Author: alearningaday

NUS: I will remember (XV) classes and professors..

It would be a shame if I did graduate and did not think the one thing that I was supposed to in NUS had changed my life in some way/defined my university life. Let’s put it this way, in a way that they told me very strongly that I didn’t belong in the engineering world in itself was probably among the bigger learnings I could offer. More often, what not to do serves us better than what to do (eg: don’t play with fire versus play with a ball, play with a racket – you get the picture..)

Now, being a not-so-faithful Electrical Engineering student, I’m not sure who is/is not going to feature on this list. So, here goes nothing –

1st Year

i)Prof Rajesh Parwani: I remember vividly attending the first few classes of PC1431 or Level 1 Physics and laughing hard at a few of Prof Rajesh Parwani’s jokes. That’s where the memory ends.. But it probably shows the power of humor. Don’t remember too much of the physics part but I remember him telling us stories of how Isaac Newton could have fought for the prize of ‘world’s biggest jerk’..

ii)Prof Victor Tan: Prof Victor Tan was our life-saver for MA1505 or Level 1 Math. He was the Professor whose webcasts every one of us non-class goers survived on. (Even the class goers come to think of it..) A deserving to-be- Outstanding Educator. Was an amazing math professor!

iii) Prof Dipti Srinivasan: It seems like we had a whole list of pretty good 1st year Profs. Prof Dipti made a module that seemed like horror then (EG1108 – Basics of Electrical Engineering – should have seen it coming right then!) to something pretty approachable. Distinctly remember listening to webcasts at 2x – and remember muttering that she was a great lecturer!

iv) Prof Gary Tan: 2nd half of CS1101C – hardly attended any classes. When I did, very good!

v) Prof Tan Suntec: Hmm, another SoC Prof. And another very good one. Pity it was CS1102C which ranks among the most nightmare-ish modules any non-programming student could imagine..

vi)Prof Brett Mcinnes: Now, here was an outstanding Prof. Another math lecturer who taught us MA1506. I still remember his very cool sense of humor with frequent jokes on NTU popping up in his lectures..

vii)Prof Peggie Chan: One of 2 fabulous CELC (Centre for English Language and Communication)Profs I’ve seen. Handled Critical thinking and writing. Reminded me of the school teachers you read about in Enid Blyton books – a real task master, reminds you of a very sweet grandmom and someone you love spending time with and annoying once a while. Just caught up with her yesterday and we were remembering the fun times..

2nd Year

Funnily enough, this one’s a blur. All I do remember is that this was an absolutely nightmare year in terms of modules. All those 2000 modules – I’m glad they are belong to my past now.. (pardon the geek humor now..)

I only remember Prof Ashraf (2nd half of EE2006 – Digital Design) and remember nodding in understanding for a few of the concepts.

3rd Year

i)Prof Matthew Linus: HR Prof – a very very good one at that. I remember him taking a lot of extra effort to help us get better and also taking in feedback from us on how he could do even better. Most HR classes were lots of fun and that’s down to him..

ii)Prof Ha Yajun: Prof Yajun was the 2nd half lecturer of EE2007 – Microprocessor systems. He also happened to be my tutor for the module. A very good teacher and also someone who was very encouraging..

iii)Prof Charanjit Singh Bhatia: Prof Bhatia was our team’s supervisor for our EE3001 – Technology project where we were to brainstorm a technological product, write a business plan for it and present it. He was a killer supervisor in terms of demanding work – very precise and knew exactly what he wanted. But, I still remember the many long discussions we used to have with him about the world.. All in all, a great teacher.

4th Year

i)Prof Ashwin Khambadkone: 2nd Half lecturer for EE3505 – Electrical Energy Systems. Even though I don’t have the most positive memories of the module, I was amazed at how Prof Ashwin conducted his classes. He was probably the only Professor I’ve seen actually ‘conduct’ a 200 people class. He managed to engage the whole class, go back to basics and was always very well prepared. Formidable!

ii)Prof K K Tan: 2nd half lecturer for EE3302(Industrial Control Systems). I loved Prof Tan’s part just for the fact that it was extremely well organized. It was very easy to obtain all materials like lecture notes(which were again very well organized), labs and the like. More so, the part was also very interesting. I liked his organization so much that I followed him when choosing my design module. Pity he only handled one half of the design module as again, that part has been brilliantly organized.. :)

iii)Prof Brad Blackstone: Probably among the better teachers I’ve seen throughout my student life. Just for the one fact that he embodied that being a teacher meant being a learner first. Always flexible, always open to new classes, he’s among the few teachers who actually came down to the level of us students and then took us up! I’d recommend ES2007S to every student who’s reading this and wants to learn practical life learnings in communication..

iv) Prof Albert Liang (and Kai Tak Lam): Respect where it is due for my FYP supervisor and PHD mentor. I’d entered my 4th year as a student keen to work hard and make some amends in what remained of university life. While all other EE modules drew on past demons (i.e. 2nd modules), my FYP Prof made sure that I was up to scratch in terms of understanding of concepts. We spent the 1st 2-3 months practically only improving understanding and then got to work..

He was an absolute pleasure to work under. While he did extract a sizeable amount of work, it never felt as such because he had very clear defined always! And also assigned Kai Tak, my PHD student mentor, who is as good a mentor as I could have hoped for.

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That sums up most of what I can remember from the various teachers in my university life. I’ve always thought Electrical Engineering was a well designed course for those very passionate and interested and it’s these Profs who made the learning experience excellent. Thank you if you are reading this! (Though the chances are probably very unlikely, except for Brad.. :))

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7 days to go..

NUS: I will remember (XIV) ArtVibe..

It seemed only natural that I’d follow Sparkz with ArtVibe, my other baby during this final year. How ArtVibe happened is something I have a bit of a laugh about. I was 3 days away from catching my flight back home and I had just decided that I’d be spending my last year enjoying life as a student. I was looking for an exciting project or 2 to work on. Sparkz was in the ideation stage and I wasn’t sure if it would go through. Now, ArtVibe was a club I had seen a close friend run for a year and somehow, it hadn’t picked up from an encouraging start. So, I was very eager to do it to both help the club up and also bring this friend back to painting as he’s quite the pro..

I accidentally happened to meet one of the more passionate members and realized that they were unsure of what would happen to the interest group. And I readily jumped in – took her email address and said I’d follow up. I did.. And soon, we were ready to roll..

Oh, and if I didn’t mention it, I can’t paint or sketch or do anything art related for nuts..

1)The beginning: The biggest challenge here is that we had no team. So, there were 3 of us who began working on this slowly. We had a welcome tea before we knew it – we decided we would do little but try and do it well. Despite our lack of funds, we spent on a nice venue (Celadon Room, NUS museum) and we had a decent turn out – some of whom seemed very passionate.

We were all set of our first paint for fun session, which was a LOT of fun! We had a bit of impromptu learning and then a fun activity. Before we knew it, we had two more VERY enthusiastic 1st years join us and soon, we had the beginnings of a team..

We had quite a few activities over the year. For more on what happened, here’ s a link to our blog..

2)The Team: I just realized that I’ve never featured the ArtVibe team on my blog. So, here goes! There’s everyone on the picture that made ArtVibe happen this year..

Top Row:
From Left

CS a.k.a Casiel Tey a.k.a Ching Siong: Our humor guru. An amazing artist, full of laughs, excitement, energy and a joy for laugh. Oh, and also great insight in discussions and blessed with a brilliant sense of humor. CS was one of the big big contributors in the Olympic Art Project

Nadiah: Nadiah was a great addition in our 1st semester. While she wasn’t able to participate due to hectic school schedules (she’s a student of nursing), her passion for art was great to see. She lead some great sessions like Art Appropriation (I still don’t know what that means being the art ‘noob’ that I am..) and a great session on making photo frames with ice cream sticks

Bottom Row:

From Left:

Eli: Amazing artist – lead many sessions and an expert in too many things to mention. Eli was instrumental in bringing the group up to speed in the first semester and was someone we could rely on throughout..

Rohan: :)

Aishwarya: Aish was the other corner stone in helping getting the ball rolling. A very talented sketching person, Aish was the logistics person who made sure all the paint for fun sessions.

Center Row:

The reason I’ve saved these guys for last is because these guys did an amazing amazing job along with CS in making Olympic Art happen. So, now for the row of stars –

From Left:

Madhu: Madhu is the incoming President of ArtVibe for the year 2010-11. Simply an amazing person who landed from exchange just at the right time. Despite tight schedules thanks to an attachment with Accenture, Madhu was always around even during sessions when the team was up late in the night on a weekday.

Dhanya: Dhanya’s been the ArtVibe poster girl for the year. She’s been the one who’s practically been learning the ropes along to take over all the logistics. A very talented artist, great great team mate who has this amazing ability to take herself very very lightly and hence is a joy to be with..

Abishek: Abishek was the other super passionate 1st year who joined ArtVibe. Another very creative person – always brimming with ideas and lots of energy. Also our ArtVibe photographer and blogger. Very skilled at both!

Looking to Abishek, Dhanya and CS (all in their 1st year) to keep the ArtVibe flag flying high in the coming years.. :)

Snigdha: Snigdha is a close friend who came into ArtVibe with a desire to help. It turned out that I was way too tied up with Sparkz to help with the Olympic Art project and Snigdha readily took it up – leading the initiative all the way! It was thanks to her that the event flowed smoothly and successfully. Amazing leader and always always full of positive energy!!

Since there’s been so much talk about Olympic Art, do check out pictures and the post about the event here..

The team has been THE biggest success this year! Every moment spent with them has been memorable..

3)A lesson in delegation: One of the things I have always been eager to learn was delegation. I’d read in multiple books that it’s the natural step to growth. I always agreed but I found it very difficult to let go of anything that had my name on it completely. It’s a matter of empowerment and trust. The Olympic Art came at a time when Sparkz was nearing THAT time when every night was an all nighter and following Sparkz, I needed a bit of a break and needed to piece bits of life like FYP, modules etc together. So, I had no choice but to learn to let go..

It was a great experience just for that. I actually think the whole event went much better without me than it would ever have with me around.. Haha. A great lesson, a superb experience..

Thank you, ArtVibe Team, for making it happen! :)

And for all those interested in checking ArtVibe out, here’s the link to our facebook page!

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8 days to go..

Listen to your voices..

Our gut generally gives us a clear and succinct summary of what’s going on..

But we can only hear our gut when everything else is clear – if we are stressed, for example, there’s too much noise crowding out what our gut is saying..

It’s when we listen to our gut that we can truly put our heart into something and do it well..

The big question – are we listening??

NUS: I will remember(XIII) Sparkz..

Moments before the event.. :)

Sparkz seemed like a dream when it was over. All those months of effort had culminated in what was a memorable night. I’m not sure how the 280 odd people who turned up felt about it – I did hear consistently that it was a pretty good show(which was gratifying), but this one, I’d done for myself.. It was very special to have my Mom, Grandparents, mentors and close friends at the event and just watching them enjoy the event felt very gratifying.

And even though the night ended as one with bitter-sweet feelings as a result of an incident that I’ll detail below, I think the time post the event only sweetened the effect.

3 things I will remember about Sparkz –

1)The Team: I was blessed to work with a very very special bunch. I say this time and again and as a teammate pointed out, it almost became a never ending eulogy but the beauty of something that goes well is the feeling of satisfaction that comes after it – makes all effort put in worth it. And boy, did they put in effort..

It began when we just began work on Sparkz. We decided we had to spread the word and get multiple registrations. And our team began working feverishly only for it to be extremely hard to sustain this as exams were coming up in 3 weeks and Sparkz was a new additional block in their schedules. Eventually, a lot of things went wrong – we had 3 teammates drop out. 2 mentioned that they couldn’t imagine this sort of a workload in the coming semester while the other doubted our ability to lead this project. Stress was clearly working its magic.. And we decided to give the entire team a break. And we did..

For 3 months, there was effectively 3 of us working on the project – trying to get the marketing up to speed, the venues arranged. There were moments when I was wondering if we would ever be able to even complete this little dream of ours and things picked up again. And slowly, we had our team members back on board and everything began clicking in place.

At every moment, we had a fully aligned group working towards this little dream. In retrospect, they had every right to question the amount of work we were putting in. After all, what would we achieve at the end of the all this that would be justification for so many hours of time. And it was only then that we realized that we were just doing it for ourselves.. And we were determined to have a fun ride..

I’ve written about each of them here and I can never forget this team. A few of us kept meeting every weekend for a month and have even worked out ways we are going to engage each other for a long time. They are my Sparkz team after all, and I’m very very proud of them..

2)You are closest to success just when you are about to give up: I thought this was the coolest thing I realized when Sparkz was on. We had our own unique set of challenges and in all these times, 2 things worked –

1)Stay CALM. If you are not feeling calm, then feign calm. Pretend like alls ok. As a popular hindi movie put it, your heart tends to get weak so it’s our duty to let it know that ‘all iz well’. And it is true, stay calm..
2)Just do what you can. We just focussed on what could and things always turned just when we had almost given up!

3)The performers, the day and the judge incident: Sparkz was what it was thanks to our performers. I was amazed at the wonderfully sporting nature of all contestants in the auditions. And our 10 finalists fully deserved their place. Even now, I go back down and watch their audition videos and remember how they dazzled us! Their videos are here.

The day came before we knew it. We had many sleepless nights in the week leading up to it. Every one of them was a memory in itself! And on the day, however, came the big big hiccup. We had an incident with one of our main judges. It turned out that she had snapped at my teammate who was in-charge and I decided to help by taking it over. Anyway, she turned out to be pretty disrespectful and disparaging and seemed like she was out to find fault with everything. So, in a call 10 minutes before the event when she refused to cooperate and was out to disrespect me, I felt my self restraint crack and had to thank for trying to make it and that we would have to go on without her. This was followed by a 20 minute conversation thanks to which the show was delayed. I had to do the listening as I felt she deserved the respect if she wanted to vent out her frustration but I was very clear that I didn’t want the show sullied thanks a bad mood or comment..

By the time, it was 710 – this conversation was over and I was shaking! It was too much of a development to take after almost 30 hours of sleeplessness. It was a very tough call to make at that time but it’s one I know I will not regret..

The show began once this was settled and yes, there were a few blips but the quality of the performances was breathtaking. It was a pleasure to listen to/watch our performers. We had a very deserving winner in Richard and even now, when I listen to him on my DVD, it’s hard to see the difference between the original and his rendition of the same song..

When the show ended, the feeling was ironically bitter sweet thanks to the judge incident. But as time passed on, that memory faded away to be replaced by all the good ones..

I was reminded once again that things go wrong when you least expect them to. Some can be averted, some cannot but all you and I can do is make sure we just give it our best shot and move on.

At the end of the day, however, my greatest success was my team. Watching them take up responsibility and become better for it and just the thought of having the core team as friends for a lifetime is what’s made it worth it..

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9 days to go..

NUS: I will remember (XII) friends..

I have been fortunate to have a close set of friends a.k.a ‘the gang’ but today’s post is not about them, it’s about a bunch of others.. Today’s post is going to be different. No learnings – just a collection of thoughts.

Why? Because I just had the most amazing 3 hours laughing at myself with a very very special friend and I felt I should write on these moments rather than blog about what I had planned..

1)The intellectual: I love deep long discussions – philosophy, life, human psychology etc.. Just love discussing in depth. I love listening to a completely different point of view. And this is a tribute to a friend – the intellectual..

The biggest hazard of having a conversation with this friend is that we start generally around dinner time (8 or 830) and generally go on till 4AM atleast and has often gone on till 7 or 8AM even. This has included ‘study’ times, lots of exchange of youtube videos, but most of all just discussions – understanding why we believe what we believe in – asking that dreaded ‘why’ question!

Because, often we tend to have a point of view and we don’t know why. It’s when we ask ourselves that why question that we understand where these points of views come from. I have often used these discussions to further deepen my understanding of concepts in many books and then, just laugh – laugh at everything and most of all, myself. Every moment has been a pleasure and we’ve managed to keep this happen despite being in completely different ‘gangs’.. It’s a friendship I treasure and one I will continue to do so for a very long time..

And the few hours spent today was right up there among the all time great. This friend has decided it’s time he found out something ‘weird’ about me and find something that would be unexpected. He’s on a mission – let’s see how it goes..

Just a tribute to an awesome person!

2)Football friend, work friend: There have been two friends who deserve special mentions as well.

My football friend has been a friend who came together thanks to a common interest – Manchester United. We share a common myopic view of the world when it comes to football. In fact, I think it is fair to say we are United fans first, and lovers of watching football second. It’s only a pity we’ve really gotten around to spending time this year but boy, have those times been fun. I enjoy catching games with this friend.. And enjoy the endless chats on how we would do as managers.. Haha

The other friend is a friend I’ve worked with for a long time. Again, someone I’ve seen grow up over the years. We’ve shared a very nice working relationship and even after our paths separated, we found new excuses to work with each other. It’s been a wonderful relationship – one that I will look back on with a lot of joy. It is also because this person was one of my first ‘kids'(this term I shall explain right below) – that may have changed with time but there’ll always be a special place for being the ‘first’ in my heart.. :)

(Typically, they would be in separate paragraphs but I just realized I have another paragraph and I am fixated about 3.. Haha)

3)My kiddos: I was taken in an environment at Nineo where, in our 1st year, we were our mentor’s kids. And we kept becoming so and so’s kids depending on which mentor we were working with. And soon came the time for me to have my own ‘kids’. Now, as this was my first leadership test, it went really bad and I gave my first set a torturous experience. The good news is that they survived and one of them made it through most of the rest of my journey. These opportunities got lesser and lesser as the years passed and things changed at work..

That changed this year though with Sparkz and ArtVibe. All of a sudden, I have a very special bunch of friends to spend time with. Every one of them is a source of SO much joy these days that time spent with them is an absolute pleasure..

These experiences have played a big part in ‘making’ me. If I had to lead people, I realized that I better start practicing what I preached. And if today –

-> My room is kept clean and sanitable
-> I’ve begun laughing at myself
-> I’ve learnt to rush a lot less and be calm a lot more..

I owe it to this special bunch..

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I am a people person and generally most of my associations are people related. For example, I would choose between where to go depending on the people and most of my university life has been spent alongside people as well. I’m not much the TV show or movie person (as the intellectual friend above discovered to his dismay) – I’m much happier being around a bunch of friends – learning, playing around, having conversations and doing something fun.. There’ s a whole list of people who’ve given me an immense source of joy and this post is just remembering fun times, unpredictable times that have really defined a big part of my university life..

Here’s to them!
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10 days to go..

Changing environment, schedules once a while works well..

I’ve realized that it is nice to switch schedules once a while – i.e. work from morning to night for a week or two and then switch..

For me, morning schedule works for the more discipline oriented tasks i.e. ones that need doing. Night schedule works better for the more creative/ more thinking tasks. So, when I’m in chop chop mode, it’s morning that’s good!

Change, in essence, can be very positive if we take it as such. It gives us a new perspective.. :)