In this week’s episode of Looking South, Eric Gau chats with Billy Lee, a student at Tamkang University who has interned in both India and the Philippines.
Listen here.
Transcript below:
Eric Gau: Good morning. I’m Eric Gau, and you’re listening to Looking South on ICRT. It’s our weekly program where we go over some of the effects of the central government’s New Southbound Policy. This month, we’re looking at how it has impacted education exchanges. To share his experiences in that regard, we are joined today by Billy Lee, who has done internships abroad. Billy, good morning, and welcome to the show.
Billy Lee: Hello, good morning everybody.
Eric: Billy, why don’t you give our listeners a quick introduction about yourself? What are you studying, and where have you studied? And where were your internships?
Billy: I’m currently studying for a PHD degree, in Tamkang University, in the department of Computer science and information Engineering. My major is big data analysis, medical information system, clinical support system design and designed disease prediction model.
Eric: Did you have any particular reason for choosing this field?
Billy: Before I was going to Tamkang University, I was studying in the department of information management in the national Taipei University of Nursing and Health Sciences. Here, we had a lot of collaboration with hospitals. So based on hospitals’ data, we can find a lot of interesting points from the hospital data. So I want to try using more technical like big data analysis to find some correlation between different diseases or find some impact factor inside the disease.
Eric: What made you decide to go on these internships abroad, and why did you pick the countries you actually worked in?
Billy: At the beginning, I have never thought of being an intern in other countries, let alone a Southeast Asian country. The idea that going to India for intern is from my advisor, my professor. When I heard this idea, I just ask him “are you crazy?” Because, in Taiwan, we have a great hospital system, like the national health insurance and high quality medical service. So why should we go to India to intern inside the hospital. My professor just told me, they don’t have anything, so we can learn from the foundation and try to know the foundation. Because their hospitals are similar to Taiwan’s around 20 years ago. So not too many information systems inside, not too many connections by Wi-Fi, by the internet inside. So when we go there, we can know the infrastructure of the hospital and we can try to design the different parts inside the hospital and how to connect it and how to make it interoperability. And also, we are going to a middle India city, not a high level hospital, we’re going to low-level hospital, not too much money support them, so really like kind of original.
Eric: How was life for you different in India, compared to how it was back here in Taiwan?
Billy: Actually, I think in India, they are speaking Indian more, not too many people can speak English because we are not going to the high-level country. In the beginning, I just tried to know how to communicate with Indian people. When we going to there, we were going to hospital for intern. My mentor was a doctor there, and he can speak English. But other employees in the hospital cannot speak English too much, so communication has kind of a gap between us. So sometimes we want to ask someone to be our translator. Finally, we find another student, a doctor student, going with us and lead us going to inside their hospital and try to be our translator.
Eric: What did you learn there in India that you wouldn’t have been able to do if you had stayed in Taiwan for all of your studying?
Billy: As I mentioned to you before, I learned design a whole infrastructure of hospital information system, and know how to make system interoperability. And also, after the India training, I going to the Philippines this year. For the Philippine internship, we went to Asia development Bank, it is an international bank. The employee inside come from different country, based on different culture. When we work together, collaborate together, we should fix different cultures. And also, inside the international bank, more different to Taiwan is they have more collaborate, more communication, and everyday evening we will have a short meeting to report to share our experience and share the job we already finished today with our team member.
Eric: And finally, for students or young workers who are also thinking of going overseas to study or to get work experience, what are some things you suggest for them to keep in mind?
Billy: I think, because in Taiwan, we don’t have enough chances to speak English. And our school don’t have a full English environment. So just remember, don’t hesitate to speak English. Because sometimes we will think about our English is bad. But English, language is just a skill, just a tool for communication. At the beginning, I went to India. Their English is also bad. I can try to speak English to communicate. And also, we are going to hospital, they are using a lot of terminology, which is hard to hear and hard to understand, so it is more hard to communicate. But when I’m going to the Philippines, it is totally different. I just try to speak a lot and talking and discuss everything, and if I don’t understand, I will just say “Okay, pardon, can you explain again, because I don’t understand?” They are really friendly and they explain again and again until I understand what they’re talking about. I think the first thing is just don’t hesitate to speak English. And second is, because we have a long time there, we usually try to know and try to join their life and join their culture. Because when we’re going to India, my friend in India, I just tell you a student there and lead us going around the hospital, that one, their friend got married. They led us to going to there, finally we know how their culture marries. I think that is totally different from Taiwan, so you should join their culture and their life and try to know that. And third is more important thing you should finish your intern and know what you need to learn from there.
Eric: Some excellent advice. We’ve been chatting with Billy Lee about his experiences studying in the Philippines and in India. Billy, thanks for taking the time to share your story with us today.
Billy: Okay, thank you very much everybody, goodbye.
Eric: That wraps up this week’s episode of Looking South. For this and past episodes, head on over to the ICRT Web site, and you can find them under the Podcast section. Transcripts of the interview can also be found on the Looking South blog. I’m Eric Gau, and thank you for tuning in.