Blog Post 4

People from different countries have different cultural values and these differences may lead to misunderstandings or even conflict when people from different cultures. Hence, it is important that we understand the other person’s culture or learn to be empathetic towards different cultures in order to be better prepared to communicate more effectively and avoid intercultural conflict. The intercultural scenario that I have chosen is one in which I was in a foreign land and had difficulty communicating with a local.

I visited Japan in May this year and this was one of the main incidences in which our lack of comprehension of the Japanese language presented itself as a real handicap. There was no actual conflict in this situation but a certain degree of embarrassment and unnecessary stress for both parties could have been avoided if my family and I had better understood the Japanese culture.

I was exploring a small shopping centre with my parents and we decided to buy some groceries on our way back to the hotel. We could not find any supermarkets so we decided to ask a Japanese lady who was shopping with her daughter. We asked her in English and both of them could barely understand what we were looking for. Next, they replied in incoherent English which led to our difficulty in understanding them. Hence, the most distinct barrier to communication in this situation was clearly language. This could have been avoided if I had brought a Japanese phrasebook with me to aid in my communication with the locals.

Following that, my family spent some time repeating what we were looking for and the Japanese lady gave us a general direction after conferring with her daughter in Japanese several times. It was clear that we could not understand each other throughout the few minutes but the lady tried her best to help us while struggling with our language and smiling sheepishly all the time. She only apologized and stopped trying to help us when we thanked her and went on our way. It would have saved both parties a significant amount of effort and stress if I had better understood the Japanese culture and realized that they are not accustomed to saying ‘no’ even when they cannot help you. Therefore, I could have thanked them for their assistance sooner when I realized that they simply could not understand us. At that point, I merely thought that the Japanese lady was very helpful and patient with us and did not realize that she may have felt at a lost but just could not bring herself to tell us she could not help.

One more point was that the lady gave us a bow when she apologized but we did not bow back but gave a slight nod of the head and gave her our thanks. In hindsight, it would have been more polite if we were to adopt their custom and had returned the bow.

In conclusion, it is important to be aware of the different cultural norms and values in order to communicate better with a person from a different cultural background and avoid conflict as we can better understand them. By the way, we failed to locate the supermarket that day by the way.

Blog Post 3

I have a few Muslim friends and it was after they shared their opinion with me that I realized that there are too few stalls around NUS canteens that serve Halal food. Taking the Science canteen for example, there are effectively two stalls that do serve Halal food and they are namely the Malay and Indian food stall. I am Catholic so there is no restriction to my choice of food and I already feel bored of the various stalls there are at Science. Therefore, I would patronize the canteens of the different faculties on different days of the week. I cannot imagine how restricted the Muslim students in school must feel. Fortunately, Megabites has been added which provides some variety to the Science canteen, but Science is considered lucky as other faculties have just one or two Halal food stalls.

One might argue that there are not that many Muslim students anyway so we do not need that many Halal stalls, but I beg to differ and I feel that even though they may be a minority group, they deserve to have a wider variety of food than what is currently available. Besides, many types of food that the Chinese eat can be made Halal as long as it does not contain pork and if a little effort is put into purchasing Halal meat. On the other extreme, I am not proposing that every stall in NUS canteens be made Halal as that is not feasible because many Chinese and Japanese dishes contain pork.

Therefore, my research question would be “Are there enough Halal food stalls in NUS canteens?”

An attitudinal survey is necessary to assess if the general consensus amongst the students (both Muslims and non-Muslims) is that there should be more Halal food stalls in the canteen of the respective faculty that they frequent the most. Both Muslims and non-Muslims have to be included in the survey to get a fair representation of how our student population feels as the two groups may have contrasting opinions about the issue. Once the consensus of the majority opinion is compiled from the attitudinal surveys, our findings can then be shown to the Office of Estate and Development in NUS to propose for the introduction of more Halal food stalls.