American name David Birth name Huayi

My partner is a very dynamic Chinese guy named Hua Yi, but is known by his American name, David Birth. He is an only son and lives with his immediate family although he has other family members and relatives in South East China. His father works as a truck driver and his mother, as an airline inspector. He goes back to China to visit every two years or so. On assessment, he believes that their family belongs to the middle class economic strata. David’s parents moved to the United States nine years ago in 2000 in search of wider horizons and better earning opportunities.

David believes that he left his cultural roots in China, but he has never forgotten this, and so, despite his being in the United States, he has retained his cultural identity and learned to incorporate American culture into it. He believes he has half of his heart in China and half in the United States. David is a very physical person and loves to indulge in sports and other physical activities like table tennis, club and local golfing, as well as fishing. He values his leisure time and spends this mostly with his family and friends.

He likes to watch movies and spend time learning new things and discovering new possibilities. He is also very outgoing and can handle his emotions quite well. David finished his secondary education from North Penn High School in Lansdale four years ago in 2005. He has consistently been a ‘B’ student and decided to shift from nursing to international business during his college years. He plans to pursue this degree in international business and later transfer to a ‘temple’ from his community college.

He is bent on finding a job in the Philadelphia area so that he can use this job as a stepping stone to accomplish his dream of being able to travel all around the world and learn new things. In the next year, he has also made a resolve to work hard to acquire good grades to enable him to transfer to a better college. He also plans to invest in real estate when he has the resources and buy a luxurious house for his parents. David can be very shy at times and he also has difficulty in verbalizing his emotions. He is very close to his family and so fears that one day they will acquire health problems and eventually die.

INFERENTIAL SECTION: Based on the simplicity of David, and his very simple aspirations, I can easily say that he only seeks very ordinary dreams for himself and for the people around him. I think that his foremost desire would be to able to meet the basic requirements of a dignified life, hence, quite likely, in the next ten years he would be focused on building his own family, leading a good family life, maintaining a decent and good paying job, and being able to acquire residential property. Considering his Asian background, David has high hopes of moving to America.

Based on his past, I can say that moving to America is a very welcome change for him and that this significant event in his life has given him a more liberal and permissive view of things, enabling him to be more decisive, more open to risks, and change. His Asian background has also given him the propensity to view things based on the oriental belief of Karma, which means that according to his own personal philosophy, he thinks that the energy you put out to the universe, which could either be good or bad, is the same kind of energy that the universe will send back to you.

VALUE SECTION: As a person, my partner’s strengths are being able to maintain an open mind in all things and seek opportunities to try innovations. This mindset of his could be considered a strength because this will enable him to explore many new things in life and try out more opportunities; therefore making him a more rounded and more holistic person than he is now. David is very open to criticism and he believes that he can learn many new things from what other people say – as a strength, this can contribute to self-improvement as well as individual development.

David, on the other hand, can be very shy at times. This prevents him from vocalizing his ideas and making his thoughts known to other people. This, as his weakness, can cause him to become less satisfied of certain situations because he cannot verbalize what he wants to do about these things. He may also have problems with indicating what he truly wants in many cases because not all people can read other people’s minds. Treated the other way, this shyness can be converted into a strength if it is based on the concept of being mild-mannered and composed.

This particular attitude of his can work the other way and give other people the impression that he can control himself well and is not given to stray and baseless reactions and emotions. SELF-REFLECTION SECTION: As a interpersonal communicator, I believe that the most important skill that I have is the ability to listen and allow the other person to speak. Many things can be gleaned from how another person reacts to our questions and I am confident that I give due attention to these subtle and discreet reactions.

Another ability of mine that I consider a strength is my skill of being able to rephrase the question for clarity. This can be very helpful especially if the person I am talking to has difficulty in comprehension. I am also given to being lively and bubbly at times so this serves to keep the interest of the person I am talking to. I also tend to be very intimate when it comes to communication; maintaining eye contact, physical contact, and contact on a mental level.

I avoid being too emotional when communicating to maintain objectivity. In my conversation with David he found me to be very entertaining. On the other hand, my approach to communication can be very aggressive at times and this can intimidate the person I am talking to and cause them to shrink into themselves. My being very vocal and verbal can sometimes come across as intimidating. I tend to be very precise at times, and this can work against me by making me sound more like an investigator than a communicator.

To improve on my interpersonal communication skills, I believe that I need to expose myself to more real life situations and not treat encounters like they are opportunities to earn a good grade in the classroom. I have to learn the entertainment and knowledge value of communication and the various benefits that it can present to social relationships. Perhaps, I need to attend personality development seminars and workshops to make me more effective in interpersonal communications. To add to this, I also need to develop a certain degree of rapport with myself to be able to reflect this rapport to whoever I am communicating with.