UCHANU 2010: A BIG PRESENT FOR MY STUDENT LIFE

A visit to a primary school in Con Cuong, Nghe An province

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is the last blog of UCHANU 2010, a course that left so many wonderful memories in my mind and made part of my student life up to now.

Joining the course is a good way to equip myself with a lot of good habits and skills. First one is keeping writing regular blog that is very useful in improving my writing skill, a habit that I hardly did everyweek before the course time. Though it is advised that writing diary regularly is a good way to enlarge our English vocabulary and the same time a way to review what you have done for a scheduled time, I haven't been able to get used to that for some reasons: too much attention to other activities and probably laziness also. However, from now on I would prefer to write something about main achievements and non-achievements weekly to just sitting silently and keeping everything in mind. It's a good way to improve writing skill as well as giving my mind a quick break.

Second is the skill to make good observation at every small daily situations and senarios. As a result of what I gained from studying about "development" in UCHANU class, almost any small daily situations convey certain meaningful messages in our life that can hardly been recognized if people don't try to dig deep into those. I learn a lot by observations through many wonderful field trips to factories, far and poor central areas... And I understand that development process in Vietnam is occuring at a very rapid rate, partly of that come from development of just small and ordinary activities in daily life.

Another very important skill is to make interviews to people. As part of our project, I had chance to take the role of an amateur reporter who conduct several interviews to different job holders in society. Interviewing people with high-ranking as well as low-ranking jobs, both require me to be able to equip myself with good communication skill and ability to pose the right questions at the right time. By doing this, I have opportunity to practise a little bit journalism skill which is one of my hobbies that I probably can follow up in the future.

My lovely team Cucumber:X

Around 3 months being a member of UCHANU and having chance to work in a group with nice+kute+funny cucumber members, I have learnt a lot of great lessons.

In terms of group work, it seems not easy at all to make a project in my major class with members who are Vietnames friends of the same age. And it even turns out to be more challenging when you work with people from different culture, different perspectives and different languages. However, team cucumber has been able to function well thanks to the great dedication of all members. And the lesson that I think the most important factor contributing to group efficiency is how we together can maintain high team spirit and cohesion. Each of us has our own schedule with parttime job, service class, major class and so many other stuffs in our time table. And too busy with these stuffs sometimes make us forget about group progress. Hence, we've decided to set up a specific day for group meeting and then meet regularly each week to discuss about what has and has not been done. This is not just for project reason, as it seems to be a straint that links all members together through food, drink and so many other interesting sharing +chitchat.

Second lesson I can learn is about time-management and self-adjustment. Planning time for making interviews to us is not easy as some are busy at beginning of the week but the others just free at weekend. And the problem is that all members would like to come to the interview to have chance understand more about another job in Vietnamese society. And in order to find out the best option, there were many times I need to change my own working and personal shedule to match with the others. That's a necessary part of group work.

Additionally, group work also teaches me a lot of communication skill. Somtimes we've to debate about how to conduct the interview most effectively and also make real comments about each other contribution and quality of others' products. That definitely helps me improve my communication skill in English.

I myself have tried a lot to be a responsible member and devote effort to cucumber group. Frequently update and respond to group suggestions and request through email, mobile and othet channels, I always want to contribute as much as I can to group success through finding contacts and persuading people to help us conduct the interview in a most comfortable way. However, recently several misfortunes have made me lack of time to attend group meetings to enjoy wonderful moments with cucumber kids. Yet, my enthusiasm to cucumber has never reduced.

Cucumber Kids: Son, Lena, Van, Miki and Lan (from left to right)

HIV CONTROL THROUGH CREATIVE DAY

It is approaching the national month for calling actions to prevent and act against HIV/AIDS. Vietnam has been a country putting significant effort for the past years to attract attention and participation of all people in the community to fight against HIV/AIDS. It is a millenium disease taking life of so many people in the world and causes immeasurable losses and negative inpact on our society.

By September 2010, the total number of people infected with HIV in Vietnam has exceeded 180,300, including more than 42,000 developed to full blown AIDS.

A big day called "The Vietnam Creative Day on HIV/AIDS prevention" is going to take place at the beginning of December this year as a campaign to call on individuals and organisations to present proposal on HIV/AIDS control method.

Personally, I believe that such a big campaign has been done year by year but infected people have not been given many chances enough to raise their voices in society to help community understand better about the way how to prevent the dissemination as they themselves have to endure that epidemic and have the strongest desire to take actions to fight against it than anyone else.

Promotion Month

This month is a good time for Hanoians as they are well treated with good and appealing promotion strategy. This campaign has been launched at the beginning of Nov as "Hanoi Promotion month", giving chance to me and other domestic comsumers buy both normal and high-end products with reasonable and cheaper than normal price.

This is a very good news to a regular consumer like me and my family members as we often make regular purchases of necessities for family consumption  every week. I and my mother often go to supermarkets at weekend and this is a good way for us to obtain goods at lower price.

This is believed to be a good campaign to attract domestic consumers to buy and use domestic products, encouraging and assissting domestic manufacturers in generating higher revenue and increasing competitive advantage.

However, I hope that the quality of products offered through this campaign is closedly maintained at good and acceptable level, as this has not been strictly monitored in previous campaigns when old, unfashinable items or even fake/faulty ones were offered at low quality level.