Four principles for lovers!

There are a number of cases that we can surely see about the fact of love – criminal, sexual, jealous, sweet, and long lasting love – in our society that has always been posted or published in different medias including below-the-line and above-the-line; that is, conferences, magazines, and especially social media like facebook, twitter, and youtube, are the sources where we can fine evidences and make comparison to see the root of those real meanings why some of those cases could be happened.

To reveal this fact, there are four principles from a gentle man named Soeng Phalla, who used to be a stock associate in Room to Read Organization, that we could use to discuss about this case. Speaking at the warehouse of Room to Read during lunch time, Mr. Soeng Phalla shared us that there four influences that all lovers should know to prevent any kinds of bad situations for their long life partnership (1) Social Influence, (2) Family influence, (3) Religion Influence, and (4) Knowledge influence.

(1) Social Influence: It is a simple yet quite easy to pile it up in our mind factor. Once we have 100-year partner in life, there will be a bit affect from social influence, so be positive with what you get or hear about your partner from social influence. Sometimes, people could just keep talking either good or bad about your partner, yet keep neutral and sound-judgment for what you hear and correct each other in case of problems made. If you are ridiculously easy to accept all of those influences, your mind will not be stable, keeping chasing you to find out the answers, and provided that you make a wrong judgment on it, your psychological doubts will make a bias judgment on your partner. Thus, contentment in family seems unhappy and will probably break the bond of love one day.  

(2) Family influence: As most of you know about Tom Teav story (If you are Khmer) and Romeo and Juliet story (it might be easy to imagine this time as the example is universal.), the biggest problems of your long life journey with your partner are relative to family influence. As the two above mentioned examples, the end of their story was death of their lives because of family gap and discrimination, so be sure your family is ready to accept your love even if they are not, let try to showcase them that you are mature enough to take care of this and will spend your life time with each other well.

Two comparable meaning of love

(3) Religion Influence: The third factor, which is also a huge problem, is about religious influence that most of us has already admitted that some religious in the world are contrarily opposite from each other, so it causes those who love each other inconvenient as there will be a greater effect of their future endeavor requiring them to face a lot of things and have to challenge it to find a good deal for their future family. It is also another psychological mindset, forcing us to view the world in the different ways with different beliefs.   

(4) Knowledge influence: Providing that you follow the news everyday about social issues, you will probably see there are quite a few cases happening in all the part of the world. Because of having low knowledge, jealous issues force someone to acidify one another, which is quite bad that such cases happened, and some other partners decide to no longer live in this planet while some suicide themselves or others. Actually, the world is quite beautiful, yet those of low knowledge view the world shortly and unproductively.

The world of contentment even family life or social life requires each and every of us to respect certain obligation from one another, especially those of 100-year partners, who will have to spend such a long time together, so only understanding, forgiving, and respecting each other is the only way that can bring a full of love and warm contentment to family life. With those four principles, you, lovers, should take it into account and explain your partner to live meaningfully in your family life. 

Self-awareness!

High School Life

Looking backwards to a long past time when I was in primary school, I was just a very good gambling boy, being good at nearly all types of child gambling during that time and being the top three slow learning students. Because of that bad habits, I spent two years in grade one, which was quite ashamed of other classmates, who passed to the next grade while the top three slow learners just probably liked their teacher so that is why they did not want to get to the next steps. It looks silly, but memorable not to have that bad experience again.

Starting from primary school, an update of gambling habits was also stepped up from gambling for children to a teen gambling, but that time I was not in the top three slow learners again but in the middle level one.  Since then, my result level was just in the middle no increasing or progressing to be seen or noticed, and I started to be addicted to playing football with other friends. Because of liking playing it, I sometimes spent my weekend doing cycling to Takmao district, Kandal province to play football there with villagers and my friends and then returned home in evening.

Grade 11 photo

A tremendous change began in high school, especially the last year, which was the most important one for my twelve-year study, and it was a must-to-be-passed year as though a twelve-year time would be useless. Having already been almost late to start learning as the last eleven years was not seen as a good or acceptable foundation, I had to enforce myself to add up more hours for self-learning at home and practice more exercises for all important subjects, namely that, Biology, Mathematic, Physics, and Chemistry. As having no background or basic from the last eleven years, it was quite hard to catch up with other students, so I felt that I should have already focused on learning for that missing times. Anyhow, I could not turn back to that time, having to admit about the fact of my past and start to improve it day-by-day. The most meaningful time in my life is the time that I was in the last year of my high school life, taught me to understand about the meaning of struggling life and the hardship of my parents.

Play-station Game

I just thought I was a bit late and had no confidence at all to have passed that degree from my high school, yet it was incredible that I made it with a great result I never believed that it was. Most of my friends never believed that It would be possible for them to have heard this result as we really knew that we hoped to just pass it without any expectation to get a better result, but it paid off and my result was even higher than my friends'.

As of now, I truly believe that having high self-awareness  in mind is the best choice of self-improvement as we would be able to be seen that we are curious to learning and enlarging our scope. The world is just a playground where failure and success are to be faced, so we all cannot just avoid it, yet have to admit it and change to the right direction. The outcome will be fruitfully seen.  

The power of questions!

the reaction of the powerful questions

When I was a student in PSE Institute starting from year one, I felt that I knew nothing about myself and did not even know what I were doing right away, yet because of having high commitment to learn and reach my goals, I tried to ask myself as many questions to reflect and look backwards to see who I am as I could. By that, I learnt about another meaningful and powerful questions to help myself control if I am on the right track as planned for long life investment.

The first journey of my questions – even before until now they are still being asked and checked if I am always in the right track or out of track – begins with "Who are you?", which sounds a bit weird for most of us why we have to ask this question, for the reason is to find out who I am first before getting to know more precisely and in detail. However, from my point of view, you would probably say I am crazy as this question is about to ask those who lost their memory or do not know who they are, yet if we could answer this critically, it is already the best step.  

Questions

When getting more familiar with myself, I started to ask: "What are you doing?" to just check all things I do are aligned with my goals or not, and "Why are you doing this?" to make sure it is the right purpose of that execution.  Learning through those thorough questions, I started to have a better understanding of my potentials that have to be then sharpened while still needed to be asked around from whom I know for their opinions to compare what I see myself with other's outlook.

With those above mentioned questions, there was another questions come up: " What should you do to reach your goals?" that is really helpful for me to see where I am, what problems I encountered, and what is the next task to be done to sold those issues. Since then, there is always a progress from a small step to a bigger one that needs to fix and not to push it aside; thus, I could still stay controlled.

Answers

The last two years of my student life in PSE, especially end of year 2 onwards,  are exceptional that I started to have a lot of works to be done individually and publicly to help my school to lead some projects – mostly involved with students' ability development – while I had to work out with assignments from at least 5 lecturers for the whole week, so student life became busy and stressful with a lot of workloads. Thanks to those hard and busy situations I found another questions "How do you spend your time?", which was quite interesting for me improve myself for my future development, and from that time, I am more autonomous and be able to produce more results in my student life – for my last two years that I wanted to share knowledge to other students.

Once we do know who we are, what we want our life to be, and how we do spend time, we are proud of knowing that we are already one of the most productive human resources for our country enhancement, enriching our country for a new brighter hope and empowering the next generation of our people by sharing what we know. 

Four principles of self-encouragement!

Mr. Soeng Phalla

Thanks to Mr. Soeng Phalla, a gentle and friendly guy, who is a former stock associate at Room to Read Organization, a well-known and kind institution supporting the countries in the world by providing books and other study materials to students, where I took two-month internship there I learnt an ideal and wisdom idea from him. It is really true about the fact of each and every society in the world even though we have different systems of education like those countries of developing world have more best elites than those of under-developing. However, his idea resonates that although we have different systems of education, we still imply those ideas in our everyday life.

With a well-rounded attitude as a good leader for our team in stock department, Mr. Soeng Phalla shared us a four-systematical idea that I named it as "4 principles of self-encouragement". He mentioned that in our life there is nothing can be stronger and more powerful than us, so thinking out of the box is the best catalyst to help us stay encouraged. Explaining in a nice and simple way in warehouse of Room to Read, he told us that there are four factors that can help us motivate ourselves in a better way (1) genesis or clan, (2) family, (3) environment, and (4) self factor.

(1) genesis or clan factor: Most people value or believe that if someone was born to a noble or wise family, the child in those family would become a clever or wise man in the future even though we cannot see what and how our life in the future would be, yet it is still debatable.

(2) family factor: Linked from above factor, though we were born to a nice, wise, and rich family, but if there are a lot of problems happening in that family and members of family do not take care of one another and never give a warm contentment to each other, the child will not be motivated and will do something else out of track that cannot align with their future endeavor. Thus, all parents or parents-to-be should spend some times sharing their children ideas and advices.

4 principles of self-encouragement

(3) environment factor: As of the time we were born from a nice genesis or clay and our family takes care of us with full supports, provided that we are in a bad environment forcing us to do something illegal and harmful, the child would not be able to prohibit themselves not to do so due to their young age and teenage period; thus, the environmental factor is a huge and intangible influence, having a greater change to almost all people no matter how young or old they are.

(4) self factor: Listening carefully to all of those factors provided, I am really fascinated in this last idea as when I reflect it to the fact of my society and would probably others, I could see that most people who struggle in their life can succeed in almost all the tasks they do. Even though we were born to a poor situation, our family does not really care much about us, and we are in a bad environment, if we respect ourselves to be stronger in moving on in life not to fail in one of those three factors mentioned before, namely that, genesis, family, and environmental factor, we will be able to succeed  in everything not only our working or studying life, but also family life as we have self-belief.  

There is no man who can predict someone else's life's faith, yet man can really find out real power within himself and make use of it to be a strong encouragement factor to leverage life result. 

Four principles of financial investment from Sithathak Buddha!

Sithathak Buddha

Once we talk about the world of finance, it seems complicated for those who do not have any background or skill – like a university course for BBA or MBA in financial management, but when taking this theory from Sithathak Buddha, explaining us in general, it does not seem difficult to understand or take longer time to learn a BBA or MBA in equivalent course at the university at all. These ideas are very simple yet meaningful for us to evidence human life or the fact of how systematical the world would work and link from one thing to another.

At that time during Sithathak Buddha's period, there was a young man living with his old and seriously sick father in a village nearby Buddha's pagoda who seemed to have not been able to be treated. From time to time, his severe sickness – because of being old – became so bad and would probably die soon, and having already known and admitted that he himself would die soon, he told his only one son four riddles before he died (1) to respect or worship once time and throw rice to the south of the earth, (2)  to the north, (3) to the west, and (4) to the east of the earth with that same activities every day morning. After his father passed away, a good son always did exactly the same activities without any consideration before following his father's riddles, that needed him to do different things for his long life journey without his father's support.      

4 principles of financial investment

One morning our wise Buddha left from his pagoda to get foods from villagers – as this is a traditional and common activities of all Buddha, having to ask for foods  from those who like to do good things – for his lunch, he deliberately walked through the man's house and saw his strange actions, then he asked "what were you doing young man?" and the man suddenly stopped his action, telling our wise Buddha all of those four riddles from his father. Having already understood the deep meaning of the riddles, he replied wisely and simply to the man, saying that, your father wanted you to invest your wealth fruitfully and divide it into four parts (1) part one of your wealth has to feed your family, (2) part two of your wealth has to keep up for your business or earning, (3) part three of your wealth has to reserve once you are sick or have urgency that requires such amount of money, and (4) part four of your wealth has to give for charity to help your society and human being. As you live in a society requiring you to struggle in your life, it is a cycle of how sustainable and hard human life is that you cannot avoid or pretend not to confront with it. Therefore, you have to invest your wealth wisely and when you are better, you are supposed to share what you have to those who are not, needing your support and help. This was your father's true meaning, asking you to take a look at that situation and think deeply. Provided that you could follow this, your life would not face debts and hard situations.

Social Investment of 4 principle of financial investment

Due to the fact that our life has to work out with living, we all will have to face debts and difficulties, so preparing and investing wealth is not easy. Once we all are better, we should look at those who also need to survive in their life, so we should do whatever we can – no matter how big or small our action is – to share and help others in term of human being.      

Opportunity Understanding!

Opportunity Match

Most people always wonder how could they become clever, strong, motivated in life, and especially successful in everything they do, yet it is not an easy-to-think answer and is a debatable question, which require us to deem deeply about this. Generally mentioning from different point of view of successful persons, there is no actual definition of success, but we could draw that it is a combination of our efforts with opportunities of which we can and have to make it a reality. It is hardly to believe in wording without seeing any actual evidence.

Visit at Shanghai Science & Technology Museum

Already read it several times and still felt like to read and think about it again and again, I just like the quote from one fact guy man named, Disraeli, who I always keep in mind and practice all what he has said "the secret of success in life is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes. But most of the time, we always wait for the right time before they begin. But the right time never comes! It's because opportunity has always been with us. But we are not ready for it." As we could see so far with his words, the whole meaning is to let us discover ourselves to seek for what is the best inside us and what is not.

Once I was in the class with Mr. Anthony Tige, my professor for the principle management class in year 2 and also for entrepreneurship course in year 4, the last year of my study, I found another theory from his principle of management class, saying that opportunity is a match between our strengths, capability, and or ability with the environment.  When I take it to consider in our life, it could be one of the best answer to reveal the meaning of success while we can also still apply it in our day-to-day basis for our future development.

Drawing (We have to draw our life.)

Within Disraeli's meaning, it tells us that everything could not be done for us, but are to be done by us with our own persistency and willingness as there is no-one being happy to help us every single time as if we do not really want to even help ourselves. Understanding well about this meaning, I start to draw an imaginary vision in my brain and remind myself to try to make that image a reality. Since then, I learn to understand the advantage of the environment in which we live to make use of it and align it with my competency to catch up a good opportunity. As a result and because of my efforts, I got a golden opportunity to get involved in Henkel in Shanghai, China, for an internship for a six-month basic.

There is no good turnover for those who are not even care about themselves and those who don't put any efforts to the task they do. All species in this planet are entitled to having the same 24 hours per day, 30 days per months, and 12 months per year, so there is no bias on this yet everyone makes different outcomes and satisfactions. Thus, there will be an unequal world for those who belittle themselves.     

Life Expectancy!

Life's Span

Having already spent nearly half of my life – if men could live only until 60 years old like the prediction in the list of United Nations, I have just finished my BBA degree at PSE Institute. I still have many things that I want to achieve through this long life time. I also guess that I will have to face a lot of unexpected circumstances and challenges in the future, so life is all about struggling. Once I was in my second year, I was taking a course called managerial economy. This course is all about economic situations in management. It tells us a lot about the world. I got really interested in one theory from Alfred Marshall, whose idea was truly recognized in 1890.

"Economy is the study of how society manages its scarce resources to satisfy unlimited human needs and wants." was written and mentioned in his book “Principles of Economics" in 1890. I observed this idea to be really true in human life. Thinking deeply about this theory and reflecting on human life, I found one simple yet well-known and exceptional idea about life expectancy.  Only if we could think and understand how this theory works, would we be able to have a greater effect to our own life, see the depth of meaning inside Marshall's theory, and use fully the potential in our life.

Visit at Shanghai Science & Technology Museum

To describe the idea that I found from his theory, I have already put bold words – society (we are like a society here in this statement), scarce resources (it is like our life), and unlimited human needs and wants – to make it remarkable and visible, and the explanation here is that the economy is like the study of how we ourselves manage our scarce resources to satisfy our unlimited needs and wants. Of course, we cannot manage to be born in a rich, noble, and or king family. It is fantastically easy to think that when we were born to a family, we bring nothing with us for our new life, and even when we die, we also bring nothing along with us, so life starts from nothing and ends with nothing as well. No-one in this world will live forever without death. Everyone has to face it one day in life. There is one thing that has no end is our unlimited needs and wants, yet due to the fact that our life is limited, we have to use it wisely and fruitfully in order to meet our needs and wants.

According to the Wikipedia site cited from the List of the United Nations, for 2005–2010, Cambodia was tagged in rank 152 in the world in term of life expectancy, having only 60 for male and 62 year-old for female while Japan is on top of the list, with 79 for male and 86 year-old for female. So, what does this mean? Reflecting on the above theory, we (Just in case you are Khmer as the example was about Khmer) can already see that we have already spent nearly 30 years, which is half of our life just for studying – from primary school, through high school, to university – to gain more knowledge and will have to surely spend some more years for work and family life; therefore, how many years remaining for the rest of our life to help our family, society, community, country, and especially human beings. What if we fail to manage our life time since the beginning of our life to the time we are autonomous. That is a critical question we are to ask ourselves.

With that in mind, we should use our time lucratively to reach what we wish for life, and the most important thing in our life is to find who we are, what we like our life to be, and how we want to get our life to be. If we could do so, our life expectancy will be worth enough and it will be likely for us to live a meaningful life. 

Four principles of success from Sithathak Buddha!

Sithathak Buddha

It was a great time for me when I was a student in Business School of PSE Institute, learning invaluable lessons from a wise and ideal guy, Sithathak Buddha, whose ideas and beliefs were shared and respected throughout the world. Truly believed in his findings and legacy – the truth of life, mercy of human-being, and the world of calmness, I really single out that his way and knowledge are worth to be followed and to be spread to others. It is not just about the religious belief, but about the fact of human life.

Finding those four principles of success from a good source of internet , I always keep that in mind, change the way I thought, and operate it in every single job I do. As it turns out, it pays off for my life that I never think I could be the one I am today.  Given this time, I would share this to those of you who like to read and learn something new and exceptional, and those four principles, mentioned by Sithathak Buddha,  are depicted in below detail from Bali Sangsekrit (Khmer ancient characters) to English explanation (1) Chanda: Having heart of zeal (great energy or enthusiasm), (2) Viriya: Doing with effort, (3) Citta: Committing oneself to the task, and (4) Vimansa: Using wise investigation.  

(1) Chanda: Having heart of zeal (great energy or enthusiasm): The first thing of our achievement solely depends on the power of our love – it does not mean for lover, but really means for our task or everything we do – to make all our jobs visible and successful. Therefore, without loving or enthusing what we do, we cannot even step forwards to reaching out the final results we expect.  We can't just force someone to do thing they don't even feel about it, yet providing that it happens, the result will not just be right.

4 principles of Buddha

(2) Viriya: Doing with effort: Once we find out what we like or enthuse with, there is already 50% of success we can believe in it will surely happen; however, it is not enough to just like without effort, which is the best catalyst ever for all successful persons in the world – Steve Jobs, who changes the world of technology; Isaac Newton, who shares the world of physics; Mahatma Gundhi, who inspires the world with wise ideas; Thomas Edison, who is the pioneer of light; and the like – who do exactly the same by effort and struggling.  

(3) Citta: Committing oneself to the task: Even though we have effort, we will not be able to reach our goals or achieve something we do hope for as sometimes we face difficulties that we need to challenge it while our effort will be incidentally harmed, so with committing, one could still keep focused, going, attentive, and curious to defeat with those challenging situations.

Mahatma Gundhi

(4) Vimansa: Using wise investigation: Having a strong bond that is connected with above three mentioned principles, Vimansa is the last and wise principle that can enhance us to be even more productive and developing.  Provided that we could use it usefully and correctly, it is quite helpful for us to check our past time and performance to see how fast or slow we progress from time to time. Thanks to those four principles, I could sharpen my saw, broaden my horizon, strengthen myself not to give up, and keep going although I have to face challenging situations, and I personally and truly believe that it works out fine providing that we follow it tightly and strictly.  

An elephant story!

My teacher, Mr. Lun Phearin

Learning English during a meaningful time from my gentle and respectful teacher, Mr. Lun Phearin, now becoming a vice principle at Westline school and a businessman at Pheavy Phone Shop, I remember one of his nice, educational and unforgettable stories that always remind me every time in my life. I just like his way as he is, always staying calm, positive, and focused in each and every situation he deals with.

Whilst learning English with him in his English session, I always kept focused, attentive to what he explained, and curious to search more in detail to enlarge my scope for English level. Having fully learned with him, I saw a tremendous change I could make and the result came out with a remarkable reminiscence that I would like to recap and reminisce it now.

Elephant

Already intended to share us about struggling life, he shared us a nice and meaningful story about elephant. "There was a small and lovely elephant child living in a house near the forest and a bit far from village with its owner, and the elephant child was tied by wire tie once it was kept at home. The small and lovely elephant child tried many times to break that wire, yet it hurt him very much and scared him not to try to break it again. As the nature of a strong, tolerant, friendly, and helpful animal, elephant is quite strong and full of power. Time was over and over, the small and lovely child elephant became a gentle one, whose body is big and full of power. Every day his owner always brings him to find useful wood in the forest nearby their house, and the gentle elephant is very helpful, it can topple a number of hundred-year huge trees in just a couple of minutes and even be able to bring it back home with his owner. It can also carry heavy things for his owner in every single situation his owner could not do it by himself. Once they returned home after spending a long time finding wood in the forest, his owner used the normal wire tie he used to use to tie his gentle elephant as usual just like it was a young and lovely elephant. Having a marvelous power from nature, it should be impossible to block our gentle elephant from breaking the wire tied him since he has enough power, yet due to the previous experience when he was young, he feels so scary not to break it again.", told Mr. Lun Phearin, also adding that, "Do not just experience yourself like an elephant's life! You can free yourself to do what you want, and the past time will not scare you anymore yet will teach you not to test those bad experiences you used to face."

Visit at Shanghai Science & Technology Museum

Having learnt through it, I just like and remember his words and advices he shared.  Thanks to his remarkable story, I learnt to reverse the meaning of that story and would use "elephant" as my nickname in the nick of time to remind the time I used to be with him, and this elephant will not be just like an elephant in that story, being strong to use his past time to motivate himself in the present time for his brighter and struggling life. A good judgment would always come up when we are strong enough to reckon and face with our past time, and it does not mean that our faith will have to be exactly the same as our past time. Our faith will not just be right if we are scare not to give ourselves a mean of successful and struggling life.  

Missing time!

Visit at Shanghai Science & Technology Museum

Just a short moment of time, I finished my four-year BBA program in PSE, started to intern in the Business School of PSE Institute for two months to help finalize a marketing research project for data analysis and findings preparation and also help share knowledge to the next generation of students through teaching for another extra time during vacation, and already left my lovely country nearly five months for mission abroad in Shanghai, China.

Staying alone in a six-floor rental house near my company and working for the whole day, I did not realize that have already been here for four months and half, leaving around one month and half to stay. Time goes quite fast, leaving us a lot of memories and remarkable things. The time to learn from Henkel is shorter and shorter, and time to go back home is to come soon so that flight preparation will be needed.

Visit at Udong Mountain

During this meaningful momentum of time,  I have learnt a lot of things from my working place, especially the question "what is the timing for this project or what is the deadline of this task?" that my managers asked me and the mistakes that I have made. Having already spent a lot of time learning to understand the cultural differences until I could adapt myself into different situations with other  interns as well as employees here, I feel a bit disappointed with myself as the time for me to try to learn and bring back all exceptional knowledge from this one of the top ten companies (FMCG sector) in the world to my homeland is quite short and tight right now, so the only thing that I could obviously do right now is to do all things with my best to learn as much as I could and observe all potential points from my both managers as well as others, who have a lot of experiences in their lives.

Working in Business School of PSE Institute

To be exact with the remaining days, I leave less than 6 weeks to be here so that I will have to gear up my speed again to meet the international standardized levels and qualities performance done by other international interns. Had I understood the cultural differences, working style of international level employees, and working policy of this conglomerate, I would have gone even faster and been more capable to prepare myself in advance; however, I could not surely turn back to that pass time to correct all of those mistakes. Anyhow, all of those missing times and mistakes are now guiding me and will last long in my life. This is a once-in-a-lifetime experience, teaching me a lot of things even self-motivation, self-awareness, and professional working manners.

Time will not just stay at one point and surely never care about us, waiting us to go along with it. Therefore, we should do whatever we want as time is not returnable. Everyone has the same time per day – 24 hours to do whatsoever he or she wants – to stay on earth, but it is not really equal at all to those who fail to manage their time doing something worth to themselves. 

My bad decision-making!

Study at Vietnam

In every single time we breath in our life, we have to confront with simple yet difficult thing to foresee if we make it correct or not, is our own decision-making, which can lead us to the top of thing we anticipated doing it, yet it can also downplay us not to produce any remarkable results in our life as well. Thus, our decision-making can make a greater change of both positive and negative results, and surely if somebody could tell us what the right thing is to do in all possible times, that would be a tremendous gift.

Before getting a chance to intern here in a German conglomerate – Henkel, based in the headquarter in Shanghai, I have faced a very tight-time-to-decide choice that I have to weigh its balances vis-a-vis the advantages of the choice I made.  At that time, I was assigned to be a contestant for English speaking competition, yet before that contest there was an announcement for internship abroad as well, which was even more important than the English competition.  To fully complete the BBA program in PSE Institute, there was an entrepreneurship course taught by Anthony Tige, Business School Advisor, and we all needed to pass it as it was a must to get the degree. We all worked in group, needing to prepare a business plan to present it in front of business people from various institutions as well as our internal teachers and professors.

Dam Sen Park at Vietnam

Having already passed one step for internship abroad selection, I was just informed a quick and urgent timeline for one more test, internal interview, and external interview with Schwarzkopf Professional marketing director during the week of English speaking contest, so time for preparation was really urgently short and there were already several responsibilities for me to complete it including business plan competition, that the deadline to submit to Anthony was already quite tight and nearly due, English speaking contest, and Internship-abroad test and interview. I, therefore, needed to make a better decision for a long term investment of my future career path. Already observed other contestants during the training for speaking contest, who have already well prepared for their speech, I finally decided not to prepare mine for contest, focusing on the other two could-not-be-missed works for entrepreneurship course and internship abroad.

The Bund at Shanghai

Because of not preparing  for the speech and spending more time until late at night to finalize the business plan for my group, I finally failed the contest while everyone already believed that I would be the one who was the winner. Unfortunately, the belief and expectation were down, and the winner was not me.  However, looking backward to the past time, it is the best decision I have made, and I would not have been with Henkel had I not fallen in that contest.

Sometimes, life has to face failure, difficulties, and obstacles, but do not loss face and belief. Do not belittle ourselves, see what is the best inside us, and encourage ourselves to reach what we wish. Even the word "IMPOSSIBLE", we can still reverse it to "I M POSSIBLE".  We got to find who we are, what we want, and how we want it so that the decision we make will give us a fruitful result we will satisfied with.           

Living Abroad!

Normal soup

Starting to leave from a lovely and memorable homeland, I commenced working as an intern in Henkel, based in Shanghai, for another 6 months. As part of graduation, I have to take only four months of internship, yet due to the policy of Henkel, all interns are supposed to take a six-month basis for their internship.  It was so thrilled to have heard that I was selected to intern here in Shanghai, China that I never ever even think I could have a nice change to get to know here.

Bread with salads

Adventure life began so lonely yet meaningful to learn as to the meaning of struggling life in another country; along the ways which full of obstacles, wishes, helps, supports, and chances, I experienced testy life in various situations with different interests – sour, bitter, sweet, and salty test – that I had to admit it and singled out what was the best and what was not.  Sometimes, we faced something worth for us to challenge and something not useful that we had to not care about; thus, the only thing we could do is to anticipate in advance to gather all supporting information for our better decision-making.

A start began so far in this great nation in Asia, kept chasing me to face something new and learnt from it, and there were a lot of shocking experiences that I have learnt from this meaningful time: I have learnt to live in another country with different cultures, eat different foods I used to eat, which I was not really accustomed to it, meet different people from whom I used to know, and see different views of the city which were even more better than my country.

The most important thing that lets me go through the meaning of life was that being alone was the only thing that I had to tackle with, making me become even more diverged, letting me understand the hardship of my parents, and encouraging me to be even more inspired to live in life. Having fully worked for 8 hours per day and 5 days per week and had to come back home a bit late at night sometimes to cook dinner, I clearly understood the meaning of working life and personal life time. Having had to spend at least 40 minutes or 1 hour for cooking, I always have dinner late at night and have to wash dishes and other cooking materials after eating, so life becomes busier and more productive.

Salad with fried cabbages

With that in mind, I tried to use my time fruitfully as much as I could to make use of it and did something worth for my future development. Once I am here alone, working on different things including cooking and washing dishes after having already had lunch and dinner, I feel how busy I am, but I feel good to it even though it was hard and busy because all of those works remind me about my mum, who always does those things to feed me.  Now I do the same thing as my mother does, understanding how hard she is to get one meal for me. Thanks to those hard and busy situations I know how worth and important time is.   

If you understand the hardship of your parents, who never say no to support you no matter how difficult the situation is and who always give you a never-ever-made-warm smile, you would be likely to understand the hardship of life, the meaning of appreciation, the high value of getting thing done, and the spirit of team.  

Life of young man

Lunch Meeting at WATAMI

"What do you think a young man?" is a nice sound from my managers asking me to go to their desks to clear some works which were not well done and still needed to be clarified. "How do you think or what is your idea?" is another question being asked for opinions from my side, and "What will you do next?" is always asked to check for the next steps of progressing jobs to make sure each project gets done on time.

Our new boss, Edward

"What is the timing of this project?", referring to the specific timeline for all the statuses of the project, is also a need-to-be-clear question to check where we are now in each project, that my managers surely and always ask to make sure if support from their side is needed.  Thanks to those questions I learned how to manage my work load to meet the expectation of my both managers; the results are not really competitive though and perseverance is still a must for myself to get motivated to keep track of my work. Having that in mind, I learned to step forward to reaching out what works best for self-development.

Our new team, Cathy

Being open-minded, not only accepting good things, but also taking critical recommendation from someone else, is the only way I could make change for my works, strengthening my working pace on a regular basis.  Generally calling from all managers, a young man becomes another called-name my managers remember and always call me. I like the word "a young man", which is quite well-known for Regional Marketing Team members.   

Life of a young man is struggling to meet the challenges to have a chance to know more about himself and discover more as to what is the best within himself and what needs to be improved in term of weaknesses. From day-to-day basis, I have noticed that I still have a lot of points that need to be worked out for future of professionalism, and through observing skill that I have in the school while staying in year 3 in PSE, I have also noted that I will have to learn a lot of points for my future employment from professional people here.

Welcome Lunch for Cathy

Through those questions of which I am asked almost every day, I feel passionately curious to reach my goals for my future plans. I can also be able to align myself to the direction that I have set as my five year-plan to be a young businessman in the future.   

Once we do know where we are, where we want to go, and what we are about to do, we can surely find out how strongly powerful we are and how bad we are, and surely no one will come and tell us all of those things inside us. The only one who can tell us who we are is ourselves.