Let's Present!

After weeks of learning about communication, this is it. The final test of our capabilities to present ourselves! So, let's present!

Powerful Presentation Skills (29th March)

by En Najmi and Miss Amira

The classic style of presentation: Present what we did and learn yesterday, to everyone! So we went out group by group to talk about NLP! We did well, except I was bombed for saying A very good morning to everyone! Instead, a strong stern GOOD MORNING! will do, it seems. 

Again, the hot tips for presentation:

• Watch videos of famous people giving speeches like Obama. I heart his speeches. Very energetic and mind blowing. Watch and learn from them!
• Watch videos of people and expression. Bollywood clips? American Idol? Remember, presentation is not only about the content. You don't have to understand the language, you feel them! For me, korean drama is what i watch!

Okay, it seems that my tips sounded more like, GET ON YOUTUBE PEOPLE. See, its not time wasting, it helps as well :P 

Next, we did a presentation on TIME IS MONEY. A simple topic, yet you can make points up and present it to everyone! 

Powerful Presentation Skills (30th March)

by Encik Najmi and Miss Saras

Most important lesson for presentation: The four P's! Nope its not 4 Peas, but rather:

• P for Prepare! Do not go to war without weapons!
• P for Practice! Practice makes perfect!
• P for Pause! Have a break, have a Kit-Kat!
• P for Pamper! Love yourself, have a steady mind and heart! 

and finally P for Present!  Time to present and give it your best shot! 

Our group presented on Antioxidants ;)

Preparation for Presentation (31st March)

We went through from A to Z on preparing a presentation. Heres some tips:

Introduction: State how long your presentation is, your main objective.

Content: The bulk of your presentation

End: End with an impact!

I chose to do a product pitching on a product which I fabricated, MuscleMan(TM) and energy pill that will provide you with all the energy you need!

Presentation D'day (1st April) 

APRIL FOOL! but still, life goes on and so we must PRESENT! sadly, we were split into two different groups, GROUP A and GROUP B. I was in Group A led by Miss Suze. It was really fun! The first half was presentation, in the mid there was an ice-breaking session. Dancing to the beatles tune! 

The trio-girl-group dancing. Watch them here

We decided to come up with a play instead! Watch it here

The plot was about a guy who fell in love with a close girl and was willing to share the world with her. But one day, the girl left for another guy, leaving ME all heartbroken and lost. YES, i was HEARTBROKEN!. So much for telling her all my secrets ;( 

More presentation to end the day after that. And it was a sad goodbye to the communications module. :(

Let's go back to basics!

Communication Concepts and Skills (Friday, 26th)

by En Khairul Najmi, a very inspiring and experienced trainer. 

Yes, its back to the basics of communication though the communication module is already nearing its end. Communication involves a sender and a recipient, the transfer of information through a medium. Communication have a history to way long time ago where people would use sunlight and mirror, and smoke or sound signals. Now we have the snail-mail, the mobile phone, the internet. Technology has advanced for the purpose of communication. Yet, we still face a major communication issue. Words are still only 7% of communication, body language 55% and tone 38%. Sms-es, emails, letters: they contain only words tor occasional intonations to express our ideas and is very far from the ideal perfect communication. This is the reason why, though slowly, we are switching to video calls through 3g or webcam/internet, and video conferencing, all which involves the ability for the recipient to perceive the body language that comes with the message. 

Again, the emphasis of communication: body language. Which is why people love Bollywood films. They are so expressive in every scene (which probably requires a very huge garden, ample of space to dance about). Communication is not just about speaking in brilliant languages, but also in an expressive manner, with impressive intonation!

Let's use the power of mind!

25th March, Thursday

No, not physic but the power of our brain, of our mind. Neuro Linguistic Programming, or NLP in short, is the use of mind to control our behavior and emotions which affects our interpersonal communication. There was much to learn from Mr. Faizal Kamal, a certified NLP practitioner. Though i have heard of the Laws Of Attraction or Attraction Theory before, I was shocked to have experienced the events for the day:

• I was able to dwell into the sub-conscious world, where thereafter I could not control the movement of my hands
• He made my friend, Renu who is a strong person to wander deep inside her sub-conscious and made her cry non-stop for at least 15 minutes
• He was able to make us breath fresh air and feeling fresh as if we went to the top of the hill with beautiful scenery even when we were stuck inside the air-cond room.
• He was able to eliminate phobia, e.g my friend got rid of his phobia for dogs
• He was able to make Azniah, our colleague to hate the smell of cigarettes (he smokes 400 cigarette sticks per week) after anchoring it with the smell he hates the most: 'papadam'.
• He made us channel our power into a lightbulb which could break a thin piece of glass (normally it wouldnt break it). 

If this is scary, what happens if we are able to use 100% of our brain capabilities? As of now, we only use 10%, 5% or maybe even a merely 1% of our brain.

I was at disbelief. There has to be some explanation somewhere. I realized that there exist another world that only our minds and souls could wander, something that science may never explain with proof. The power of positive thinking and putting our minds and hearts into action to make it successful will be very useful to survive the harsh and cruel, ever-stressful corporate world. 

Let's Write!

23rd & 24th March, Tuesday and Wednesday

Here comes a legendary author, Miss Liew Suet Fun to tutor us about writing articles for publications. She is just awesome. One of her many books, Gilding the Lily tells the true stories of women we may bump to each other as just like any other normal human being but with amazing stories to be told behind the scenes. She read a snippet out of the book regarding a female radiologist from Taiping, and I was touched. More about the amazing stories of ordinary people here on TheStar Online.

Of course, we as bunch of scientists had much to learn about creative writing. We were nurtured, thought to, ordered to use simple languages in our lab reports. I'd never expect to do any creative writing in laboratory reports. However, this does not apply just to explaining a scientific research to the public in layman's term, it is the art of using words to grasp attention and at the same time enlightening the readers. Creative writing is very useful also in proposals, reports, write-ups for businesses. We were shown creative writings from magazines, articles from National Geographic, Scientific journals, Reader's Digest. How they (authors) could explain things simple and yet so vividly, of course, with excellent vocabulary and use of the language.

Everybody should try write. For starters, if your are unable to write, try to read more books. Her advice was

• Choose what you read. If you read rubbish, you will write rubbish. Shows the importance of quality reading. 
• There is no such thing as writer's block when you have the resources!
• It is possible to adapt to another persons' writing style if you are fond of it

I was inspired by her during the session. I used to have this dream of writing articles to be published in the papers or as columnists but I ended up becoming just a casual writer/blogger. I was ashamed of myself because I did not pursue my hobby and passion when I was young. My English could  have been better and I would have written more articles. Instead, she told me that I am still young, and can still fulfill my dream if I'd wanted to. She only started writing 6 years ago and shes a professional now.  Meeting her brought up so many memories in me, especially one in Form 2, when i was barely 14 years old, I wrote a 20-paged fantasy novel to be submitted to my English teacher, though it was only supposed to be a short simple essay.

Let's Negotiate!

Monday, 22nd March 2010.

A fine Monday morning, to negotiate!  Mr Hisham is a very dynamic man, an extremely suitable man to teach us kung fu The art of Negotiation.

For me, this is very useful. I am always weak with negotiations, especially when buying products which can be obtained cheaper. Here, Mr. Hisham thought us how to understand the whole negotiation situation better.

• In life, we negotiate to get better prices and to save money. 
• In business, we negotiate to get better deals, which means more profit! 
• Not to mention, knowledge is power. Doing the cost-benefit analysis gives you the bargaining power!
• During negotiation, listen to other party carefully! He may be leaking information which can be used to your advantage. 

We had three cases of negotiation to role-play.

Star employee who wants 3 months break to take care of her slow-learning son. The employee is valuable, but getting 3 months break is too much! 

Landlord who wishes to increase the rent after the recently completed highway. How to do it without losing the pay-rent-on-the-time-always customer?

Son who wishes to further studies with his girlfriend to reputable university (more $$$ needed). Bratty son can only study with his girlfriend!   

I wish I could have posted the videos but it is available on our BeST Programme 2010 Facebook Group.  Try watching it, its hilarious!

Oh yes, did i mention Mr. Hisham is an extremely funny guy, who knows how to make people laugh, stay entertained and energetic for the whole day!

p.s I also received a pen from him <3 I got the Best Actor award!  

Let's Report, again?

This time, it was a much harder assignment. We were asked to conduct a survey to understand the trainees satisfactory level towards the program so far. We chose to evaluate the the satisfactory level of trainees towards the communication module. 

We created questionnaires containing demographic questions, and also various questions which mainly requires the correspondents to rate, select or give opinions to open-ended questions. 

Next, based on the survey, write a full-fledged report on the matter. 1 week later, we are required to present our report.

It is our first group-assignment, though we had various activities together already. Cant wait to make our group proud. Go go Super Genes. Aja-aja fighting! Gambate!

19th March 2010

Let's groom and Let's feast!

This was fun. Dressing up and feast on fine food! Aha, Grooming and Dining Etiquette. 

 Dining Etiquette?

We had an ex-stewardess Miss Noraini who worked with Cathay Pacific before. Her experience in Dining Etiquette is just awesome! Lets see some tips:

• When dining, always thank the host and allow the host to sit before you sit.
• When female guests arrives, gentlemen stands up.
• When female guests leaves the table (even for toilet), gentlemen stands up.
• Never call the waiter "BOSS" or calling them with funny sounds. 
• When food falls to floor, do not pick them up. Same goes to utensils.
• Place the napkin on the lap, not on the shirt like a toddler. 
• Always place hands (when not in use) on the lap not on the table. 
• Drink soup with a circle movement, outwards, then back inwards towards the mouth. 
• Try not to make noises when sipping the soup.
• Break bread into pieces, apply butter then eat them mouth-sized pieces, not shoving the entire bread into the mouth.
• If somehow, the napkin flew far away, get the waiter to give you a new one. 
• Lemon-water prepared for cleaning fingers, not dipping your entire hands into it. 

You may be wondering, why are we learning this. Some interviews are done over lunches with the potential employers. Even while working, there may be functions or events that you will have to attend where food is served. It is not compulsory to learn dining etiquette but having more knowledge may save you from countless embarrassing events! 

At the end of the day, Mr. Farizal gave tips on choosing the perfect shirt and tie (including tying the correct knots) to the guys. Heres something interesting: 

• Ive always thought that the color of the socks does not matter, but it actually have to match with your slacks, not shoes! 
• Select the correct collars to suit face size. Round faced (like me) should choose collars with small distance between the left and right. 
• Select the correct tie pattern. If the pattern on the shirt is all vertical, DO NOT get a vertically-patterned tie unless you want to look like a stick. Get the semi-horizontal (45 degrees angle) ones.  
• The color of the tie can/should be contrasting with the shirt.
• Try different types of tie knots. It is less boring that way :P 
 

The girls however, were thought on how to dress up and applying make-up for work.

 Mr. Farizal and Me

A truly memorable experience!