Biodata of Me

I am Ng Hsuen Huey, currently a 3rd year undergraduate pursuing my life sciences courses in National University of Singapore (NUH) and expecting to graduate this coming May.

I am currently taking the role as an Executive Committee in Chinese-Varsity Christian Fellowship (CVCF) in NUS. This job requires me to plan and organize activities every week. This provides me a good opportunity to build up my leadership, management, communication and organizing skills. My heavy workload in both the academic and CCA has equipped me with the ability to handle stress and time management to achieve a balance between both fields.

I am an outgoing person who loves to interact with people. As such, I enjoy learning new things and meeting new friends from different countries who have broaden my horizon. Besides mastering English, Chinese and Malay, I have also chosen to study Vietnamese and Bahasa Indonesia with the purpose to interact with people regardless of different cultures. Last August, I had even attended East- Asia Regional Conference (EARC) held in Tokyo, which has built up my network with friends from universities of different countries and with varied cultural background.

Apart from interacting with people of similar age, I am also interested to making friends with children and teens of secondary school age. I am currently taking the role as a teacher or mentor in a teens’ fellowship to lead a group of teenagers of secondary school age. Besides teaching, I enjoy listening to their spiritual sharing and guiding them through different difficulties. Every year, I would also join CVCF mission team to organize children and teenagers’ camps in different regions of Malaysia.

Before I enrolled into NUS, I have taken up a few tuition teaching positions in both tuition centers and home tuition for 4 years, which have enriched my teaching experience. As a result of my past teaching experience, I have a great enthusiasm for teaching and am ready to choose teaching as my future career path.

Struggling

Recently I am troubled by a conflict with a very good friend of mine, MY. We enjoy sharing with each other during the times when we need a listener.

Around two years ago, he fell for a girl, SH, but SH had rejected him. Although feeling hurt, he still continuously treats her as a very good friend. However, it was obvious that his concern for this girl was more than that towards a good friend. His close friends have noticed this and have reminded him not to immerse too deeply into this “relationship” as they are afraid that he would get hurt again.

Nevertheless he always assures us that he has no feeling to this girl anymore. But somehow we still can observe “something odd” from his way of treating this girl.
However, a couple of weeks ago, I heard some rumors about my friend, MY. Obviously SH was spreading to some friends about the matter that MY likes her. I do not know what is her intention of doing so. What comes into my mind at the moment is that I want to protect my friend from being hurt again.

After hesitating for a while, I decided to tell MY about the rumors that I heard and hope that he could keep a distance from SH if he really does not like her. I did not comment much about this girl since I do not know much about her. I thought my well-meaning advice would be understood and appreciated. But unexpectedly MY reacted quite aggressively after I talked to him. He sent several long SMS to me saying that I have wrongly blamed this girl all these while. I don’t understand why he reacted so aggressively at the moment. I don’t think it’s appropriate to continue arguing with him over this matter. Thus I just briefly replied him, telling him that I don’t want to comment anything about this girl and what I wish is to say something which is concern about him.

Unfortunately, a couple of days ago, MY had chosen to tell the girl about what I have said. This caused a stir among us and the misunderstanding getting even worse. I don’t understand why MY has the need to do that. I feel that I was given away by a friend whom I trust and concern so much. I am confused now. I am not sure whether have I done wrongly by telling him that matter at the first place? Can anyone tell me what I should do now?

Fruitful Japan Trip

Last August, I had a wonderful and fruitful journey to Tokyo for an international conference. We enjoyed the intercultural exchange with students coming from many countries who have their different native languages, interest, background etc.

However, throughout the whole conference, what actually stroked me was Japanese’s time perspective. They tend to follow the timing exactly as it was stated in their plan. If you offend their “norm”, they won’t be so easy on you. I experienced this when I was still in the canteen eating lunch during the moment when we supposed to gather in the hall for a seminar. The time-keeper suddenly turned up and stood by my side, staring fixedly at me with an unpleasant look and ordered me to immediately dash to the hall without any delay. Honestly, I was quite shocked and unpleasant with his attitude. Yet I knew that I shouldn’t be late at the first place. This unpleasant feeling became more intense at one of the nights when the time-keepers sort of chasing all the attendants out of the hall by shouting and putting up the blocks surrounding the hall right after a night event has ended. I was just wondering… Is that any more appropriate way of keeping a good time than being rude on people?

I couldn’t deny that Chinese has a very bad habit which is “being late”. Usually when we are invited to a wedding dinner, if the starting time stated is 7pm, the dinner would for sure start at 9pm instead as most of the guests invited are expected to be late. Thus, obviously Chinese’s time perspective has a marked contrast with Japanese’s punctuality. To Japanese, time is precious. This is more or less associated with their hectic and stressful life style. The competitive working and studying environment which they have to face everyday trained them to be more disciplined than we are to keep pace with it. Apart from that, they might expect us to show the same respect to their culture (since they are the organizer) when we have stepped into their country.

After knowing more about their culture, I started to understand why they tend to behave this way when people didn’t keep the time well. From the other way round, I also see Japanese’s time perspective as a virtue that we ought to learn. Thus, I am instead grateful to be given such a good chance to know friends from other countries who give me a deeper insight into their culture which are so different from mine.