25th JCRC Election Rally
Last nite was the rally for the coming election. It was very different from the rally we had last year. This year there are 26 candidates running for 16 positions, which means that most of the positions are contested. It made things very very interesting i must say.
I dunno if its a good thing or a bad thing to see some graduated seniors to come back for this year's rally. Some of the questions the audiences asked were phrased in a rather harsh manner i must say. Some of the candidates did a good job and handled the situation well, while others did not raise up to the occasion.
For me, i am running for the post of president. Though i have got no opponents running against me, its only normal for me to kanna the most questions. And i DID kanna bombarded quite bad!!! To be honest, i din understand some of the questions targeted to me and i really dunno wat were the answers they were looking for. Overall i think i did ok as i did not freeze or seem intimidated (i hope...). Must admit tat some of my answers to their questions were abit ambiguous but i was trying hard to stay composed and calm so hope the hall people won't blame me.
The voting will take place in abt an hour time. Hopefully, nothing unexpected happens. If any hall ppl are reading this, pls go down to Canteen 1 between 6-11pm to vote for me!!! Thanks!!!
25th JCRC nomination
Suddenly alot of ppl wanna run for JCRC. Nearly all the posts have competition. Last year no competition at all, this year freaking different. Hai... starting to feel stress about being Hall 1 prez....
As the saying goes, 'expect the unexpected'. Who knows what unforseen thing will happen next...
MUST READ!!!!!
Taken from a friend's blog:
In response to the August 8, 2006 issue of Nanyang Chronicle's article "Mission accomplished; Prof Koh steps down". The article can be found here.I feel that the article is mostly a clever play on words. Nothing in the article is technically wrong or factually inaccurate - but what it is actually saying is a different matter altogether.To begin with, the so-called "first step". In all my time in NTU, I cannot honestly remember "a survey of students involving the NTU administration to understand what went through the minds of [the] students". In fact, I cannot find someone who can honestly say that he or she remembers such a survey being done. To me, that suggests that the survey was either done without much effort, or that the survey was so badly designed as to exclude large demographics of the student population. Me, a single student, not remembering such a survey is not a bad thing. Not being able to find someone who does reflects a rather gross flaw in the survey.From my personal experience, Prof Koh is rather rude, overbearing, and sarcastic when she replies to emails with queries. This is, of course, my own personal experience, but you must understand how it clouds my perspective of the "personally replied students' e-mails" aspect. If the notion of "treating students as our customers" was really in effect, I would hardly think that you would be rude, overbearing, and sarcastic to your customers. I really, really fail to see how the "renovation of Canteen A" has any incredibly significant bearing on student matters. Yes, it would be nice to renovate it. But surely that money we pay (from the fee hikes, no less) would be better spent by increasing the shuttle bus budget so that we can have higher shuttle bus frequency? I don't fault the setting up of the Student Counselling Centre or the Student Activity Center, but seriously, if the "renovation of Canteen A" is one of the major accomplishments in a tenure of the Dean of Students... to me it seems either there were so few accomplishments to list that the "renovation of Canteen A" was one of them, or that the disconnect between the Dean of Students and the ACTUAL students is so great as to be under the impression that the "renovation of Canteen A" would greatly benefit the student population.The HAS/PAS issue. Let's get the first issue straight. I can think of no other example in the real world where an existing, functioning (not necessarily perfect) system is forcibly removed without having prepared another functioning system to replace it. This is what has happened. The PAS was removed BEFORE the HAS was completed. To me, it seems like the issue was forced. Change for the sake of change. Would you throw away your only chair BEFORE you buy a new one? Would you demolish your house BEFORE you build a new one? I cannot see the rationale behind this ridiculous decision. To me, it shows a very poor grasp of management skills.Secondly, the immense delays in the HAS system. As of the HAS forum day, there was only a skeleton (insofar as we were told). Six months of work has produced that. Honestly, I believe if you gave the task to any of the school's main committees, they would come up with a more solid system rather than just a skeleton. There are two ways to go from here. If you want to claim credit for the HAS system and keep repeating the fact that you are the head, then take responsibility for the fact that frankly, you have done a very poor job of coming up with the HAS, bordering on either laziness, procrastination, or several other reasons I shall not mention. If you will not accept the responsibility that you have done a poor job leading the HAS, then it would also follow that you stop claiming credit for implementing the HAS and stating you are the head of the HAS committee. You can't have the best of both worlds.Also, critising and scrapping the PAS is easy. Anyone can critique a system. Coming up with a new, workable, superior HAS system is difficult. All that I have see you do is to scrap the PAS system (the easy job). As for coming up with the HAS system (the difficult job), it seems rather convenient that this difficult job only came at the end of your tenure of as Dean of Students. In army terms, this would affectionately be known as "taichi". I refute the "HAS would have taken much less time to complete" sentence. It is not completed. And if all that you can show from three years of doing surveys I have never heard of is a SKELETON of a system, with no details in place... I have to say that no lecturer of mine would ever accept such shoddy homework after giving me a three year deadline. I say it now, there is very little to show from the much vaunted "three years" of work. If the HAS working committee, under your supervision, has come up with a perfectly detailed system in the vein of the Points Award Scheme book we get each year, then I applaud your committee. If not, well, like I say. Shoddy work.Student apathy and the HAS forum. Barring the fact that very short notice was given before the forum; excluding the fact that it was a very short forum; ignoring the fact that students perhaps would have lessons during that very short window of time you deigned to come for the forum; and not considering the fact that it was rather close to the exam period and expecting students to compromise on their academics when it seems that you would not make a similar sacrifice - well, yes, the turn up was bad. I can't deny that. I can see an immense amount of reluctance in having the HAS forum, and if you can show this kind of attitude to students, I don't blame students for their apathy either.I must say that claiming "it's practically impossible though to consult all except through online surveys and forums which students notoriously ignore" is either thorough laziness, incompetency, procrastionation and/or apathy. What it effectively amounts to saying is that you have tried these survey methods but they do not work. Then find one that does and stop blaming the methods. You claim we are your customers. If a certain survey medium does not work with your customers, will you just tell your boss the methods don't work, sorry I can't get feedback? I would think in the real world, with real customers, your boss would tell you to find a method that works instead of giving excuses that current methods do not work. Nobody would keep on using the same method, knowing it doesn't work, unless they couldn't be bothered."More have to speak up". Well, at the HAS forum I must say I heard more than a fair share of passionate speeches giving feedback about the HAS. Were any of those taken into consideration? Come to think of it, I don't recall seeing anyone writing down any of the suggestions taken during the forum, which to me just goes to show how seriously you took the forum. Where was the promised second forum? Making a promise and not keeping it is a lie, plain and simple. No amount of word play will hide that. To me it seems feedback goes through this "pick and choose" filter. Feedback that is unpleasant or negative to you is mysteriously absent. Feedback that is pleasant and supports what you have done manages to reach your ear. However, I believe there is more feedback of the former kind than the latter, and thus you get very little feedback you hear. As I have pointed out, if you want feedback, the passionate speeches made at the HAS forum was more than enough example. It's not that students don't give feedback, it's that you don't want to hear it if it inconveniences you. We speak, but nobody wants to hear the unpleasant truth.I am very disappointed in the former Dean of Students. Claiming credit where credit is due is fine with me. Claiming credit for things that are not beneficial... well that either means one is delusional, has a tremendous ego, has done very little but wishes to cover it up, and/or is trying to pretend to have done a good job. I sincerely hope the new Dean of Students, Prof Loke, will truly be a Dean of Students, and I wish him all the best. I hope he does not follow in the shoes of his predecessor.
NBS pageant preview 2006 = SUCKS!!
Just to name a few reasons why it sucks:
It was at some unknown place with a weird name...
The place wasn't a club to begin with...
It costed 15 MEGA bucks...
I am broke...
The free drink tasted like coke (suppose to have alcohol content)...
The whole preview lasted around 10 min...
Very few ppl form our OG went...
It wasn't even my batch's bash...
Well done to the NBS DnD com for making lots of money from freaking ppl lik me.
Suck thumb for ppl like me who were dumb enough to go.
P.S: The 15 bucks i paid to enter the freaking place were purely for friendship and support for the freshies. (salute to myself!)
Hardworking me!
Have been rather busy since sch started, with hall stuff and sch works and all.
This sem i am a new KaLeong!! I did 3 tutorials already and its jus the 2nd week!!! For the record i think i did around 5 or 6 tutorials for my 1st yr all together.... So think you can really see the difference there. Shocked a few hall ppl when they walked past my room and see me studying.
For the beginning of the last 2 semesters, i always said to myself that i must work hard. But then it never happened. This time round, things are kind of different, i am really gonna be hardworking!!
Suddenlly feel so proud of myself!!!! HEHehe!
School start lo!!!
NBS camp + BKK trip + hall camp has really shagged me out to the max man. But it kind of end my vacation on a high la. Not to forget the great freshies i got for both my hall and NBS camp.
For now, other then meeting up with new friends and og outings, its back to the books again. Freaking NTU keep changing the textbooks!!! Fucking hell, can't sell my old books.... Hopefully this sem i will work hard la.........
