Evaluating Intercultural Behaviour

Recently, one of my relatives brought her American boyfriend, John, to my aunt’s place for steamboat. Instead of asking John if he wanted to eat using a bowl or plate, my uncle said “Do you eat plate or bowl?” As a result, John was confused. My uncle then tried to use actions to explain what he meant. However, the misunderstanding was cleared when another relative explained what my uncle actually meant. In Singapore, the use of Singlish is very common. However, when it is used in conversing with foreigners, it can result in ineffective communication as the message is not brought out clearly. In this scenario, I think John was probably puzzled why my uncle asked him whether he wanted to eat a plate or a bowl.

Later, when my uncle offered to scoop food for John, John requested for the chunky part of the chicken. This time, my uncle was the one who was puzzled. He did not know what John meant by “chunky”. In this context, when John said he wanted the chunky part of the meat, he meant meaty part of the chicken. Slangs and usage of words differ in different countries and since the word “chunky” is not really widely used in Singapore, my uncle could not get the message John was trying to convey. Also, as everyone was using chopsticks, John also tried using them but was rather clumsy with it. This was probably because Americans normally use fork and spoon to eat and many types of food are eaten using their hands. Hence, it could be difficult for John to use chopsticks to eat as he was not accustomed to them.

This dinner showed me how people of different cultures have different ways of saying and doing things. Hence, I feel that in order for effective communication, we have to consider our audience to ensure that our message is clear.

Potential Research Project Topic

Presently, there are two different types of MRT trains in Singapore. One has rather wide seats and the other, narrow seats. I feel that the trains with the wide seats allow fewer people to sit down and the trains with the narrower seats are sometimes too small. When I discussed this issue with my friend, she felt the same way too. During the peak hours, the MRT trains are very crowded and I wish that there could have been more seats to allow less people to stand and more people to enter the train. This leads me to a few questions:

1) Is there any way for the seats to accommodate the maximum number of people?
2) How can the MRT maximize the number of seats without compromising on the comfort of the passengers?

These questions made me think whether the partitioning of the MRT train seats should be removed. Hence, my general research question would be “Do you think that the MRT trains can accommodate more seated passengers with the removal of the seats’ partitioning?”

In countries like Japan, the train seats have no partitions and through my observation, there seems to be no problem with this issue. The passengers will shift themselves to accommodate the most number of people sitting down. However, I am uncertain if this concept will work well in Singapore. Hence, an attitudinal survey would be needed to get the opinions of the general public in Singapore on whether this idea is feasible here. Furthermore, with the survey results, we can feedback to SMRT regarding this issue.