PUBLICATION OF UPENA UITM TERENGGANU FEBRUARI 2014

PUBLICATION OF UPENA
UITM TERENGGANU
FEBRUARI 2014
Has it ever come across your mind that your
child is the victim of bullying? How would you
react? Give it a thought for a moment. If your
child grew up without going through the agony
of bullying, you are indeed very lucky.
Lagares, a father of a fourth grader boy, forced
his son to stand on a street corner with a sign
asking the passer-by to honk if they too dislike
bully. In order to make the punishment
worked, he was with his son all along. According to the story, his son was accused of bullyWhat is bullying anyway? According to Wikipeing his schoolmates and as a responsible fadia, bullying is the use of force, threat, or coerther, he wanted to give his son a painful lesson
cion to abuse, intimidate or aggressively to
to learn in life. He decided to make his disobeimpose domination over others. In short, a
dient son understand about humiliating others
person who uses force to hurt others intenpublicly will not help one to feel better. “Put
tionally, be it verbal harassment or physical
yourself in others shoes, it is no fun being bulassault, can be considered as bullying. Today,
lied!” is the message Jose is trying to convey to
cyber bullying is another avenue for bullying.
his son. Would you follow the footsteps of
Bullying does not happen in school only, it can gutty Jose Lagares of Texas in shaming your
be at home, a big brother aggressively domichild publicly as a punishment?
nates his younger siblings, or at your workDo you find Joe go too far in punishing his son
place where a young and new staff is pressurfor bullying his classmate? In fact, Jose Lagares
ized by senior colleagues to meet up with their
is pursuing the footsteps of some parents who
needs.
have shamed their children for countless
I grew up together with my brothers, not one
attempts of twerking. I guess majority of Mabut five. Indeed, it was not easy, with the
laysian parents would not buy his idea, not
cleaning and washing, but I never complained, that we are gutless or narrow minded but we
I guess I accepted it wholeheartedly. I remem- believe in different methods of parenting.
ber vividly, I was given fifty cents by my second There are always pros and cons from this new
brother to buy two bottles of fizzy drinks, back and bold parenting approach. The public needs
in those days, fifty cents is about 2 ringgit now to ponder on the effectiveness of this new
or may be more. I crossed the road and went
approach. The aim to impart a learned lesson
over to the coffee shop in front of my house,
from life is wise but at times it can be very
on my way back when I was about to cross the painful and detrimental to child development.
road, I saw my angry dad with his cane holding Needless to say, some applauded the action,
up high in the air, the bottles slipped from my some found it outrageous and some worried of
tiny hands and dropped to pieces, I trembled
the negative impact of humiliating a child as a
to move forward with my eyes seeking help
punishment on his personal development.
from my brothers, instead they turned a blind Anyway, without any hesitation, I stand firm
eye.
on my point, I will not practise this bold approach for the sake of punishment, I personally
My dad was shouting furiously at me for disoobject to any physical punishment to a child
beying his house rules. That night, I was tucked
and I am more concerned of bad influence on
into my bed and caned generously. I wept
the public when the video goes viral. “Shame
quietly until I dozed off. I thought I could lead a
on you” is a phrase I would use rather than
peaceful life tomorrow! Not for long, when I
humiliating a child publicly. I would encourage
opened my eyes the next morning, one of my
a child to tell the truth and shame the devil.
brothers was standing next to me waiting to
Frankly speaking, humiliating people, of any
put me to trial. Luckily, I was helped out by my
age, regardless of your kind intention as a
other brothers. I did not know what bully was
starting point, is still considered as a nasty act
at that time and I guess we were all too young
of human treatment.
to understand our doings.
“I am a bully. Honk if you hate bully?” is a
story I read up recently on the Huff Post. Jose
The preaching of Confucius has a deep influence on my life. Confucius believed in edu-
cating than punishing a wrongdoer. Those
educated wrongdoers would eventually sense
shame and would want to live an upright life.
Thus, I believe dwelling on the issue of right or
wrong lies in the hands of parents. Nevertheless, I applauded the quick action taken by this
gutty dad to curb his son’s misconduct rather
than concealing the truth. How many modern
parents dare to face the cruel truth about their
children when they were called up by school?
A painful experience I encountered when my
son was first day at kindergarten. A gleeful boy
of mine excited over his first day at school
turned out to be a nightmare when he came
home with a swollen eye. I was shocked and
upset, but I managed to pull myself together
and listened to a child’s plight, a girl sitting
beside him used a mechanical pencil to poke
his eye. I decided to talk to the teacher and
after her cool and brief explaination , I realized
the school wanted to keep the matter low key.
After giving a deep thought, I paid a visit to the
girl’s parents. After hearing my side of the
story, she was chained to the leg of a lazy
chair, the only presentable chair in their living
room. I was astonished by her grandmother’s
action. I had a little chat with the old lady and
discovered the little girl’s sad story. She was
left by a Siamese mother and her mother was
nowhere to be found. She started to behave
weirdly since then. I decided to forgive her but
at the same time to ensure the safety of my
child, I had requested to move her to a table
nearer to the teacher and I had a nice chat
with her, thus, the issue was never raised
again.
From the incident mentioned above, I realize it
is not difficult to tarnish a child’s mind but to
mend her broken heart only time can do that.
“Honk if you hate bully” can turn out to be a
nightmare for the boy rather than an applauded action and left an unhealed scar in him
forever. Punishment should be carried out in
an appropriate way because it tends to make a
child feels bad. A punishment helps to discipline a child’s misbehavior but to shame a
child’s misconduct publicly can lead to low self
-esteems.
As referred to the course that I am
taking for this semester - Supervision in Hospitality Industry, I
found out that a lot of leadership
styles available. As seen, nowadays the leadership styles had
much affecting the productivity of
work especially to the hospitality
industry since this industry is
working with diversify employees.
In hospitality industry, we can see
that the successful of the service
delivery is depending on the approach of a leader train his/her
subordinates. In this case, the leadership styles are needed in order to
lead the employees to understand
the standard and procedures of
performing tasks. The supervisor
may use the autocratic, bureaucratic or democratic styles that might
suit to their employees based on
the employee‟s behavior. According to Douglas McGregor, there
are differences between people
under Theory X and Theory Y,
which that might need different
approaches in leading them. The
Theory X people is the people that
preferred to be led and avoid responsibility meanwhile the Theory
Y people are the employees that
will work on their own accord
towards objectives to which they
feel committed.
The diversity of employees will
urge the supervisor to apply the
correct leadership styles to right
employees. Failure to apply it will
give an impact on turnover rate
among hospitality employees. The
employees‟ turnover becoming
one of the major concern since the
process of hiring new workers in
hotel industry will effect on cost
include money and time of providing training. The questions are
“How to maintain the worker?”
and “How to retain them in a hotel?” In my opinion, those problems can be gauge via making the
workplace as a „happy‟ place for
employees in order to deliver service with optimum productivity. A
“happy” place for employees is the
place that they might feel respect,
recognition, and appreciation from
the management. Again, the supervisor as the closest management to
the employees plays the important
roles in leading them. If I were the
supervisor, I might choose the best
leadership styles that called Democratic or known as participative
leadership style that almost reverse
from autocratic which supervisor
might want to share decision making responsibility with the employees by collect the ideas and suggestion from employees. Meeting
among employees take place to
resolve problems and making decisions that affecting them thus motivate them to do at their best because they know the goals and
expectation from the management.
As a conclusion, the correct leadership styles adopted by the supervisor may contribute good impact
on the workplace environment.
When the working climate is
“happy”, the employees will work
efficiently and effectively that will
contribute to the best service delivery for guest as well increase the
revenue to the hotel.
Reference:
Miller, J. E., Walker, J. R. and
Drummond, K. E (2012). Supervision in Hospitality Industry (7th
edition). New York: John Willey &
‘Waiting for inspiration to
write is like standing at the
airport waiting for a train (F. I.
Anuar, 2013). Inspired by this
quotation, I would like to
share some useful tips here
on getting started to write. I
attended a sharing session
by two brilliant researchers in
my field, hospitality management. I found it significant to
share with all in line with the
new year of 2014. Hopefully
my piece of writing will contribute in encouraging others
to write as well.
First and foremost in
getting started to write, we
have to set a timer. For the
first few week practice, allocate about half an hour a
day to write. Being academician although writing is not
our cup of tea, we need to
force ourselves to write. It will
be very difficult to start writing in the first place whether
it is subject related matters or
non-academic
w ritings.
Questions liked ‘What should
I write?, How should I write?
Where should I start?’ and
etc. will all raise up in our
mind. It’s normal to get
stucked in the early stage of
writing. But once we managed to break the writer’s
block, the flow will be very
smooth. Just write and do
your writing non-stop for a set
amount of time or entire writing session. Make our sentences short, clear and easy
to understand. Use simple
and plain English. We don’t
have to use bombastic languages just to impress others.
Please ignore the grammatical or any typo errors first.
You just write from what is in
your mind. Translate your
ideas on the paper.
Secondly,
your
alarm clock will be ringing by
now indicating that time is
up and your 30 minutes is
finish. Stop writing, put aside
your pen and go do something else liked drinking coffee, jumping around or playing with your phone. The
purpose of doing such activities are to relax your mind
after the 30 minutes writing
session and convert your
attentionand focus to other
activities. Of course sometimes you will face situations
where you still want to write
and you have lots of ideas
but due to time is up, you
have to stop writing. In this
case, list the points that you
have, write notes to yourself
or you can even talk to a
recorder. You can do a transcribing process later.
Lastly, when you
are done with your ‘take a
break’ activities, this is the
time where you get back to
your writing materials. Read
out and loud each sentences that you wrote. From here
you can detect any grammatical or typo errors. You
may even want to reconstruct your sentences back to
make it better. It sounds
easy, right? Please give yourself a try and trust me, you’ll
find it very interesting. I tried it
too at the end of the sharing
session. It really works! So
good luck guys. Lets our writings flourish UiTM Terengganu
academic
ambience.
A review of an article in the Aug 17th 2013 issue of The Economist - “Using the social network seems to
make people more miserable”
An article in the August 17, 2013 issue
of the economist reported research findings with showed that people who are
constantly on the Facebook are generally dissatisfied with life and jealous of
others. Is this true? Does it applies to
you? According to the findings of a
research reported in the economist,
people who used facebook excessively
are exposed to the best moments of
others peoples‟ life. Often people on the
facebook project a false image of themselves. Facebook pictures overrate peoples‟ achievements and happiness and
the unsuspecting viewer may feel jealous and sad that his own life is not like
that.
People have even been known to be
envious of the faces they see on the
facebook, even though the images have
been photoshopped to appear like a
waxed plastic doll.
According to the economist article,
“those who have resisted the urge to
join Facebook will surely feel vindicated when they read the latest research
findings. The study was published by
the Public Library of Science, conducted
by Ethan Kross of the University of
Michigan and Philippe Verduyn of
Leuven University in Belgium. It
shows that, the more someone uses
Facebook, the less satisfied he is with
life.
According to the research findings,
using Facebook is associated with jealousy, social tension, isolation and depression. However, the economist, cautions its readers, when it points out
that, “these studies have all been „crosssectional‟—in other words, snapshots
in time. As such, they risk confusing
correlation with causation: perhaps
those who spend more time on social
media are more prone to negative emotions in the first place. The study conducted by Dr Kross and Dr Verduyn is
the first to follow Facebook users for an
extended period, to track how their
emotions change”.
The economist article reports that, the
researchers used 82 Facebookers for
their study. The respondents, in their
late teens or early 20s, agreed to have
their Facebook activity observed for
two weeks and to report, five times a
day, on their state of mind and their
direct social contacts (phone calls and
meetings in person with other people).
These reports were prompted by text
messages, sent between 10am and midnight, asking them to complete a short
questionnaire.
The study found that, the more a respondent used Facebook in the period
of the study, the worse he reported feeling in the questionnaire at the end of
the study period. Respondents were
also asked to rate their satisfaction with
life at the start and the end of the study.
Those who used Facebook a lot were
more likely to report a decline in satisfaction than those who visited the site
infrequently according to the economist
report of the findings.
However those who did not use facebook a lot to socialize but socialized in
real life, did not report any serious decline in their feelings at the end of
study period.
The economist article stated that, “A
volunteer‟s sex had no influence on
these findings; nor did the size of his
(or her) social network, his stated motivation for using Facebook, his level of
loneliness or depression or his selfesteem. Dr Kross and Dr Verduyn
therefore conclude that, rather than
enhancing well-being, Facebook undermines it.”
In an earlier investigation, conducted
by social scientists at Humboldt University and Darmstadt‟s Technical University, both in German and presented
at a conference in Leipzig in February,
used 584 users of Facebook aged mostly in their 20s. This study found that
the most common emotion aroused by
using Facebook is envy. Endlessly comparing themselves with peers who have
doctored their photographs, amplified
their achievements and overrated their
happiness can leave Facebook‟s users
more than a little green-eyed. Real-life
encounters, by contrast, are more
WYSIWYG (what you see is what you
get).
However the article in the economist
points out that, “What neither study
proves is whether all this is true only
for younger users of Facebook. Older
ones may be more matured, and therefore less envious of their friends‟ successes, false or real. Maybe, maybe
not.”
“Before I let you on his name, allow me to describe him. Figuratively he is well known for his Caucasian look, tall, good build,
and grayish eyes which make the ladies turned twice upon him.
He possesses excellent communication skills with an extra bonus
of good sense of humor. He has this crowd puller charisma and a
strong austere personality, although by one look, he does not seem
so. By this description, I suppose you would wonder what kind of
trouble could a guy so liked by many would possibly be in” said
Mr Arma.
you to address this cheerless emotion you are feeling” Mr Arma
concluded his narration with his point on knowledge, management and emotions.
“I think this conversation helps me a lot, sir, thank you, I
will take my leave I got a class at 11.00am”. said Suri in a hurry.
“You‟re welcome Suri” the reply came. “By the way Sir, who is the
person in the story? asked Suri while opening the door. “Mr Mohd
Onn Azraai, the Head of our faculty, and you can always expect a
smile from him if you bump into him, although the earlier de„It did cross my mind, sir” Suri said. Mr Arma continued scription of good build had vanished into unknown abyss, the
while putting on morsels of food into his fish aquarium. “But exgood character I had described earlier is self explanatory upon
cellent as he was, he reaches a point whereby all his fellow friends seeing him today” smiled Mr Arma.
began to dislike him”. “After all, he is the Chairperson of the stuSuri smiled back to Mr Arma, and went on to attend her
dent‟s committee, captain of the University Rugby team and the
class. The rest of the day was full of classes, discussions, and short
favorite of many lecturers. You may observe that at this stage,
meets up with lecturers to consult few things regarding assignmany will start disliking you, although they won‟t show them, and
ments. When night fell, Suri was back in her room, all freshen up
the right combination of situation will trigger this dislikes into
and had just finished her Maghrib prayer‟s, when all of a sudden
actions or statements by them towards the person they dislikes. Do
she heard a very loud cry from the very end of her corridor. She
you follow me so far? “I believe I do, sir” Suri‟s response came with
walk towards the end of the corridor while watching there are
her eyes wide open and mind awaken like someone being taught
many fellow students carrying few students toward the Musolla,
for the first time that carrots are actually vegetables and not a
they were shouting, crying, and moving aggressively in order to
screwdriver”.
get away. Suri followed through, and as they reach the Musolla,
“His situation is a natural progress in any organization,
the hysterical students are shouting even more so upon seeing a
whereby with many advantages and abilities, others will begin to face in the Musolla, sitting and waiting calmly.
dislike him to a certain degree. But he was able to encounter this
Suri recognized the person as a lecturer in her faculty,
through sheer determination of delivering what he was supposed
but little did she know the purpose of his attendance on this pecuto do, while at the same time remain humble, approachable, and
liar situation………………………
friendly toward others. The key here is the ability to sustain the
confidence people has of him and delivering a common purpose
around him. By doing that, he remains in other people‟s council
for any conditions, situations or problems. He was able to filter all
that was being said about him and takes the positive notes for his
betterment. Then, he will ensure what he and his committee set
out to do will be executed in the most excellent sort of conduct.
He does that in many events and workings needed from him, thus
maintaining people‟s confidence, and his work quality, he was able
to build himself into better character as a person and leads to one
word eventually, a good leader. Mr Arma narrates with looks of a
person reminiscing over glorious days.
“But he must have encountered one of those bad days,
sir?” Suri interest increases. “Needless to say, he had, but by sharing his problems with his family and close friends, releases the
emotions for him to start anew every time he stumbles. As I said
earlier, the revelation of how the committee feels about you is
knowledge, and it is a very good thing actually, simply because it
will alleviate your mental endurance to a higher level. Now your
learning process is how to deal with your committee, knowing
how they feel about you. I‟m not saying it‟s going to be easy, but
that is management, which is also a learning stage. I hope this
conversation and maybe with your family or close friends help