The Unspoken Connection: When Trauma Creates Unbreakable Bonds

Have you ever met someone and felt an instant, inexplicable connection? As if you've known them for years, even though you've just met? Sometimes, these powerful connections aren't born from shared interests or compatible personalities. Instead, they're forged in the fires of shared trauma.

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The Invisible Thread of Shared Pain

Imagine two strangers sitting next to each other at a coffee shop. On the surface, they couldn't be more different. But beneath their calm exteriors lies a shared experience - perhaps they're both survivors of a natural disaster, or they've both battled a life-threatening illness. When they discover this common ground, something magical happens.

This phenomenon, sometimes called "collective trauma bonding" or "hardship bonding," is like finding a long-lost sibling in a world where you've always felt alone. It's the relief of finally being understood, truly and deeply, by someone who's walked in your shoes.

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More Than Just "Getting It"

But this bond goes beyond mere understanding. It's a connection that can feel almost supernatural in its intensity. Here's why:

1. Shared Language: Trauma survivors often develop a unique vocabulary to describe their experiences. When they meet someone who speaks this same "language," it's like finding a native speaker in a foreign land.

2. Unspoken Understanding: A simple look or gesture can convey volumes between two people who've been through similar ordeals. It's communication on a level that others can't access.

3. Mutual Respect: There's a deep respect that comes from knowing the strength it takes to survive trauma. This respect forms the foundation of a powerful bond.

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The Double-Edged Sword

While these connections can be incredibly healing, they're not without risks. It's like finding a kindred spirit who shares your addiction - comforting, but potentially enabling. Some pitfalls to watch out for:

• Trauma Echo Chamber: Constantly reliving past traumas without moving forward

• Toxic Positivity: Dismissing each other's ongoing struggles because "you should be over it by now"

• Codependency: Becoming overly reliant on each other for emotional support

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Harnessing the Power of Shared Trauma

So, how can you nurture these unique bonds while avoiding the pitfalls? Here are some tips:

1. Acknowledge the Connection: Recognize the special nature of your bond, but don't put it on a pedestal.

2. Focus on Growth: Use your shared experiences as a springboard for mutual healing and personal development.

3. Expand Your Circle: While this connection is special, don't let it isolate you from others who can offer different perspectives.

4. Seek Professional Help: A therapist can help you navigate the complexities of these relationships and ensure they remain healthy.

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The Beauty in Shared Scars

In the end, these trauma-forged bonds remind us of the resilience of the human spirit. They show us that even in our darkest moments, we have the capacity to connect, heal, and grow.

So the next time you feel that inexplicable pull towards someone, consider that it might be more than just coincidence. It could be the invisible thread of shared experience, weaving a tapestry of connection that's as beautiful as it is complex.

What If...You Could Do It All Over?

The allure of our unlived lives.

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“The thought that I might have become someone else is so bland that dwelling on it sometimes seems fatuous…” - Andrew H. Miller

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The thought has an insistent, uncanny magnetism.

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“One of the most significant facts about us may finally be that we all begin with the natural equipment to live a thousand kinds of life but end in the end having lived only one.” - Clifford Geertz

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We have unlived lives for all sorts of reasons: because we make choices; because society constrains us; because events force our hand; most of all, because we are singular individuals, becoming more so with time.

“While growth realizes, it narrows,” Miller writes. “Plural possibilities simmer down.” This is painful, but it’s an odd kind of pain—hypothetical, paradoxical. Even as we regret who we haven’t become, we value who we are. We seem to find meaning in what’s never happened. Our self-portraits use a lot of negative space.

For some people, imagining unlived lives is torture, even a gateway to crisis. Miller tells the story of Spencer Brydon, the protagonist of Henry James’s tale “The Jolly Corner.” As a young man, Brydon left America for Europe, where he “followed strange paths and worshiped strange gods,” living as a playboy. Three decades later, he returns to New York, where he takes stock of his peers. Many of them are rich, powerful, or respected; they have built substantial lives. Brydon, who is single and only superficially accomplished, starts to wonder how he would have turned out if he’d stayed. Would he have become a successful businessman? Married his friend Alice, with whom he’s reconnected? He begins to spend his nights prowling the hallways of his childhood home, convinced that the ghost of the man he might have been wanders there. Eventually, he meets a version of himself: an apparitional Brydon, with a forbidding face and two missing fingers, who strides forward in “a rage of personality.” Watching him, Brydon faints. He wakes with his head cradled in Alice’s lap, and realizes that he loves her: better this life than that one!

Most of us aren’t haunted so acutely by the people we might have been. But, perhaps for a morning or a month, our lives can still thrum with the knowledge that it could have been otherwise. “You may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife,” David Byrne sings, in the Talking Heads song “Once in a Lifetime.” “And you may ask yourself, ‘Well, how did I get here?’ ” Maybe you feel suddenly pushed around by your life, and wonder if you could have willed it into a different shape. Perhaps you suddenly remember, as Hilary Mantel did, that you have another self “filed in a drawer of your consciousness, like a short story that wouldn’t work after the opening lines.” Today, your life is irritating, like an ill-fitting garment; you can’t forget it’s there. “You may tell yourself, ‘This is not my beautiful house. . . . This is not my beautiful wife,’ ” Byrne sings.

We may imagine specific unlived lives for ourselves, as artists, or teachers, or tech bros. Or we may just be drawn to possibility itself, as in the poem “The Road Not Taken”: when Robert Frost tells us that choosing one path over the other made “all the difference,” it doesn’t matter what the difference is. Carl Dennis’s poem “The God Who Loves You” tries to make that difference concrete. Dennis poses a question to his protagonist, a middle-aged real-estate agent: “What would have happened / Had you gone to your second choice for college”? A different roommate, a different spouse, a different job: could it all have added up to “a life thirty points above the life you’re living / On any scale of satisfaction”? Only “the god who loves you” knows for sure. It’s an unsettling thought; Dennis suggests that we pity that all-knowing god, “pacing his cloudy bedroom, harassed by alternatives / You’re spared by ignorance.”

Swept up in our real lives, we quickly forget about the unreal ones. Still, there will be moments when, for good or for ill, we feel confronted by our unrealized possibilities; they may even, through their persistence, shape us. Practitioners of mindfulness tell us that we should look away, returning our gaze to the actual, the here and now. But we might have the opposite impulse, as Miller does. He wants us to wander in the hall of mirrors—to let our imagined selves “linger longer and say more.”

What can our unreal selves say about our real ones?

Their mere presence in our minds may reveal something about how we live: “Unled lives are a largely modern preoccupation,” Miller writes. It used to be that, for the most part, people lived the life their parents had, or the one that the fates decreed. Today, we try to chart our own courses. The difference is reflected in the stories we tell ourselves. In the Iliad, Achilles chooses between two clearly defined fates, designed by the gods and foretold in advance: he can either fight and die at Troy or live a long, boring life. (In the end, he chooses to fight.) But the world in which we live isn’t so neatly organized. Achilles didn’t have to wonder if he should have been pre-med or pre-law; we make such decisions knowing that they might shape our lives.

Among secular people, the absence of an afterlife raises the stakes. In “Missing Out: In Praise of the Unlived Life,” the psychologist Adam Phillips warns that “once the next life—the better life, the fuller life—has to be in this one, we have a considerable task on our hands.” Given just a single shot at existence, we owe it to ourselves to hit the mark; we must not just survive but thrive. It’s no wonder that for many of us “the story of our lives becomes the story of the lives we were prevented from living.”

COVID-19: A Game Changer for the Workplace

“Lockdown” was named word of the year 2020 by the Collins Dictionary. This is not surprising as the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted everyone’s way of life. Attempting to contain the virus, cities and countries alike went into lockdown, shuttering schools, businesses and virtually all non-essential services. Yet, as the pandemic dragged on, what had initially been slated as temporary lockdowns became a new normal, inducing what some have termed a Great Transformation. The ripples of this Great Transformation have been felt most strongly in the workplace, where COVID-19 has upturned the cubicle model of work that has existed since the 1960s. Under the opposing pressures of public health regulations and economic necessity, COVID-19 has been a game changer for the modern workplace by shifting its physical, psychological and sociological dimensions, consequently introducing lasting impacts that promise to redefine the 21st century office in a post-COVID-19 world.

COVID-19 has been a game changer for the workplace across multiple levels, notably the physical, psychological and sociological. Before the pandemic, the workplace was largely characterized by the cubicle model developed by Robert Propst in the 1960s . This model was defined physically by box-like work stations, psychologically by entrapment and sociologically by isolation. In contrast, under COVID-19’s lockdowns, the cubicle model of the office has been thoroughly disrupted. At the physical level, the changes have been both obvious: the centralized in-person workplace has given way to virtual conference rooms, “work from home” (as well as cafes, parks, and anywhere but the office), and personalized work stations that range from traditional desks to poolside lounge chairs. Psychologically, the feeling of entrapment—of being chained to a desk and tied mentally to work—has been replaced by freedom and flexibility. Whilst meetings and deadlines still remain, employees can otherwise structure their days freely, allowing a mindset of personal agency where work can be better balanced with other priorities. Lastly, COVID-19 has altered the sociological structure of the workplace, metaphorically tearing down cubicle walls and encouraging more communication and collaboration amongst colleagues. Ironically, with interactions shifting from post-it note memos to Zoom check-ins, employees are more connected than ever before. Workers expressed that they used to feel connected to their company, but now they feel more connected to their colleagues. In short, COVID-19 has ended the decades-long reign of the cubicle across all dimensions.

This Great Transformation of the workplace created by COVID-19 was produced by opposing pressures from public health regulations and economic necessity during the lockdowns. On the one hand, COVID-19’s health risks required measures such as social distancing and closure of non-essential facilities. These led to second-order effects such as people needing to work from home, watch over children and at-risk family members and navigate pandemic disruptions to daily life, all during work hours. On the other hand, economic needs meant that a halt to all work was impossible, a fact that became increasingly clear as the pandemic dragged on. Together, these opposing pressures forced an unavoidable conclusion: that the traditional model of the workplace could not be maintained. Economic necessity required that work continues in some form, whilst public health regulations and their impacts on daily life demanded flexibility and change that the centralized office could not fulfil. Consequently, corporate culture as a whole had to adapt to the conditions posed by COVID-19 and accept this game changer to the workplace.

Rather than a short-term impact, COVID-19 will have a lasting impact on the workplace for a number of reasons. First, there is still no end in sight for the pandemic. Regions that were thought to have recovered are now undergoing resurgent waves, and even vaccines will not be sufficient for fully containing the pandemic. As such, these workplace changes will need to remain in place for at least another year, becoming gradually ingrained as a new normal. Second, the new model of work has proven successful in terms of corporate success. Contrary to expectations, studies have shown that remote work has actually increased productivity, and Q3 GDP gains demonstrate that economic growth is not tied to the cubicle model. Third, the pandemic and workplace adjustments have shown to employees and employers alike that new models of the workplace are not only possible but also desirable. Thus, organizations worldwide are already planning for a post-COVID-19 work-life that accommodates lasting shifts in employee attitudes, work dynamics, and physical spaces.

In summary, COVID-19 has been a game changer for the workplace that has radically shifted society’s understanding of the office. What was once tidy grey grids has been reimagined in the public consciousness across all levels as the structural impacts of the pandemic forced companies to adapt. Looking forward, it is unclear what offices will look like post-COVID-19, but one thing is certain: there will not be a return to cubicles.

How the mighty have fallen

Just 5 years ago, I embarked on a journey across the Pacific Ocean and began my studies at one of the world's most prestigious educational institutions. After which I went on to continue my GCE A levels studies across the Atlantic Ocean at Britain's Brainiest School. For these 3 years, it has been the heights of my life (thus far), winning all sorts of awards, experiencing and accomplishing achievements that I never even dreamt of. And most notably, the love of my life returned to me at the beginning of these 3 years.

Everything was going great, it was smooth-sailing through and through. I was on the top of my game. As if the world were my oyster. I began to venture out of academia and into the business and finance world. Things went well at first but it all began to go downhill from about a year ago.

Long story short, right after my Great Grand-Mother passed away last Summer, my extended family was divided into two sides and thus began the year-long lawsuit between the two sides (the details may be covered in another blog entry). A.k.a. my year of hell.

At this, arguably, the most difficult time of my life, things kept getting worse. My family was fractured, businesses took a hit as I dedicated less time to them, and the most heart-breaking was the fact that my love for the past decade left and fell in love with someone else.

As I am dealing with the lawsuit, I decided then and there that I had to keep a cool head, and chuck all my emotions away, focusing on solving the problems at hand. After a whole year, now that the lawsuit has almost been brought to its conclusion, I began to pick up the pieces that are my businesses (and my heart).

Thinking back over the past 5 years, I have probably experienced more than what an average adult has in 40. Studied in 2 continents. Traveled to over 50 cities across 4 continents. Competed and won at international competitions. Started companies. Involved in a multi-million dollar lawsuit. Got my heart broken. Invested in companies across the globe. ... I cannot help but think (and sigh) how the mighty have fallen. From being the top of my game to getting slapped on my face (figuratively) on a daily basis.

Mentally, I have been in a pretty bad place for the past year. But recently, I met a new friend who renewed my hopes and dreams about the future. I am starting to see the way out of all these messes. Now I try to remind myself that - I may encounter defeats, but I must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so I can know who I am, what I can rise from, how I can still come out of it.

Enough venting, back to work.

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“Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved.”

What is NATO? And how powerful is NATO?

After World War II, the Soviet Union gained power and forcefully spread communism into neighbouring countries like Germany and Czechoslovakia. The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) was created as a unified front amongst Western nations against Soviet aggression. This alliance also sought to prevent future wars and devastation. At its outset in 1949, there were 12 original NATO members (Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, United Kingdom and United States). Today, there are 28 members. One of the most important aspects of NATO is its mutual defence pact. This states that any attack on a member country is viewed as an attack on them all. This agreement was especially important during the Cold War, when it helped prevent nuclear conflict. The knowledge that another member of NATO would retaliate to nuclear aggression was a key aspect of the Cold War’s “mutually assured destruction”. After the Cold War, NATO continued to be a vital political alliance, with a focus on global security. Today, the organisation works very closely with the European Union and the United Nations. NATO is involved in peacekeeping missions across places like Afghanistan, Kosovo, and various regions in Africa. They manage ground, air, and naval operations for surveillance, training, logistic, and other crisis-management purposes. The most recent NATO activity has been in Ukraine, after Russia illegally annexed the Crimean peninsula. NATO has since increased air policing missions in the area, and boosted support for neighbouring countries like the Baltic States.

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Since NATO’s members include the US, and several other prosperous nations, NATO has significant resources. The combined wealth of NATO members is more than 30 trillion US dollars and their combined manpower totals more than 7 million troops. NATO’s military spending accounts for about 70% of the World’s military spending. So, NATO is a really powerful alliance. And the threat of Russian territorial expansion may not be the worst of NATO’s problems. According to the NATO website, the “defining threats of the first half of the 21st century” comes from “nation-state failure and violent extremism”. The only solution to these problems, according to NATO, is vigorously coordinated international response. 

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NATO Member Countries:

Albania | Belgium | Bulgaria | Canada | Croatia | Czech Republic | Denmark | Estonia | France | Germany | Greece | Hungary | Iceland | Italy | Latvia | Lithuania | Luxembourg | the Netherlands | Norway | Poland | Portugal | Romania | Slovakia | Spain | Turkey | United Kingdom | United States

Will There Be A United States of Europe?

“We must build a kind of United States of Europe. In this way only will hundreds of millions of toilers be able to regain the simple joys and hopes which make life worth living.”

— Winston Churchill

In the 21st century, the United States of America (USA) is the most powerful country in the world, dominating the global economy and the political agenda. But across the Atlantic, a collection of unified countries poses an increasing threat to the USA’s hegemony. The potential of this continent, which is similar to the USA in terms of economic prowess and natural resources, yet vastly different in terms of its global aims, means the USA’s interest could be in danger. The European Union (EU) has almost 2 million troops, and is home to some of the richest countries in the world, who may just be planning to create the UNITED STATES OF EUROPE.

The EU’s origin goes back to just after the Second World War, part of an effort to integrate Europe and prevent the growth of extreme nationalism, which has devastated the continent in the 1940’s. The main aim of this international organisation was to achieve closer political, social and economic ties among European countries, in order to bring lasting peace to the region, military security and economic growth. There are, currently, 28 member states in the EU, including 4 out of 7 countries that represents more than 64% of the net global wealth. These are United Kingdom (UK), Germany, France, and Italy, whose advance economy contribute to the EU’s growing GDP of $18.5 trillion (which is far above the USA’s GDP of $16.8 trillion) in 2015.

This collective prosperity has fuelled the economic growth across the continent, and helps to achieve the EU’s 4 main aims. They are 1) to establish European citizenship as a means to protect fundamental human rights, 2) to ensure freedom, security, and justice, 3) to promote economic and social progress, and 4) to assert Europe’s role in the world. These aims have allowed Europe lasting growth and welfare in the modern world. Recently, the relations and policies within the organisation has become increasingly complex. Events in recent decades to achieve these goals, including the formation of the Eurozone in 1999, have made it clear that the EU’s ambition is above all - political union. If it achieves this, then there would be a European confederation similar in size to the USA, which would have the largest economy in the world.

However, in an email interview the Quartz, Emma Bonino - Italy’s former minister of foreign affairs, claimed that “Europe is like a bicycle, you either pedal or you fall.” The problem, she says, is “we stopped pedalling.” On one hand, member countries, especially those in the Eurozone, do not have the full independence to steer their economies without interference. But when they run into trouble, like Greece did, their counterparts do not rush to their rescue, and some even believe that the medicine they recommended is worse then the disease. On the other hand, when faced with external pressures, like the burgeoning migration crisis, the EU has shown a similar lack of solidarity. Its institutions struggle to agree to quotas for hosting refugees, sharing the border across a region with the capacity to absorb the newcomers. Several states, mostly in the East, reject this notion outright.

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Although 28 countries are currently members of the EU, with a queue of other more than eager to join, it is not the federation imagined by tis founders. Political integration lags economic integration, which is itself incomplete. The EU is a confused entity, with decisions made and enforced by a tangle of institutions at the national and pan-European levels. Some complexity is, of course, inevitable. Trying to coordinate an area with 12 different currencies, 24 official languages, and a mix of open and closed borders. But the current situation does not serve it citizen’s needs, and cannot go on like the status quo.

The most pressing obstacles standing in the way of the European expansion is the EU’s instability caused by the 2008 financial crises. This plunged the EU into its own economic catastrophe. Several EU member states, including Ireland, Cyprus and Greece, were unable to repay the debt caused by the crash. And the Eurozone is still recovering from this disaster.

In recent years, the influx of migrants across Europe’s borders showed that member states have little solidarity when fellow member states need help. While EU-level institution have also come in for criticism for riding roughshod over sovereign wishes, open borders have been closed, throttling the movement of both people and capital.

Disillusioned, many Europeans are calling for drastic change. Indeed, the government of one of the EU’s biggest and most powerful members, the UK, now wants to formally opt out from the commitment to a “ever-closer union” enshrined in the EU’s founding treaties. In 2016, the Prime Minster of the UK, David Cameron, scheduled a referendum on whether the UK should stay in the EU. So the organisation could lose one of its strongest members, despite its overall unity, political and military strength, the mosaic of different cultures and nationalities that constitutes the EU, might just mean the organisation is too diverse and fragmented to realise the ultimate dream of UNITED STATES OF EUROPE.

“We believe that more, not less, Europe is needed to respond to the challenges we face, both internally and externally…[Greater political integration] is needed to overcome the inherent weaknesses at the heart of the European Union and of the Economic and Monetary Union, and to provide Europe with the vision it needs to avoid stumbling from one emergency to the other”

— France’s Claude Bartolone, Germany’s Norbert Lammert, Luxembourg’s Mars Di Bartolomeo, presidents of European parliaments, signed a declaration calling for an acceleration of European integration

The solution, many believe, is for the EU to knit itself together more tightly. In 2014, the Vice President of the EU’s European Commission, Viviane Reding, explicitly call for UNITED STATES OF EUROPE, a view shared by Winston Churchill. She asserted that all 18 Eurozone countries should form a full fiscal and political union to reach this goal. And with so many countries in the EU sharing common policies, the suggestion of a UNTIED STATES OF EUROPE is, not at all, implausible. In 2015, French President, François Hollande, called for a Eurozone government with a specific budget and a parliament to ensure full democratic control for all member states. Meanwhile, allied forces in Europe are poised to unleash the collective strength against growing security threats, like Russia and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

The EU has already demonstrated its power by enforcing economic sanctions on Russia for the invasion of Ukraine. And the continent is also home to some of the most formidable forces, including Britain’s Special Air Service, France’s extensive military deployment, and Italy’s vast helicopter fleet. In 2012, the EU spent $281 billion on military defence, including joint projects like the Eurofighter jet, Typhoon, which is a multi-purpose jet fighter with a maximum speed of 2,500 km/h. The EU also commands more than 1.6 million active personnel and runs a joint armament procurement operation, which includes more than 500 active nuclear warheads.

The EU is the USA’s emerging rival, aside from its military strength, the EU’s population of 743 million people, its trading power, its diplomatic influence, and the strength of its currency, are all greater than that of the USA. But the EU does not flaunt its strength or operate on patriotic model like the USA. Instead, it operates calmly through traditional political structures. It is this skilful diplomatic approach, that enables the EU to take over the world, without becoming a target. And with every country that joins the EU, the organisation only becomes stronger.

While the organisation may never be seen as overtly dangerous to the rest of the world. Its power as a unified force against extremism and a legal military intervention, means that Europe’s rule in the west should continue for years to come.

Strangely enough, the prospect of a UNITED STATES OF EUROPE sounds almost as distant and utopian now as it did back in 1941, when the continent was considerably more fragmented. Back then, it took a world war to make the dream of a European Union a reality. Perhaps the pain and panic of this economic crisis will be the fuel to thrust Europe towards a UNITED STATES OF EUROPE.

NASA International Space Settlement Competition (International Finals)

A Facebook 'like' of a picture of me during the NASA International Space Settlement Competition (International Finals) from a couple years ago made me nostalgic. So I decided to write a little memoire of my time there. So here goes...

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The night sky will never be the same to me.

After witnessing the International Space Station gliding over Houston’s sky with my bare eyes, I was amazed by the amount of intellect and hard work carrying with that tiny light.

Having been to and competed at NASA’s Johnson Space Center was truly the most inspiring and challenging experience I have ever had. In the first week of August 2013, I went to Houston to participate in NASA’s International Space Settlement Design Competition, where groups of forty-five high school students, from all over the world, had to come up with a fifty-page proposal of a space settlement on Earth’s Moon, to respond to a request for proposal (RFP), in less than three days. (YES, THREE DAYS!)

This insightful journey started in October 2012, the intra-school selection, to the video entry in November, then the UK National Finals at Imperial College in March, and finally the International Finals at Houston in August.

The competition was an intense industry simulation where teams acted as companies to compete against each other for a contract set by NASA’s engineers. Each company was divided into five departments: Operations, Structure, Human Factors, Automation and Finance. Each department had their duties while having some overlapping responsibilities with other departments. Under such limited time constraint, communications among departments were vital. As President of my ‘company’, Grumbo Aerospace, I was able to effectively lead my team to the title of International Champion, by setting a clear timeline, allocating tasks to colleagues according to their strengths and skills, and having a bird’s eye view on the project at all times, making sure ideas and decisions from departments would not crash.

This competition allowed me to have a firsthand experience of how real-life company works. Although we have our individual duties, if we only focus on our job, it is difficult to come up with a complete and comprehensive proposal. We have to work with people, discussing and debating ideas, which allows us to include different perspectives and make better decisions. Working under great pressure foster my understanding of the 90-90 rule - 90% of the work is done in 10% of the time, and the remaining 10% of work needs 90% of the time. The last couple of hours is the most intense, especially after two sleepless days. When the deadline is approaching, I started to see changes in personality and people’s behavior, leading to conflicts among team members. These conflicts, unlike friendly discussions and debates, are unproductive and discouraging people to contribute. To tackle this, I decided to take a big risk; instead of continuing to finish the project inefficiently and ineffectively, I took my company to the IHOP nearby and had a 30-minute brain break. This short recess allowed the team to relax and loosen up, and be more energetic when resumed work.

Besides learning a huge amount of aeronautical and astrophysical knowledge throughout various stages of the competition, I was also able to learn from real-life “rocket scientists” - professors at Imperial College and engineers at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, who were assigned to us as advisors. Their knowledge and experiences are priceless. My most inspiring advisor is Dr. Jack Bacon, who was the chief engineer of the Apollo 13 mission. He described vividly about the problems they came across when the astronauts were stranded in space, and how all the engineers turned the impossible into solutions, by utilizing the very limited resources on board Apollo 13, and eventually brought the astronauts back to earth successfully. His enduring attitude and resilience when came across obstacles inspired me to improve myself constantly and never give up.

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This unforgettable experience allowed me to learn how to be resourceful and work efficiently under time pressure, and most importantly, to work with people from different cultures. The biggest challenge I came across while leading the team was the cultural clashes and language barrier. Our team has students representing the US, UK, India, and Pakistan. The diversity of culture in our team led to misunderstanding and poor communication, which developed into low morale within the company. However, through listening and understanding both sides, I was able to resolve most issues between people through negotiation and compromises, and when necessary to make the hard decision in which I believe is the best for the team.

The competition made me aware of the importance of space exploration. I used to think that space development is very far away from our generation and wasting billions on it is rather unproductive. However, I realized that exploring space can bring many benefits to the individuals on earth; every dollar spent on space engineering can bring eight dollars worth of benefits to the global development. Space exploration has been an untold hero to our recent technological development. An example is the cell phone cameras, which were miniaturized in the 90’s by NASA engineers as traditional cameras were too big and heavy to put on space vehicles. Moreover, private companies (such as Boeing, Space X, and Virgin) are ambitiously developing space travel and exploration, its no longer far fetching. It excites me as Virgin Galactic’s Spaceport America started building in 2005, and near-earth space travel will be possible within two decades.

This wonderful journey has proved invaluable, teaching me how to be a team leader and team player, and the ability to think holistically and out of the box. No matter what jobs or positions I will be working in the future, I will always be able to draw upon this experience, which made me grow as a person.

Winning the competition was such as rewarding experience, and this is an experience I treasure, one that will never be forgotten.