Something random!

I'm in short of topics to blog on now! Seems like my life's inching towards boredom. There's nothing interesting coming up. I have to follow the same schedule everyday, that is wake up, eat, study, sleep. It's pretty normal for me to sleep at 4am and then again wake up at 7 am. I am sleep deprived now. I cannot even sleep this weekend because of my i2i exam on Monday.

I hate it when the weekends approach. You might think  I'm being stupid by saying this because people usually yearn for weekends, whereas I'm acting just the opposite. Basically, on weekends I usually have nothing to do except sitting idle. Of course I have loads of pending works along with home works, but then I don't feel like studying. Weekends are meant to be enjoyed, but instead all my nerd friends are found sitting in the study lounge with their close to heart books, especially 131, which I hate the most. :/
Hope everything gets better very soon. I am eagerly waiting for the October break :D

Research

Today I noticed that I haven’t published posts labeled “Jayne” for two weeks. I commented, wrote posts for engr103 class weekly, but haven’t written anything for my composition class in this time. My last post was published on September 10. By this post, I am going to change it to September 25.)

This Friday in class, when we were given time to read, write and comment blogs, a strange idea emerged in my head. I was reading and trying to find blogs that I could comment. “Why don’t I write about some statistics of GELC on blogger.com”. I was thinking of importing all data to Microsoft Excel, where I could count the number of total words , how many blogs has everyone published, by this determine the most active blogger, and etc. . Then I could write a post about the most interesting facts. Seems crazy?

I started from GELC Purple, which consists of five students. On top of seven columns I wrote “Name”, “Title”, “Label”, “Date posted”, “Time posted”, “Word count”, “Comments”. (I’m interested whether our instructors have such file to grade us.) I copied a text, and pasted it to MS Word, where I could see word count. The whole process took me one and a half hour. It’s just a GELC Purple. I had five more colours. Then I gave up on this crazy idea.

Nevertheless, let me share the most interesting information that I got so far. Since August 28 up today, 34 posts have been published by me, Karlyn, Josh, Amon and Dharna, 19 of which labeled “engr103”, 15 labeled “Jayne”. (excluding this post). We have written 8230 words and received 56 comments. The most active blogger of GELC Purple is Dharna, who published 8 posts and wrote 2196 words. Second is Amon with 7 posts and 1977 words, Karlyn and Josh share third and fourth positions. Karlyn has 6 posts and 1634 words, Josh has 7 posts and 1298 words. Not sure whether number of posts or number of words is more important. You can guess who is fifth. But after this post he is going to improve the position in this rating.

PS: I may have made some errors.)

engr103, week 6

Eric Lynn in his work gives plenty of examples how people from different countries were unsuccessful working together, because each of those countries has peculiar engineering culture.

In one example, Mark, a British businessman has a meeting with Max, German banker. Each one is surprised of the way other acts. While Mark is willing to know his colleague personally and talks about non-job related topics, Max, on the other hand, immediately begins to talk about business.

Then, author explains this situation by describing British and German approach to work. He portrays the British as relationship oriented. They usually try to get to know people they are working with, by this way they feel more comfortable. On the other side, the Germans are task oriented. They tend to finish their job quickly and use time more efficiently.

Then Lynn compares German and American engineers. Germans try to manufacture a product that will not break down. The Americans tend to find feasible solution that can be improved later. To illustrate this, Lynn gives a specific example of a team consisting of 50% Germans and 50% Americans. They could not come to consensus, accusing other team of working not the same way. Eventually, they were not able to finish the task, which caused a loss of a lot of money.

In my opinion, whoever we work with, we should strive to cooperate. We may have different cultures, but it should not hinder efforts to find a common language.

Understanding of different cultures!

This thirteen page article cleared the meaning of CULTURAL DIFFERENCES in my mind. I understood that how dangerous cultural differences can be. On the business level, a business can be easily ruined without compatibility and cultural understandings. In our LC classes for the last two to three weeks, we have been talking and discussing about the cultural differences and their pros and cons. Two weeks ago we read about the German and British cultural differences and how they worked together on the Chunnel project. Both teams had their own ways of working. Similarly, in the article "The Challenges of International Management Teams
How Different Cultures Affect Business Decisions", I came across several examples related to different approaches to a problem by different countries.
Lets talk about the successful small businessman from London(as mentioned in the passage), who wanted to do business with a German bank. As he had never done any business with the Germans before, he wasn't aware of the Germans way of working. When greeted by the foreign investment banker, Mark wasn't comfortable with the way he was greeted. So easily he thought that he wasn't being given respect. whereas Max thought that the other party was wasting time on useless talks. This clearly shows that Mark first wanted to know more about the bankers before investing money on them. On the other hand, Max(German), wanted save time. This time management might be a quality of the Germans, which wasn't understood by Mark.

I feel that the six important aspects of an International business are : Trust, commitment, success, working together, attitudes to time and decision making. Perceiving things in a right way is really important. One should be aware of the cultures and their way of working. In the end of the article, the technical meetings worked well. They addressed cultural differences in working styles. Many such things should be done to reduce the differences. 

Inter culture partnerships

In our reading we are presented with situations in which people from different backgrounds come together to form partnerships. Even though both situations involved different types of partnerships (the first one was for business and the other was for an engineering project), we are able to see that differences in cultures play very important roles in any type of partnership. In our two cases, differences in cultures caused millions of dollars in loss. In fact more importantly, these differences caused communication to be very awkward or unpleasant for the different partners.

So how do we rise above these hurdles? After all, in our globalized world, no matter what we do, at some point in the future we will work with people from different backgrounds. In my opinion, we need to keep an open mind and learn of each other’s cultures. We need find out more how the other thinks and solves problem. But here’s the hard part. We will also have to make some compromises in order to get thing to work.

The Challenge of International Management Teams

We've talked about the challenges of working with different people from around the world. We also know that this is where the future lies when it comes to jobs for future engineers. We all have to learn how to work together and combine our different strategies to have a better solution.

We should have some knowledge of a different person's background. Without it, problems and awkwardness might arise, and the job will probably not be finished. It still might be a little awkward even though you know how a person is, but you will understand more because you know that person's perspective.

Again with the product that the Germans and Americans were trying to make was terribly planned, which resulted in a huge waste of money. If the two sat down and had a conference about the quality, the time, and the building of the product, maybe the product would have been made.

The Jujitsu Club

Ever wondered what you would if you get attacked randomly? Would you fight or fly? I’ll tell you this, if I’m faced in some alley with some mugger who has me at knife point, none of those two choices would work. I would stay frozen for fear of getting stabbed regardless of what I choose to do. In fact, If you choose to run away, I would get stabbed in the back. If I attack, I might just get stabbed in the chest anyway. Only with some luck you just might be able to get away.

I wanted to prepare myself for these kinds of situations. I wanted to be able to quickly and more importantly, safely regain control of a situation. So I just decided to join the Jujitsu club.

On the first class, I noticed that our Sensei was an American. For some reason I thought I was getting ripped off since (this will sound stupid) I earlier thought that only Asians can teach martial arts well (a cultural image courtesy of the “Karate Kid”). Anyway, I was proved wrong during last week’s sparring session.

With another classmate I was supposed to grab and punch our Sensei as part of a demonstration. Our Sensei also specified to really try to hit him as hard as we possibly could. Want to know what happened next? Well I tried to punch as hard as I could his left temple while grabbing on to his lapel with my left hand. And with a flick of his arm, everything became a blur. I was tossed and turned and finally I found myself lying on the ground feeling stunned and totally disorientated.

I just had my butt kicked.

bleh.

I do not feel like blogging. I am absolutely exhuasted. I did my entire engineering group project (because my group just can't seem to get it right), as well as the extensive engineering homework, and made revisions to my final english draft. This was all after my chemistry test that I had yesterday at 6:30pm. My roommate left milk out all night in a bowl from her cereal because she just can't clean up after herself. It smelled. She smells. My apartment smells. All because she is a total slob. I miss my clean house, my sanitary room (without some random girl who I got stuck with's dirty underwear all over the place), and my dog (who, by the way, is cleaner than my roommate). I'm sick of being the maid in my apartment and staying up all night studying because I have to clean all day. Yesterday i cleaned the entire bathroom (sink, floors, bathtub, and toilet) with no help from her whatsoever. It took about 2 hours. I'm terrified that I'm going to get sick from living with this girl. I seriously am never in my apartment because it's so nasty. I'm either at a friend's dorm, meeting with my engineering group, at a sorority meeting, studying at Potter, or doing ballroom dancing. Which, btw, is also disgusting because there's a few weird guys there trying to cop a feel. nice.

Best Week of Physics

I only had one class this past Tuesday and it had to be physics. It was supposed to be a day of studying because I also had a calc exam that night. The thought of skipping lecture was in my mind, because I never learn anything from my professor. For some reason I changed my mind and ended up there a few minutes early. I did not want to be there, but I noticed that my professor wasn't at the front. My first thought was he was just in the back about to come out. This other American professor was there and said, "Well let's get started." I thought it was a joke. He then explained how our professor is out of town for this week and he was going to lecture us. He started out his lecture and wow, it's amazing how much you can learn when a professor explains clearly and goes through many examples. This must of been the best week of physics for me, but sadly, I will again go through lectures with a state of confusion starting next Tuesday.

My Research Paper

Huh! I had a very tiring day today. Need some break now. I am finally done with my math and chem tests. The results will be out may be within next two days. Till then I'll do some blogging. In my earlier blogs I have already talked about myself, some funny incidents and several other topics. As of today, I'll talk about the research paper I'll be working on for this whole semester. I'm really excited about the same. My topic is Solar Energy. I had many options like hydrogen, wind,water and some other energy forms to choose from, but I chose Solar Energy because I am closely related to it. I have some personal experiences that drive me to work on it. I know its going to be a really tedious task! Writing 7000 words! wow!  But it will be fun.
Basically I'll be working on ways to harness the solar energy to its maximum potential. Throughout the semester I'm gonna search on the working of a solar panel, installations costs, accessibility, etc. I belong to India, a country where there is a chronic shortage of electricity and less accessibility to all, especially the poor.
So I want to search for ways of making it economical. Just today I have thought of my first reference, that is the environmental engineering department. Soon I'll get in touch with them  to explore more.
I'll signing out now to work on my final draft that is to be submitted this Friday.
Have a great day!

Chevron lands 20-year Kyushu Electric LNG deal

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/mining-energy/chevron-lands-20-year-kyushu-electric-lng-deal/story-e6frg9df-1226139317795

According to the article Chevron has signed a contract to transport liquefied natural gas to Kyushu Electric Power, Japan from Wheatstone reservoir, Australia. This contract will cover a twenty year time frame, in which 700,000 tons of LNG will be shipped. In my opinion, such a long term contract has a benefit. By this way, Japan provides itself with guaranteed energy source for a long time, so citizens won't worry about the future.

The article states "Many experts predict nuclear safety concerns in the wake of Japan's earthquake and tsunami earlier this year will boost demand for LNG, as some governments rethink plans to build new reactors." After such a disaster every country should reconsider its plans for nuclear energy for safety reasons.

The writer also asserts that Australia, with its ample gas reserves, can catch up to the biggest exporter of LNG, Qatar by the end of the decade. This supposition makes sense if Australia will continue to sign such large contracts.