Travelogue 2016: Our Field Trip to the Republic of Singapore (Q&A)

The UST Chemical Engineering Class of 2016 Educational Tour

Crossroads: Unfold Impending Chemical Engineering Grounds in Singapore

Travelogue 2016

Author's Note: The following post was submitted by the author to the University of Santo Tomas Chemical Engineering Department in line with the requirements of a particular subject course covering field trips and seminars.

Prologue

On 5 April 2016, members of the University of Santo Tomas - Chemical Engineering (ChE) Batch 2016 embarked on an international field trip to the Republic of Singapore, the first in ChE history.

This international field trip was in line with the requirements of the course ChE 524 – Field Trips and Seminars, the latter being a course offered to all 5th year graduating students of the chemical engineering program.

The field trip, which ended on 10 April, was supervised by six members of the faculty, including the department chair.

In what way did the field trip help further your understanding of professional and ethical responsibility?

Upon our landing at Changi Airport in Singapore, I already felt a change in atmosphere. Many people whom I assume to be Singaporeans appeared to be very orderly even while walking. Also, they fall in line (queue) in an orderly fashion. They are very disciplined, especially about time management. Comparing this with Filipino stereotypical work ethics, I believe that merely comparing their work ethics with ours contributed greatly in understanding professional and ethical responsibilities, the latter being a goal of the chemical engineering program. We must use this observation as a lesson and apply it to our work ethics.

Our professional responsibility was also tested during the plant tours since we had to strictly follow the set timeline in our itinerary. Also, I have personally observed that long restroom breaks, slow walking pace of my batchmates have raised eyebrows among the ethnically Chinese Singaporeans working in some of the factories we visited. The naturally carefree Filipino work ethic may not always compatible with Singaporean counterparts. 

Singapore’s Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) was also a test of our communication skills. I can say that their rail transit system is around fifty times more efficient than the Philippines’ ailing railway systems. Even the awesomeness of the relatively spacious and efficient Philippine LRT-2 which I [used to] ride to school is diminished when compared to this.

In what way did the tour improve your ability for effective written, visual, and oral communication?

Since we were in a foreign country, our oral communications skills were put to the test as our Taglish, or Filipino proficiency were obviously of little or no use among most Singaporeans. The most challenging for me was understanding Singaporean-accented English, since although they’re using grammatically correct English, the accent makes it harder for us to hear and immediately understand them properly. Visual communication skills were also highly appreciated since Singaporean public transportation has a knack for using icons alongside quadrilingual word signs.

Two members of ChE Batch 2016 reading the information board at a bus stop.

This tour emphasized the importance of an engineer’s ability to communicate, for what is the use of an amazing idea if one cannot share it to the world’s development? Thus, I believe that awareness on globalization should be used as a reason to improve our language skills, especially with English and Filipino. (I separated the two languages since I have observed than in Metro Manila, the colloquial lingua franca even among academicians is actually Taglish, or heavily code-switched Filipino.)

The author at Newater.

Concluding Statements

The theme of the field trip also suits well with this objective, as it reminds us that learning is not limited to the four corners of the classroom. Not only that, many things are learned from experience, not from academic classes.

Overall, I can consider the trip to be an enlightening and one-of-a-kind experience. I have learned many things in this five-day trip. After seeing the development of the city without jeopardizing the environment because of their sustainable development skills, I could not help but compare it with our homeland the Philippines. The next challenge is to see and try to emulate the good aspects of their professional work ethics and apply it to our work ethics. Also we could or should try ("try" because ideally it is possible) to help develop the Philippines into a country that has a high human development index like Singapore.