Blog Post #2: Can Martians and Venusians Communicate?

“Men just don’t get it”

A quote taken from a campaign marketing a credit card specially catered for ladies aptly describes how at times women are just frustrated when men do not understand their intentions.

Are men that dumb to not know the intentions? Or are men and women not meant to be understood by the opposite gender?

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Sarah's account

I had just given birth to my very first daughter, Michelle, a few weeks ago. Not only was I completely exhausted, but I was also in extreme pain from the after birth. My husband, Walter, returned to work after taking care of me for five days. While he was away, I ran out of painkillers.

I did not want to disturb him from his day job and called my visiting friend to purchase some painkillers along the way, but when she arrived, she had no pills with her. Consequently, I spend the whole day in pain while taking care of the newborn.

When Walter returned home, I did not understand why he didn’t show me concern, neither did he sensed that I was upset. When I sounded out to him that my painkillers were gone and that nobody cared. He complained that I could have called him and headed for the door.

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Walter’s account

Being a new father was not easy. Not only do you have to provide emotional comfort to your newborn and the new mother, you also have to ensure that you are able to provide for both of them financially. I could only take a few days of leave to take care of Sarah, after which I had to return back to work.

I came back home one day and saw that Sarah was not her usual self. Thinking that Michelle might have given Sarah some trouble, I decided to check on our baby girl and she was sleeping soundly in the crib. When I went back to look for Sarah, she started complaining about nobody cared for her. I knew that she was tired, but so was I. I made sure that Michelle was safe before attending to her, was Sarah being jealous because of my actions?

Sarah then complained about her painkillers being out of supply. Sensing that she was trying to be picky on small little issues, I headed for the door to break the emotional outpour.

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Who do you think is at wrong?

(I apologise for the late posting, ths post was saved as a draft and was not published s:)

Blog Post #1: Why Effective Communication is Important to Me?

Since young, my language teachers have always reminded me constantly that language is a powerful tool. During the period of my early teens, I did not understand that the usage of language was influential, but I was definitely awed by how school debaters could craft an illogical concept into something convincing to the listener.

My involvement in the ongoing Youth Olympic Games (YOG) has allowed me to interact with athletes and coaches of various nationalities. During the period of involvement, I realised that though some of us may share the same native language (English), there were still instances where both me and the athlete did not know what each other was talking about.

Hence, the art of communication is indeed crucial to bring across the message. An individual may exude the confidence when he/she speaks. However, the pertaining issue is how the communication can be effective.
Living in a fast paced society, listeners have only a few minutes to hear about your proposal. Time being a factor, effective communication would allow the speaker to bring across the message clearly. Having the intention interpretated clearly by the listener, one would not need to spend extra effort in re-phrasing the initial structure of the phrase or sentence.

As much as we do not want to waste our efforts in trying to bring across messages accurately, we have to realise that communication is a mutual exchange of ideas within a group of individuals.
I have always enjoyed interacting with people of different nationalities and listen to the ideas that they bring forth from their countries. Hence, effective communication would allow such cultural and ideology exchanges to be made. In the process, we learn from one another and enrich ourselves through the use of communication.

I have always dream of being the school debater that gains the admiration of his/her listeners, but more importantly, effective communication would mean to me getting ideas clearly intepretated and being able to enjoy the cultural and ideology exchanges that effective communication would facilitate.