Week 4 Tasks Reflection

Unexpectedly, this week, I find myself exchanging culture values, practices and even language with many of the International students in AIT.

Early of the week, I went to a party which had a live Irish musical band playing at Scribes. From that visit, I immersed in an Irish pub atmosphere as well as enjoyed the tunes of Irish folk music. I even learned Irish dancing. Some of the students were dancing and personally, I feel that the dance steps are unique and it gives others the feeling of dancing along. However, I did not stay too late as it was a working day the next day. But nevertheless, it was an enjoyable short stay which was worthwhile.

Also, one of the nights, Sun Kun (the Chinese professor who is living in the same apartment) brought her 2 students from China over. I had a privilege opportunity to communicate with them. At that moment, I felt very happy as I was able to help them improve their English. At the same time, we would share information about our different culture and religion.

My last cultural experience was when I made friends with 4 Turkey girls while working at the International Office. Being from the same religion (Islam), they invited me over to their place to break fast. When I arrived here last 4 weeks, I was quite worried that I would not find any other Muslims but my worries are ceased now. From the dinner, I came to know that Turkish uses different terms to address the festival after the month of Ramadhan. Throughout the 3 hour stay at their place, I learnt much about the Turkish culture. They showed me some belly dancing which is common in Turkey and taught me some moves. They even offered Turkish delights as desserts. It was a totally new experience for me. Honestly, I do not regret knowing them and I am looking forward for my next visit to their place.

Work has been relatively manageable. My main task for this week was to research and create a database on all the polytechnics and universities in both Singapore and Malaysia. However, I have not finished with the database as I only managed to get started on it on Thursday.

While getting started on the Malaysia section, I found it easy as I could understand the Malay language used in the website of the schools. However, not all the information needed are readily available and as a result, it slowed down my progress. Hence to reach my aim of efficiency, for next week, I will try my best to finalize the database latest by Wednesday.

Apart from that, workload has increased and much challenging this week. I am glad that I managed to carry all the tasks the best I could and not disappoint my colleagues and supervisor.

I am extremely excited about next week as it would both mean the end of the fasting month and start of the celebration of Idulfitri as well as, it would mean that I am 1 week closer to my birthday. So, I am hoping to have a good week ahead.