Sunday, May 22, 2011

Hey... where's the work update? Part 2

(quick note to my manager: If you're not reading the work updates, can I just skip?)

Our first session was with the faculty members of the University or clearly some folks who were standing in for faculty members and seemed to want to get over with it and get back to their real jobs. The vice-Dean Mr. W was there to help lend credibility to our session and also to take a few pictures from my camera (thank you Prof. W, and I apologize I made you do it)

Profs W, Z with Andrea and  me

The interest levels were..err.. .not the best
Hey there were more people.. some just left before this picture

Blogger Error #23847: Picture in incorrect story
Blogger Error #23847: Picture in incorrect story

Blogger Error #23847: Picture in incorrect story
There seems to be some blogger error with regards to the three pictures above which clearly don't fall in the work story. While I try to set this right, you could wait for the next blog on the relevant story.

For our next session on ‘Planning for your Career’ with the students' community, we got a far better response than we got from our first session. To begin with, I began being understood by my audience. I felt hope that can only be compared to the hope felt by a quadriplegic when a toenail twitches. I thought there could be potentially life ahead for me.



The students were fairly ‘shy’ to begin with (I’ve heard this a lot about Chinese people and conveniently use this to justify why no pretty Chinese girl has yet hit out at me… this being day 14 in China), but eventually managed to surprise us by not only their English skills, but also by the extreme breadth of the questions they asked us - both during the session and later. To give you an idea of the entire range of the questions, I’m documenting a few of the most interesting ones. In keeping with my decision to try not mention my organization in these blogs, I use the term ‘organization’ instead:



Representative-List-of-extremely-wide-range-of-questions

  1. How can I get a job in your organization?
  2. How can your organization give me a job?
  3. If I send you a mail can you get me a job in your organization?
  4. If I send you a text, can you get me a job in your organization?
  5. If I smile at you and wave, can you get me a job in your organization?
  6. Who can give me a job in your organization?
  7. What can give me a job in your organization?
  8. Where can your organization give me a job?
  9. Where else can your organization give me a job?
  10. Can your organization give me two jobs?
  11. I need a job with your organization. Help.
  12. Job… Your Organization... Me?
  13. Me… Your Organization…Job?
  14. Your Organization... Me… Job?
  15. Your Organization... Job... Me?
Clearly while we were all prepared to explain the foreplay around Career planning, the students wanted to get down to the meaty action. Anyhow, we gave these bright students adequate clarity that’s definitely going to benefit them in life ahead. A good deal of communication exchange was helped by the fact that Lucy decided to join us for this session and could be our interpreter B. Prof. Z needed a bit of help time and again and Lucy pitched in with enthusiasm. Which is good because I did not want to accidentally end up hiring a hundred students through a message lost in translation. Else I would too have a question: How do I get my job back with my organization?
    To those who could still not understand our presentation, it may have looked like this:






    All in all good fun. It's great when people begin to idolize you simply because they don't know any better. Oh.. a dime for every business card I distributed!



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