The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 15,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 6 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Be free from the phenomenon of 'following the crowd'

For the longest time in my life, I have been a ‘person in the crowd’, i.e. someone who behaves and acts according to how the crowd behaves and acts. It is like since Primary 1, my entire educational life is fixed. This has been a very difficult journey for me because I am a person who have very diverse interests. In fact, it is exactly because of this character trait of mine that I have not been able to excel in every academic endeavor in my life. I did poorly in PSLE, ‘O’ level and ‘A’ level. Although it is not poor enough for me to become a dropout. I am your typical average joe.

Fortunately, the ‘crowd’ that I have followed throughout the earlier years of my life is those that believe in studying. Otherwise, I think I will be BELOW average joe. And this lands me into the University and I have to say that this is one part of ‘crowd’ following that I am grateful to. Without a formal education that develops my fundamental skill of independent and critical thinking, I think I will probably still be following the ‘crowd’ today. Isn’t it interesting? I follow the ‘crowd’ to get into a high quality education so that I realize the importance of not following the ‘crowd’. Paradoxical right?

I think many people around me  still believe in following the ‘crowd’. Let me give you an example. I have been married since 1998. That is 13 years of marriage. We have decided in more recent years that we don’t want to have child. Immediately when I say this, tell me what goes on your mind? Will you not immediately question my decision of why your decision? If you have this in mind, you are probably a typical ‘crowd’ follower in terms of what life should be. Not that this is no good. It is ok if you keep this thought to yourself. Not ok if you start to ask me that question. Let me give you another perspective. If over my 13 years of marriage, my wife and I managed to give birth to two children, would you immediately question my decision of having children when you learned about it? In our subconscious mind, we have been brought up to think that it is a natural phenomenon to have child versus not to. That is a ‘crowd’ phenomenon in life. Who decide that? And why must it always be the case? By the way, I am not arguing to say that ‘crowd’ following is a bad thing to do. I am claiming that following it blindly is.

Back to myself, the key turning point in my life when I have decided not to follow blindly the ‘crowd’ is during my trip to US in 2003/2004. Something just happens during that period of 8 months that I find it extraordinary. It is like one moment you are following the flow of the river, the other moment you turn into a salmon going against it. Till today, I still can’t explain why and how it happens. But one thing that is very clear is since then I have slowly developed a critical mind in questioning and constant habit of reflection. I am constantly reminded how amazing and powerful life experiences can be. In just a short span of time, my horizon, my underlying belief systems, and my deeply rooted ‘following the crowd’ tendency have changed all over.

Be brave, my dear readers. Believe in your thoughts and don’t follow the ‘crowd’ blindly.

See a related blog entry on this topic here.

人上有人，天外有天

I have always think very highly of my ability in many areas all the time. It is a sense of confidence that I always have with myself. Perhaps because of the many waves of destructive events that I have endured over the years and survived. Perhaps because of the many challenges that I have managed to overcome at work and in life. Yet, I also enjoyed the feeling of being forced to realize how inadequate I am with my ability (see these postings: 1 and 2). It is a paradox that most people will find it hard to accommodate in their life. However, I actually believe that this is something good for your own ability development.

Since 2003/2004 when I returned from my Java Black Belt attachment in Sun Microsystems, I have learnt the virtue of being humble in every thing that I do. Because no matter what I do, I can guarantee that I can always find someone who can do it better, faster, and cheaper than me. I think the chinese proverb says it all: 人上有人，天外有天. But still some time as you established yourself in your career or in your life, you always want to feel that you are strong in your ability and you are ‘better’ than others. This is an inevitable human self-fulfilling feeling of accomplishment and importance. Afterall, who would want to feel lousy about ourselves all the time.

I must always remind myself that there is always someone who can do something better than me and continue to keep an open mind to learn from them

While it is ok to feel accomplished and of significant importance through your ability, it is, in my opinion, not ok to believe that you have reached the peak of your accomplishments and no one else is better than you. In fact, I posit that there is no such thing as a peak of any accomplishment. The sea of learning is borderless. Nothing is perfect in accomplishments. A junior PhD comrade of mine who I always feel that my ability is better than him reminded me of that yesterday. I was once having the strong belief that I am better than him in every aspect of my PhD study. As I read through his paper yesterday that is likely going to be published in a top-tier journal, I discovered the lacking in my ability relative to him. A person who I once viewed as inferior to my ability is now better than me in some other areas in research and that areas have allowed him to excel and publish in good journals while I am still struggling to even get one in. It is the same kind of feeling of ‘smallness’ in my earlier postings. Only this time, it comes from a junior PhD comrade instead of my PhD master and senior.

As a senior who has been instrumental in re-directing him back into the right path of PhD, I am happy to see his progression in research. Probably more importantly, I am happy to see the gaps in my ability relative to his current ability. As I have always advocated in my blogs that the ability to see gaps in your ability and find ways to overcome it is a life changing skill that is easy to understand but difficult to master. Frankly, it would be also hypocritical to say that I am not upset by this experience. It is quite ‘face-losing’ as a senior. Fortunately, it is also my belief that a real man admits its shortcomings and works hard to overcome it than just feeling jealous and does nothing about it. Nonetheless, it is comforting to know that I have acquired the necessary humility and courage to admit that I can learn something valuable from someone irrespectively of that person’s status, year of experiences, and etc. It is also a good find to discover a gap in my ability that I can now develop plans to improve on. Without the feeling of ‘smallness’ through constant and intense interactions with all kind of people, I don’t think this is possible.

学海无涯

Hence, I must always remember this feeling of ‘smallness’ and stay steadfast on the belief that 学海无涯! It is only though this feeling and belief that I can truly enjoy a life of acquiring and applying knowledge.

Most enjoyable overseas run at Perth along Swan River near City

Until I visited my friend in Australia in my recent trip, my definition of living is restricted to city living. The convenience of modern days technological advancements, the availability of public transport, and the seemingly ‘protected’ and safe environment are all taken for granted in city living. But at what expenses?

To be frank, I was once very clear of what is the true meaning of living. I knew at very early part of my adulthood that you have to work really hard in order to live well. Coming to Australia changes my mind. I begin to wonder if the people in Australia can really survive in their country? Probably can but I just couldn’t figure out how. I don’t really see them working really hard. Their standard of living is high relative to Singapore’s living.

Take for example, a can of coke zero would retail at most S$1 in Singapore’s supermarket. Here, it will cost you AUD2.99. It would cost as high as AUD5 if you buy it in restaurant. And that is just coke. A typical Australia’s meal even at fast food chain will cost you at least AUD10. Compared that to a hawker’s food in Singapore that is around S$4 (with drinks). You can’t help to wonder how do the australian manages to survive in such environment? How much do they have to earn to get ends to meet? Yet, as I wonder around the country and meeting with my close friend who has lived in Perth for the last 8 years, I realized that they have only been living comfortably but also in rather high quality. Just to set thing right, they are not the super wealthy kind. They have a regular job in Australia like anyone I know in Singapore. Yet, they own a house, two cars and get to visit the great nature parks every other weekend (if they choose to). While they paid high taxes, they get to enjoy good infrastructure services (such as well-maintained roads and beautiful parks) and free medical fees. Have I mentioned that my friend works in a company that give them one Friday off every fortnightly? And they still enjoy the standard annual leave and holidays. As I ponder over these new information that I have gathered over the last one plus week in Australia, I begin to reevaluate am I truly living my life to the fullest. Or I am merely living the life that I have inherited from the many generations of people living in Singapore.

Incredible Scenery at Cradle Mountain, Tasmania

Perhaps in a more profound way, the trip has reminded me many times to reconsider what constitutes success in life.  In many countries including Singapore and USA, success is all about money, status, and fame. But this cannot be the true meaning of living. If it does, then the generation of human being who have no concept of money, status, and fame would have felt that their life is not worth living and would have ended their life very quickly. The fact that we have survived as a race of human being today tells us that they must have defined fruitful living in a very different way than what our current society has defined it.

Life is an amazing journey of experiences.  While I rejoice to the new-found experiences about living through my recent Australia trip, I am also fully aware that social norms and peer pressures as well as my deeply embedded habits will make any changes to my way of living in Singapore a very difficult choice to make. However, I remain confident that I will find my ideal way of living in my lifetime. How about you, my friend? Have you found your ideal way of living life to its fullest? Share with me if possible.

Greed is one mechanism to motivate someone

We were having our usual Friday’s night out. The night was young and we were sitting in Coffee Bean chit chatting. Suddenly, my pal, Wee Yeh then said something to this effect:

You know Jenson, there are two ways that people get motivated. One, fear and two, greed.

These words struck a deep core in my heart. Is it really true that each one of us gets fire up to do something great in life because of fear and/or greed? I think there are some truth in it. I ask myself why am I working so hard to work and study at the same time? Perhaps, it is the greed to be called ‘Dr’. Perhaps, it is the fear of being obsoleted by the rapid pace of society progression. Perhaps, it is both.

While I do believe that my pal brought up a very interesting point to think about, I also do think that there are other ways to motivate people beside fear and greed. Sometime, people are motivated because of higher calling (something like compassion), other time, people may be motivated to do things because of love. These are equally powerful motivators. However, it seems that these are internally generated motivations which is a little different from the external provoked motivations as stated above. It seems that if you really need to influence someone else other than yourself, you probably will need some tools that will invoke the greed or fear in that person. Then they will translate that into perhaps internal motivation and push themselves towards that goal. This is obviously easier said than done.

Conceptualizing motivation into these factors is an important undertaking in my opinion. Because once you fix in your mind that this is the reason that is responsible to create the motivation in people to get things done, it will translate to real actions. Actions that will have influence on the outcome you are trying to achieve. Nonetheless, the fact remains that getting people motivated to do something that they may not be motivated to do initially is an art by itself. As a manager, I am particularly interested to find all kind of ways to do this and do this well. Wee Yeh brought out a good point to think about and I thought it is important enough to get it documented as a blog entry.

Frankly, despite many years of practicing how to motivate people, I am still struggling with it. Every person is different. That is why while conceptually it is easy to say that he/she is motivated through fear or greed, but translating this reflection into concrete and proper actions are the most difficult endeavor that even some of the best managers will fumble at times.

My first marathon timing: 5hrs 58 minutes

It was almost 1.5 years ago since I have started my “run for my life” project. The journey is nothing short of a great adventure. Along this long and difficult process of getting my fitness back, I discovered a lot of new things about my body. I made mistakes in training for my Sundown half marathon and my Standard Chartered marathon and I figured ways to overcome these mistakes or at least I hope to overcome them in the next run. I have made great friends with people I never met on Endomondo who are equally passionate about running.

As I looked back of a year of running achievements (see here for my initial workplan for 2011):
(1) Sundown half marathon;
(2) 2XU compression run 12 km;
(3) KERun 7 km;
(4) RunNUS 10 km;
(5) New Balance Real Run half marathon;
(6) IPPT incentive pass (IPPT running passing timing: 11.18 minutes); and
(7) Standard Chartered full marathon

It was an incredible feeling as I ran past the finish line

I can’t help but to be in a state of awe of a human being’s ability to excel so rapidly on something he/she chooses to invest time and effort on. I mean can you imagine this typical conversation that I am having with my running buddies now:

I feel something is amiss for not running for a week. Perhaps I should run 10 km this weekend.

Versus this typical conversation in the past

 Running?!! Har?!! No no no… I can’t run.

It is really amazing how I have progressed over just a short 1.5 years. When I shared my story with my friends, I discover that my ‘running’ project is not a norm that people will undertake in their life. On this regard, I would always tell them this story that I have learnt from a good running buddy of mine

 If I am to give you 1 billion dollars to run everyday for 1 hours for the rest of your life, would you do it?

If the answer to this question is yes, then you have just placed running your top priority in your life. Whatever that you place as priority, you will find ways to get it done and that is exactly my point. For people who never believes in exercise, exercise is never their priority. Hence, it makes no sense to convince them otherwise. Perhaps I should also say that I am not trying to convince you that running is for you and you should start running. For me, running is a mean to an end. I used running as a way to keep healthy and health is what I want to have for as long as I shall live. My main point is regardless of what you do, the aim is to get healthy and stay healthy.

It took every ounce of my determination to achieve what I have achieved.

Way back in 1.5 years ago when I started this lifetime project of “run for my life’, I told myself that if I don’t have health, I don’t have anything. I can’t work to give to the society and to fulfil my aspiration and I can’t help my family when they need my help. I can’t do anything. Yet, I have seen many people around me (friends and family members) that took their health for granted. Abusing their body through over-eating and the lack of exercise. That they have this myth in their mind that somehow their body is going to take care of itself without proper conditioning through exercise. Many of them don’t even spend time listening to their body and only when the body really breakdown then they regret and feel that they should have done something about it. But it will be all too late.

I was recently reminded by a friend of mine that commented that someone dead during the Standard Chartered Marathon 2011 and tried to highlight the danger of running so much. My answer to him is in whatever exercise you do, you need to listen to your body. Don’t push when your body tells you not to. Exercise is about learning this skill to listen to your body, not a form of extreme sports.  Again, it is a mean to an end.

After one whole year of running activities, I have to say that I am happy with my achievements. Although I have not been able to do everything that I have planned, I have at least achieved 90% of them. In any plans that are derived under large dose of uncertainty, I think it is a reasonable report card for 2011. I am looking forward for another eventful 2012 and I wish that I can do this consistently for the rest of my life.

Viva la running, Viva la health.

It pays to choose your choice of words wisely

I am never good at grasping the essence of the English language. It took me many years to get to where I am today. Too long perhaps. I still have a very long way to go before I am able to confidently say that I am fluent with the language. It would be wishful thinking to believe that I can master it. Nonetheless, regardless of whether it is English or Chinese or whatever languages that you are using for communications. I have to constantly remind myself that every single word matters a lot.

I was reminded recently of the importance of the choice of words we use when we are communicating. As an person who has been highly exposed to the academic world, I increasingly realize why people always say that the smallest things differentiate. Things as small as even the choice of words use in a conversation, in an email and every other possible communication platform can have a significant impact of the outcome that you want to achieve through that communication.

I give you an example. Let us take for instance you want to ask someone in your organization of the issues that he/she faces on a day-to-day basis at work, you can choose word like ‘problems’ as in ‘can you share with me what are some of the problems you face at work?’ or you can choose word like ‘challenges’ as in ‘can you share with me what are some of the challenges you face at work?’. Think about it. One word different. Between ‘problems’ and ‘challenges’, which question will you as the interviewee be more inclined to answer and want to answer well. I bet it would be the latter. The word ‘challenges’ conveys a latent message of overcoming odds, it is something that people want to talk about. The word ‘problems’, however, conveys a latent message of hitting ‘roadblocks’. Chances are people don’t want to talk about it.

If you think deeper, the choice that you made will also reveal something about you. Using the above example, if you choose ‘problems’, you are likely to have a personality that is inclined towards looking at the world as a half empty cup. You view every occurrence in life as a problem. Conversely, if you choose ‘challenges’, you may have a personality that is adventurous and you view every occurrence in life as a challenge (half full cup). Just one word and your personality can be guessed at and often such guesses can be right. Now, I am not advocating that you fake or conceal your intention or personality through the use of ‘appropriate’ words, I am cautioning you to be careful with your choice of words. Indirectly, I am cautioning myself as well. There is a saying that summarizes it well, ‘Some time words we say is not what we actually meant’. That is why writing and speaking well are not skills that can be easily acquired. It takes many practices, a lot of tries and errors, and a lot of patience and reflections to develop. Of course, some people have great talent in it and are able to do very well since their childhood. I am, however, the slow learner kind.

Every single word matters a lot, so choose our choice of words wisely.

Invisible forces all around us

When I was younger, I never believe in ‘invisible forces’ in life such as chance or fate. I believe if I work hard, I will achieve my goals and targets. As I age, I increasingly feel that somehow our life is being controlled by some kind of unexplainable, unseeable, and unpredictable forces. Let me tell you why.

As a youngster, we are always driven by what we want in life. We have desires on many things and we work our heart out to pursue our dreams. Often, we realized that the harder we try, the farther we are from our targets. May be not true in all cases, but I feel it has some truth in most cases. At least it is true for me and especially on those really difficult targets. Like owning my own home, my first car, my PhD, and etc. As I let go of my obsessions to keep thinking about the targets and just focus on doing the things that I believe I ought to do, somehow I would mystically move closer to my final ‘destination’. I really can’t explain why is this so.

I blog about not being too calculative in life sometime back. I think this ‘not being too calculative’ idea has a very significant impact in promoting the occurrences of this invisible force. Let me give you an example to illustrate this: I have been a strong advocate on quality management since 2007. Over the last five years, I have been working (often outside of my office hours) on many quality initiatives with no returns expected. For example, I have always challenged myself to try to create a service culture in the team that I belong to. It is not for the faint of heart as every non-believers look upon you as if you have committed a serious crime. But I persevered and continued to give my time and effort for the seemingly ‘bottomless pit’ of service quality.

Something amazing happened throughout this journey. As I continued to focus on service quality, one good thing happened after another and the strange thing is everytime when it happened, it was at a time when I was ready for it. For example, I started out focusing on VOICE (a WITS suggestion scheme in NUS). Did really well, then IQTeam (internal in-house quality project scheme) happened and I went ahead to try it. Because of my accumulated experiences in participating in VOICE, I did very well in it. Then came the NIQC, I tried it and had been reasonably good at it because of my participation in IQTeam. Then came Lean Six Sigma, which I went ahead to get certified in Black Belt and again did well because of my writing experiences in NIQC.

I find this very amazing. Time and again, I went ahead to follow my passion and belief and just did what I should do without any expectations of any returns. And time and again, when the best opportunity appears, I am always there able to see it and ready to capture it. I looked back in the whole journey of my life and I realized that whenever I did something out of pure interests and invested my time and effort without being calculative over what it is in for me, I was often rewarded with really great opportunity that I was able to capitalize on.

I have come to the conclusion that for anyone to be ready and prepared for any opportunity, he/she must have the willing heart to do things without being too calculative about what it is in for himself/herself.

Just to give a summary of my service quality achievements since 2007 and you should be able to see how one thing I did in service quality led to another.

1. NUS Service Quality Award 2007 (Highest honor given to a NUS staff for service excellence)
2. Computer Centre’s Director Award 2007 (Highest honor given to an IT professional for his technical and managerial competencies)
3. First Placing, NUS VOICE Best Individual effort of the year award, 2007
4. First Placing, NUS VOICE Best Individual effort of the year award, 2008
5. 1 Outstanding Award and 1 Merit Award, NUS IQ Team Award, 2008
6. 1 Silver Award, National Innovation and Quality Circle (NIQC), 2008
7. First Placing, NUS VOICE Best Individual effort of the year award, 2009
8. 2 Outstanding Awards, NUS IQ Team Award, 2009
9. 1 Star Award and 1 Gold Award, National Innovation and Quality Circle (NIQC), 2009
10. 1 Gold Award, 1 Silver Award and 1 Bronze Award, International Convention on Quality Control Circles (ICQCC), 2009
11. Third Placing, NUS VOICE Best Individual effort of the year award, 2010
12. 4 Gold Awards, National Innovation and Quality Circle (NIQC), 2010
13. 2 Silver Awards, International Convention on Quality Control Circles (ICQCC), 2010
14. NUS Service Quality Award 2011, Service Champion (Highest honor given to NUS staff for service excellence) – Only staff in NUS that won this award twice.
15. 2 Star Awards and 1 Gold Awards, National Innovation and Quality Circle (NIQC), 2011

Be wary of your email content before it endangers your livelihood

The world is not like what we lived in 20 years ago. In those time when I am still 18 and studying in JC, communications with your peers, teachers, friends, relatives and etc. go by face to face. There is no hiding, every movements of your body, the tone in your speeches, and the facial expressions all leak something about you to the receiver. Today, communications are predominately done online, via emails, social media, and websites. It is both a blessing and a curse.

I want to dive deeper into the use of email in this blog. I am sure that it is probably an understatement to proclaim that email is an part of our life now. In fact, I bet we will experience extreme withdrawal syndrome if for one day, we put away all our communication devices such as tablets, smartphones, PCs, and laptops and ignore all emails. While I do think that this is a very sad phenomenon that I am seeing here because I think that the proliferation of emails have degraded the quality of our communication in many ways. I recognize that this is a future that we cannot hid from. Hence, I want to take some time to caution you and to remind myself to be careful with using email as a main media for communications.

Like a river, the proper use of email can reap tremendous benefits to one’s productivity in many areas. On the flip side of the coin, the inappropriate use of email can literally be disastrous to your reputation, your career and your life. For example, ever since 2005 when I took on the role of being a Manager, I have long understood the danger of sending email in the heat of the moment. As a veteran administrator and leader, I know instinctively that this is a no-no thing to do. Anger expressed in an email (no matter how well you write it) will conjure ill feelings from the receivers and often will make matters worse than improving it. I was reminded of this recently when I received an email from a resident in KE7 hall complaining about the poor maintenance of lightnings in MPC. Some of you may think, we have the right to be angry right? Yes, you have. But you don’t have to express it in an email, cos’ frankly it rarely helps. What matters though is to convey factual information in an email in a way that is non-provocative and yet delivering the core messages. This takes a lot of time and effort to perfect.

The next no-no in an email is the discussion of sensitive issues. For example, the discussion of a person’s poor performance or a discussion about the problems you faced in a relationship or about something confidential at work. The more proper way to discuss this, in my opinion, is always via face-to-face communication. Nothing can beat that. Furthermore, it helps to remove the hidden risk of using email to discuss such things, i.e. forwarding.  As a rule of thumb, you have to assume that anything you communicate via email will always be forwarded unknowingly or knowingly by whom you communicate with. I have one such incident recently. I wanted to discuss something sensitive with someone. But I couldn’t manage to catch that person. So I sent an email. Despite being very diplomatic with my email and all seems fine and good. The person forwarded that email to another person which due to the sensitivity nature of the discussions stirs up a big fuss out of an otherwise simple discussion. It created a havoc and I am left having a bruised relationship with a friend of mine. Obviously it doesn’t help with the matter either. If you are to ask, I have to say that I have deeply regretted sending that email. On the good side though, I have learned to be more careful with emails and not to send sensitive things to another unless I can completely trust that person.

So my fellow readers, next time when you are angry about something and want to write an email to vent it out, heed my advice don’t send it out. Write if you want, but keep it always in your Draft. Consider the virtues of patience that I have blogged about recently. If you really have to communicate after things have cooled down, consider face-to-face. Or write an email that state factual information. When you are doing that, be tact and always assume that the person who receives your email will forward it to others. Bottomline is email is a double-edge sword, use it wisely.

Loving KE Acapella Group Perfoming 'Lollipop'

I had the rare privilege once a year to witness the enormous cultural talents in King Edward VII hall on Thursday night during ICN (a.k.a Internal Culture Night). I have to admit that not all performances are of a great production standard. The kind that you can send to sistic and people will pay to watch, but some are. Not that it really matters. What really does matter is the willingness to step out of one’s comfortable zone and follow one’s passion and perform. It is this first step that I believe is worthy of mentioning.

I vividly recalled words of similar nature mentioned by the emcee of that night:

I hope our performance will spur on people who don’t dance to dance, on people who can’t dance well want to dance better, and on people who can dance well strive for excellence.

Another dance item members

I think this is the true spirit of human being. To have the courage to try something new and have the determination and perseverance to become good at it. That is why I would like to dedicate this blog entry to all KEVIIANs who took that step the first time on ICN and to those who have the perseverance to continue to work on that path. For as long as you continue that path, I truly believe that it will give you the courage to develop your hidden talent and bring it to its rightful blossom. Although I have to also admit that some talents are already well-developed. Take Ryan Sleeper as an example. His beatbox skills are amazing! I do think that all the audiences are in awe after enjoying his stellar performance.

One of KE Dance Item Members

Xin Yao Group Performance

Our very own, 'The Smoking Marshall'

Our talented Chinese Drama Group

Yet, I have to quickly remind that we are not celebrating because of someone like Ryan, we are celebrating our diversity that has united us as one KE7 hall. Let me tell you why is this celebration so important. In many ways, every residents living in the hall equate winning the chancellor’s shield, the IHG trophies, and etc as the epitome of hall excellence. We have defined what constitute to as excellence for a hall to such great extent that even when you hint at another perspective, the social pressures to conform will crash upon you, rendering you feeling powerless to changes. We see this every time when we want to reduce the IHG competition duration or changing the rules of rag or etc.

Ryan Sleeper, Lisa and Valerie (I think)

My fellow KEVIIANs we have to recognize that excellence of a hall comes in many forms just like intelligence. Many people always equate intelligence as rational and logical thinking, like having a high IQ score. But Sir Ken Robinson begs to differ, he reiterates that human being is so diversity that it is silly to assume that there exists only one form of intelligence. For example, have you notice in your life that they are people who need to ‘move to think’? These are people who have a ‘high IQ’ in dancing, why can’t this diverse view about intelligence be also recognized. My point is if you think that we need to win IHG, rag, and etc to become a great hall, I urge you to reconsider your view.

In my opinion, a great hall is defined by the willingness to celebrate and recognize diversity and the richness of talents its possesses as an integral fabric of an excellent hall. In Thursday ICN, this is exactly what we have celebrated. As I step out of the communal hall on Thurs after the ICN, there is no doubt in my mind that our beloved King Edward VII Hall is a great hall. I am proud to be part of this great hall and I am privileged to be associated with all of you, my fellow talented KEVIIANs.

PS: I have to apologize that I have not been able to obtain photos of the other cultural groups to put on this blog. If you have them, please let me know as I would like to link them in my blog.