My internship in Bangkok (P1)
Part 1: Make new friends
In 2016 I got a scholarship and joined in an international internship in Bangkok, that was such a great time in my memory. Intern students at the program came from ASEAN members plus some guys from India, Japan, China and Australia.
Actually the main purpose of the internship was about science and technology, in 2 months we worked in labs and conducted a science research which we had chosen in advance. Remember at that time I have conducted experiments to use Nano-silica as a filler in natural rubber to make composite material. With expectation that can create new material has high quality of both mechanical and chemical properties.
Then we need to make a science report, a poster, a video and present to professors at King Mongkut’s university. To be honest, the most valuable thing I got from that time was not about material science or anything else but the connection and friendship. We met and became friends, share to each other about our country, our people, our culture and learn from each other.
Buddhism is the main religion in Thailand so Pagodas, temples are the most spiritual places. We had chance to visits lots of landmarks in Bangkok. Especially the opportunity to visit some provinces in the northern of Thailand, joined in some charity events and visit ancient structures of Thai people. That was amazing and I feel so lucky to be a part of this program. About these events I will share to you in the next part of this series, but now let’s check out some of my activities at the university.
Life in Heliconia
We stay in Heliconia a really nice hotel, and my roommate was a dude from Shanghai, Jiang Xiaobo. We also have a big lounge to hang out every night. I often take time to ask others about their country, culture and share to them about my Vietnam, learn from their perspective, how they can react with tough situations in study and life.
Jiang and his friends travel to Vietnam
Every single person you meet they all have something unique, Things that you don’t have or know about. If you can communicate and be honest with them you can learn from them and these knowledge are not taught in any academic education. And the best way to learn is listening, we are young full of energy and still have time to learn new things so let’s take the advantage of your youth and learn from others.
Time flies, it has been 2 years but the experiences and joyful moments never fade away.
My lab buddy
Most of the working time I collaborate with this dude, The most difficult barrier between us is language. He almost could not speak any English, so we communicate by keywords and body language. But that’s the beauty of science. We were both studying in the same major, so we can understand each other just by using gestures.
Long time ago, before working with this brother, I have read a study showing that body language accounts for 80% of conversation. It sounds ridiculous to me at that time, totally disagree with that statement. But after having this experience and learn more about body language, I realize the important of body expression.
Learn how to read body language is also a needed skill. No matter how good your verbal language, if you cannot control body expression, it can betray and expose all of your thoughts to others and for sure that it’s your disadvantage.
In a TED Talk “Your Body Language Shapes Who You Are,” from Harvard Business School professor of social psychology, Amy Cuddy said “our thoughts and our feelings and our physiology” are deeply affected by our nonverbal expressions. When we feel proud and confident we tend to make ourselves large and when we feel powerless or weak, we make ourselves small.
In a research study, Cuddy and her co-author had people adopt “high-power poses” and “low-power poses” for two minutes and then collected saliva samples from each participant in order to study their testosterone and cortisol levels. By looking at the connection between nonverbal poses and hormone levels, Cuddy found that it’s “possible that when you pretend to be powerful, you are more likely to actually feel powerful.”
Tan Tong Sheng
Tan is the closest foreign friend of mine. When I first met him, he was following his master degree about mathematics, Tan now is a college lecturer in Kuala lumpur (KL). After the internship he has come to visit Ho Chi Minh city and visited me, last year I came to KL and stay in his house. He has a great mom, she treated me really well although we can not communicate by verbal language, but her tender gestures I can understand.
Tan is a gentle and careful guy, a hard working person at that time he was the best poster presenter for Mathematics category.
I was so impressed about this guy, at first when I saw him talking with a Chinese guys by Mandarin I think he’s Chinese. But then he used Japanese with a girl from Japan, I turned to my roommate (a Chinese guy) and asked:
Isn’t he from your country? – No, he isn’t – So, where he come from? – He from Malaysia
Later on, I known Tan can speak 6 languages, Mandarin, Cantonese, Malaysian, Indonesian, Japanese and English. You can check out my trip to KL