Presentacion de Oral (Assignment 5)

Don't be too alarmed I'm giving assignment 5 one month ahead of time when assignment 4 hadn't even cleared, because this was a playful counterfeit and a sort of sneak of the real one due on April 6th. On a serious note though, I wanted to address some of the issues and concerns Brad harangued ( for lack of verb) our project team during the surprised impromptu presentation on the 1st of March.  The following content was taken from an earlier response made to an email by agent Vanessa concerning potential impediments in course of the project proposal. Here goes:

Hey people; personally I think the problem statement was good enough. Maybe I should personally speak with Brad to convince him! Our problem statement was indeed about the lack of awareness of help given to problem gamblers, not the lack of awareness of problem gamblers or gambling, I couldn't see how Brad regretfully failed to see that and tragically misconstrued, nor the both of you good people allowing Brad to do so!!! It evaded me too completely; it was terra incognita! Might it therefore have been the spirit of the problem statement was simply not made absolute enough in your given speech to Brad, the presence of which couldn't see how a confusion dared arose.

But I would agree with the fact that there may be a problem with our purpose statement; Vanessa could put it up on the Wikis sooner still so that we could review what was wrong keenly, and then I'll help to make the modifications accordingly.

Regarding purpose of the survey; yet again maybe it wasn't clear or convincing enough for Brad, but still the purpose was fine, I brooded well enough.

The purpose of the survey was 1) Redo the survey done by NPCG on the indigenous Singaporean populace for NUS', then find out the degree of confluence. Such findings would be left and right, front and back significant because NUS' constituted the most educated one in the Singapore state and it would be interesting to know what their views on problem gambling measured up with. 2) We further wanted to know, with the survey, whether they were aware of the various types of help services given problem gamblers. 3) We then wanted to know, on top of how to make more people become aware of problem gambling (which from where we will get our solutions to the problem statement), whether there were other better ways to remedy problem gambling such as what I wrote in the survey questions: doing community services, attending courses and taking and passing exams and/or otherwise.

Clearly, the way I saw it was pretty clear enough what the purpose of our survey was; it just failed to empathize with Brad's right keys; which was why he asked to revise many things. We should speak with him again on Friday.

More informal section of the email, in terms of writing and expression

Basically for our proposal, the problem statement was the lack of awareness of the help services given to problem gamblers, and this was very very very bad, because if problem gamblers got no clue where to go for their help, they will keep continuing  deeper and deeper into gambling and cause deeper and deeper misery and distress for their families, friends, peers; and finally the whole of Singapore society will be in deep backwater. Realistically, we want to try to manage, not solve, problem gambling's effects!!! We could never solve the problem of gambling, because no matter how we contain it by closing down all casinos, people will find their own means and ways to continue engaging in such activities whether in Singapore or overseas. It's just that with the casinos opened in Singapore, gambling and its problems were brought that much closer to our doorstep and bound to affect society. Sensibly, we want to manage the problems caused by gambling, which means to make sure problem gambling DOESNT BECOME WIDESPREAD OR RAMPANT, which is to get problem gambling under control where it still will exist; only in benign amounts.

Obviously,  that was what we wanted to find out from our survey: how best we can manage problem gambling. Was it merely the help services that will be enough to tackle problem gambling wholesale, or were there more issues and angles to tackle? And that was what the survey was meaningful for; and also to ask the people if increasing awareness can manage the issue of problem gambling best, on top of finding out the level of awareness of the help services given problem gamblers; and we will get all this information uniquely from the NUS' educated force.

Brad just needed to know all this, and he wouldn't have too many doubts I'm sure.

Cheers
Que lastima!