Second half of CNY

sMy 2nd part of Chinese New Year is spent trying to catch up with datelines I so blissfully ignored during recess week. The fact that I have to battle ants on my study table, and a horrible internet connection doesn't help much either. Fortunately Jon placed a modem in my room, so my connection is quite stable now.

I think my weak foundation in integration is killing me now. Really need to master this if I need to get my work done quickly. And nanotechnology in medicine is kind of driving me mad now. But at least it's only article reading, and not that much of calculation.

On the other hand, I'm really enjoying my Biz modules. I still think that MNO project is a bother because it's rather hard to get things done within a short timeline. But at least the project requires us to help other people which is a good thing. And I get to practice writing email-proposals again. Somehow I've been doing this non-stop since I was in Year 2. Learning more and more ways to communicate with people better, and manage teams. Terminologies are a pain though, but once you remember them they can be oh-so-interesting. And my MNO tutor handed me a big compliment regarding my role play yesterday (giving performance appraisal). He's really very nice. I rarely get compliments from teaching staff in NUS so those I get I remember well. I even remembered that a lab TA praised me once for using my fumehood properly and asked my classmates to follow suit.

The more I go through my biz modules, the more I realize that my need for affiliation and recognition is higher than I thought. Like the compliment thing - the type I like to get is not 'oh you play the piano so well', but rather 'you brought out the feeling of that song', or ' i like the way you handled that'. Specific compliments encourage me more. And on the other hand, I know this is horrible, but I don't handle criticism that well. To be honest, listening to criticisms make me very uncomfortable and I shun them. Some people attach criticisms with adjectives - you did this because you're 'weird' or 'lazy' or stuff like that. Somehow critisms that refer to an action (e.g. not clearing up my study table), is more effective, and don't hurt as much compared to those that targeting an attribute (lazy and disorganized because my table is messy). I know that I AM lazy and disorganized because I didn't clear up my study table. But it helps not to mention it you see. And another reason why my table looks like a war zone is because I don't have time to clean it (yea, excuses I know).

Simon taught us this song which he put on his blog last Friday:

You know, I'd never notice the words were so special until he pointed them out. I need to have a sense of personal mission for God.

Okies :) Back to integration.