Month: May 2021

I’m really glad to have joined DNV and really fortunate that they accepted me.

DNV is a maritime classification society that conducts surveys, audits, and provides advisory services to vessel owners/managers all over the world. They provide many other services in other industries and sectors such as oil & gas, energy, supply chain. I was in the maritime business development department.

DNV has collaboration as one of their core values. The team I worked with and everyone else I’ve interacted with has shown me that they truly believe in this value. Any time I ran into issues, I never felt that I could not approach my senior colleagues for help or advice. They were always happy to answer my questions and provide me with guidance.

Everyone is invited to contribute ideas on how to improve the company’s processes, be it interns or senior executives. Everyone’s ideas were given fair consideration and credit.

A great deal of trust is also given within the team. Everyone is expected to play their part and were trusted to carry out their duties. I was not micromanaged on how I carried out my assigned tasks, I was simply given the required knowledge and allowed to complete it how I saw fit. Granted, there are many layers between what I do and the final execution so mistakes made at my level would not be significant in the grand scheme of things. However, when I complete my tasks well and without mistakes, it makes the job of those who build off of my tasks easier. Instead of having to spend time to rectify my mistakes, they can concentrate on carrying out their jobs, which would ultimately impact the team’s performance.

Working together and cooperating seems so easy and logical. Yet, many somehow fail to grasp that. Or maybe they do but they prioritise their individual goals over that of the team and choose to sabotage others so they may rise higher.

During my time in Embry-Riddle, I made a few videos as part of my coursework, one of which is an advertisement for the school. The initial concept of this video and the final product were the same and yet, it ended up being very different from how I had initially envisioned it.

I pitched the idea of creating a video advertisement for my school at the time to my group as our class project and they agreed. We were all unaware of how big this project would eventually become (although in hindsight, we probably should have).

As Embry-Riddle is an aviation focused school, most of its advertisements are naturally showcasing its ability to impart aviation knowledge and train aviators. Had I been the one in charge of the school’s marketing campaigns, I would do that too. It’s the obvious choice.

However, we did not have the luxury of time, resources or access to the school’s aviation facility (because we’re in Singapore and said facilities are in the US). So I looked at what was more reasonable with what I had available. That’s how I arrived at the video’s concept, which focused on promoting learning as something that is at the core of what school is.

It is a generic idea, nothing groundbreaking or unique. That said, I believe that a boring idea with great execution is better than a great idea with mediocre execution.

To film this, I used my mobile phone (Pixel 3) and borrowed a DJI Pocket from a friend. I wrote a script to give an idea for what the video would be like and we went from there. We planned the shots, decided on the angles, who would be in the shots, all that fun stuff.

Then we started filming.

Murphy’s law states that anything that can go wrong will go wrong (don’t quote me on that). Some shots we wanted turned out to be not as feasible as when we were planning and scouting areas, others were cut short due to time constraints. I’d say that about half the shots I initially wanted didn’t get filmed.

They were instead replaced by other shots that we improvised, along with others that I filmed during breaks and while waiting for classes to start.

I was glad I got those shots though.

Those were some of the most genuine shots of my schoolmates I’ve gotten as they were simply going about their day, doing their work instead of having to act. Those shots were far better than anything I could’ve tried to direct/script.

My favourite shot was of my three friends laughing together in a corridor because of something funny that our classmate did. When I stopped recording, I remember thinking that it was one of the best things I’ve filmed for this project. And I wouldn’t have filmed it if I forced myself to stick to the planned script and only captured what we had discussed.

In the end, I think life is like that some times. You don’t always get what you want nor will things always go as planned. But sometimes, what you wanted or planned may not be as good as what you actually get.

(If you’re reading this on the main page, the video might not be embedding properly) Have to figure this one out.