To be honest, I felt that the technical talk during the trip was really out of my league. However, the connection between our host, Mr. Ronian Siew, and us students made me really comfortable. Physics, particularly understand of light, has been the poorest among the three sciences for me. Yet, this trip made me able to breach the gap between 'law-by-law' principles and real life usage. What surprises me is that even the simplest of principles, such as the reflection of light and total internal reflection are actually truly important in constructing machines or lenses at a industrial level. Truthfully speaking, Mr. Ronian Siew's stories were pretty hard to believe, and all the more unimaginable, especially for me, since there really is no freedom for exploration in Singapore. I could feel the huge difference between an American-educated person from any one of us here - he was daring and never feared risk-taking, something many of us lack. I feel this is something all of us can learn from, else we will never pursue our dreams and passions.
Simple knowledge on light can be applied from our studies to the industry. Basic principles of light never change such as reflection, refraction, total internal reflection and dispersion of light. These concepts are necessary in order to construct a usable product.
Hi Wei Liang,
ReplyDeleteI wished we had a chance to chat during your visit, but alas there wasn't enough time. I'm perfectly confident that you have it within you the ability to reach out and achieve your dreams. The difference between an American based education system and the one in Singapore isn't all that dissimilar actually. Both are filled with grades, examinatinos, and competitions for scholarships. Both systems tend to judge students based on academic aptitude. Perhaps the difference lies in culture. I don't know for sure. But I do see what you mean. What I can say is that in the real world (i.e., the world outside of school), the difference between a person who gets the opportunity for anything and the person who doesn't is initiative. It's not the number of school competitions that a person wins, and it's not the grades and exam scores. It's initiative. Indeed, it takes guts and some risk taking. But that was how Steve Jobs got his first job at Atari. On the other hand, culture may also play a role. When Steve Jobs refused to leave the Atari store unless he was given a job, he got that job finally, but maybe that stunt worked better in the States. Imagine doing something like that in Singapore! On the other hand, there are probably other ways of taking the initiative in Singapore. If you have an invention for example, I wonder what would happen if a young and smart teenage student like yourself walked into the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS) and showed your invention to the person at the counter and said, "Sir/M'am, I'm an inventor and I have something I want to file a patent for...but I only have ten bucks." That event alone could possibly make Singapore history (in a positive way). If I were the IPOS counter person, it would be smart to encourage such initiative by calling your parents and the school to say that "you have a bright young boy and we want to help." See what I mean? It's just an example. But hey, you never know. Cheers - Ronny
Hi Wei Liang,
ReplyDeleteMy elder brother, Ivan (who currently lives near Boston in the States) read your post too
:-) And here's what he wrote me:
"Writing from the perspective of my work environment...Having started my career as a software engineer, through out many years of developing applications, at one point, I started to get bored. Not because there wasn't
much else to learn, but it was the same routine each day. Based on what you said about taking initiative, I can write about that as well.
Instead of quitting my job, I had asked my manager for a more challenging project. And I literally told him that I was getting bored. Perhaps it was the right timing when we were acquiring another company. A project landed on
my desk where in I was to work with another software engineer to develop something within a 3 weeks' time frame. Not doubt that it was challenging and hard work, including late nights, weekends and having a new-born baby
just two months before the acquisition. The delivery of the software proved to be a success. Sort of. It had to be re-written based on the CEO's feedback in another 3 weeks. I took up the challenge again. Delivering it once more to their satisfaction. The end result of this being, I was promoted to a Technical Lead
(Architect/Manager) of another group based on this performance. Now I lead my own group of developers. The story here was that I took the initiative to challenge myself when I
thought I was getting bored with my daily routine."