I write this a year later, I find myself in a completely different frame of mind. Now when I reveal my past and current struggles as an introvert to new people I meet, they are surprised. Their first impression of me is this bubbly, cheerful, outgoing girl who is not afraid to speak her mind and stand for what she believes in. So, I like to think Iāve come a long way in this year.
As a large step forward in my journey, over the last six days, I was at a leadership retreat called LeaderShape, where I met many brilliant, diverse, incredible people, and grew and learned so much about myself and others. Hereās a few things I learned.
The Ds.
We all know there are different personality types among people (in LeaderShape, we did a DiSC assessment, where it listed four different types.) I will not get into the details of the different types or their traits, but there is one type that I think almost everyone is aware of. This is what the DiSC assessment referred to as the Ds or the dominant personality type. They usually the most vocal, quick to take charge, quick to make decisions, not afraid to be direct in their criticism and the most visible. And for a person like me, the most intimidating of all people.
I had a problem of avoiding people who came off as Ds in the past. When I worked with them, I always had the feeling that my opinions were not valued, and I never attempted to disagree with them, let alone get into arguments, because I know I would end up losing and getting emotionally hurt in the process. So, whenever we had a D in the team, I would slowly lose interest in the project, not do a lot of work and fall in a downward spiral, making the experience just miserable. But at LeaderShape, I learned something. The quality I found most intimidating about them, their straightforwardedness, stemmed from their own affinity of being straightforward to. They arenāt hurt by direct criticism, and they donāt realize that other people are. And then it all made sense to me. The Ds werenāt being intimidating on purpose, they just didnāt realize they were scaring some others. And after meeting quite a few people who were identified as Ds at LeaderShape, the realization strengthened in me. They were people who did care about others and their opinions, they just werenāt used to listening as much as speaking. And once they understood the difference, and became more aware of how different people work, with some being more patient and quiet and others being more quick and loud, they were much more accommodating.
Active Listening.
Being a person who does more listening than speaking, I never realized how much trouble people, especially the Ds, had with listening closely. And when they realized that, they asked, how can we listen better? Well, hereās how:
Pay Attention: be present and observe body language
Hold Judgment: be patient and try to understand the other personās perspective
Clarify: use open-ended, clarifying and probing questions
Reflect: repeat back what you heard and name the emotions you observe or intuit
Summarize: check your understanding by periodically stating what you have heard so far
Share: share thoughts, feelings and experiences that deepen or check for understanding
(from āactive listeningā, page 2.14 in the LeaderShape Participant Manual)
The one of these I found, even after years of listening, to be quite new to me was holding judgment. I found that I quietly judged quite a bit (more on that later), and once I noticed it and set it aside, I noticed that I was paying more attention and seeing their point of view clearer, making for a much more pleasant and insightful conversation.
First impressions and Judgment.
Ah, judgment, one of my deadly sins. I tend to judge people based on my first impression of them. I tend to assume things about them, and I tend to act around them based on these assumptions. I know it sounds bad, but itās normal. Itās human to judge, but the key is to know when you are judging, realize that it is probably wrong, put it aside and actually go talk to the person. I have been guilty of judging a few people quite hard when I met them at LeaderShape a few days ago. But I noticed it, and I decided to act on it. I talked to the people even though I assumed that I wouldnāt get along with them, and to my surprise, I found that quite often we did have things to talk about and got along quite well.
That brings me to the second part of first impressions and judgment: other peopleās first impression of you. I havenāt done quite a lot of thinking about this, but I did figure out something in the last few months. People are much more friendly and receptive towards you if you are enthusiastic about meeting them. Being an introvert for most of my life, I had a tendency of shying away from meeting new people, never, ever initiating contact or conversations, and probably seeming rather disinterested. But over the last few months, I realized the power of enthusiasm. Meeting people with excitement, being interested in them, initiating conversations, I found, was usually met with similar energy. Even other quiet people came out of their shell just a bit and accepted my energy to make their own. It made the atmosphere much friendlier. It was just a win-win situation.
Appreciation.
I have a tendency of keeping my thoughts about other people, even my appreciation of them, to myself. And I understand now how bad of a thing it is not to tell people how much I like and appreciate them. It feels as though expressing oneās appreciation is a taboo in our society, as if revealing things we like about people somehow makes us smaller or gives them power over us. Or maybe thatās just how I felt. But I understand now the power of appreciation. Just telling a person how much they matter and how they affect our lives instead of keeping it to ourselves can be such a powerful thing. On the last day of LeaderShape, we did a tapping-circle, that is, we got in a circle and closed our eyes and some people went around in the middle tapping people as a response to questions such as ātap someone who made you laugh,ā āsomeone who youād like to know better,ā āsomeone who changed your outlook.ā I could never imagine the sheer emotions going through a person sitting in the circle if I hadnāt been sitting there myself. Knowing that I had touched so many lives in so many ways was just overwhelming. Yes, tears did flow.
Safe Space.
One of the best things about LeaderShape was the intense conversations we ended up having with people who were complete strangers just six days ago. And it could not have happened had it not been for the environment we had created. It was an environment of trust, of understanding, of openness, of non-judgment, of vulnerability. It was the best possible environment for the deep conversations we ended up having. The most important of these for me were openness and non-judgment. One of the biggest problems I have had in the past about being open about myself is that I feared being judged. I have sometimes found myself hiding my own opinions when they flowed against the majority. But in the safe space, I decided to reveal things that I am careful about keeping to myself otherwise. Because in the safe space, even if they did judge me, they would set it aside and be open about their own opinions and disagreements, whence we could have a constructive conversation about it so that no one left with false assumptions or bitterness about the other.
I am a person who has a really hard time with subtleness. And I have decided that it would be the best for me in new group situations to let the cat out of the bag from the outset. To take charge and reveal my own personality type, my work style, my thoughts and any other relevant thing the very first time my new team meets. I want to make myself vulnerable and encourage others to do the same so that we can figure out the best way the team can interact and work together.
People are hard for introverts like me. But I have realized that I have big, big goals for this world, and to accomplish them, I need to work with people. Hence my journey. I have so much further to go, but I know much more than I did before and I know where to go next. Exciting!
Gears working together to lift a heavy load
I've got the POWER!
In the lecture on Thursday, we briefly talked about two aspects where power comes into play when we interact with others. Firstly power could be used to understand the cultural significance of interruption during a conversation. Also, we looked at how different cultures around the world looked at differences in power. When I looked up the definition of power, I got,
the ability or capacity to do something or act in a particular way
the capacity or ability to direct or influence the behaviour of others or the course of events
Together, both definitions help us understand how power can affect an individual or a team during collaboration. The former refers to how both external and internal factors affect the capabilities of an individual. The more power one has, the less the environment is able to affect his/her performance. For example, with the power to overcome the issue of self inferiority, one can then act more confidently. The latter refers to how one affects his/her environment through actions. With greater power, one has the capacity to adapt the surroundings to his/her favour.
Power is an interesting idea to think about because every human interaction is a form of power exertion. Be it a polite handshake, a flirtatious wink or an angry curse, power is responsible for every action. We might be able to understand how we act by studying how animals resolve power issues. Take a look at this video of the power struggle among lions.
http://movieclips.com/9EfY2-african-cats-kingdom-of-courage-movie-power-struggle/
At first, they bare their fangs at each other, some lions back down after the initial conflict but others persevere and they eventually fight it out. Physical strength is the major factor that allows one lion to be crowned the alpha male of the pack. However, for humans, the power struggle can be quite subtle but it follows the same general pattern. First, we observe and gauge the strength of others. Then, we either back down for others to assume power or take control of the situation. This probably happens subconsciously and it changes our behaviour when belonging in a group.
-javier
The Iceberg Concept of Culture
Bern Widding Lecture Reflections
In last weekās class, Bernd Widdig gave a lecture about how culture can be thought of as an operating system of the mind; it runs in the background and informs our behavioral and perceptual inputs and outputs. According to Bates, culture is āa relatively organized set of beliefs and expectations about how people should talk, think, and organize their lives.ā And, more simply put, itās āthe way we do things around here.ā After discussing how culture in constructed and conceptualized, Bernd went on to emphasize that there are visible and invisible elements of culture, which comprise and define the concept. Out of these elements, we can begin to align ourselves with subcultures that represent our identities and influence how we interact with others in society. It is because of these foundational concepts that Bernd told us āculture eats strategy for breakfast, and then technology for lunch.ā I think what he meant by this is that it is futile to try to dismiss or ignore the cultural component of relationships. It is embedded within us and has an extremely important influence in communication strategies, teamwork, and collaboration.Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā
Ā Ā I have thought about Bernās lecture for a week now and I can see its application to my work with the MIT-SUTD collaboration. Prior to IAP, I had never met anyone from Singapore and I wasnāt sure what to expect. The culture of the country that I am from (the United States) maintains that society value personal responsibility and individualism, and perhaps this was a factor as I formulated my expectations and assumptions for IAP and this course. I was concerned with doing the best I could do to support the students while they are here at MIT while still allowing them to have freedom to explore and learn things for themselves. Now that I have had a chance to meet with the students and interact with them more, I am finding it easier to facilitate cross-cultural communication because we are all learning the significance of recognizing the role of culture in communication via the Collaboration Across Cultures class. Now I am able to see the two levels of communication that Bernd and Jane had mentioned; content level and relationship level. Gradually, I think we are all learning how to purposely communicate the content we want to say while forging a relationship that bridges cultural nuances. I think that this this is key for thriving in new cultures with people who do not necessarily share the same value dimensions that Hofstede defines (per our class discussion). And, relevant to our experience in this course, it will enable us explore the value of cross-cultural exchange at MIT and its implications for receiving a diversified education.
-Katie