Evaluating Intercultural Behaviors

Three years ago, my cousin was invited to attend one of her Singaporean friends’ wedding dinner. The wedding dinner was celebrated at one of the five stars hotels at downtown Singapore. It was the first wedding dinner she was ever invited in Singapore. The bride was her office colleague. She did not make any confirmation with the bride when she received the wedding invitation card as she thought she did not need to do so. On the wedding day, when she arrived the hotel, the usher asked her to go to the reception and get the table number .When my cousin checked at the reception, she found that her name was not in the list. She was very embarrassed and did not know how to react about it. Luckily, the wedding coordinator who was also her colleague helped her to get a seat.
From this wedding, she realized everybody has to confirm the attendance for wedding invitation. Back to our country, Myanmar, we do not practice it. People do not have to confirm and they usually bring along family members to attend the wedding ceremony. Singaporeans use to hold wedding dinner in a restaurant or hotel. This might probably be the reason why we need to confirm our attendances as the cost is expensive. In Myanmar, people celebrates wedding at both city hall and hotels but the wedding cost is not as expensive as in Singapore.
My cousin also brought a porcelain tea pot and cups set as a wedding gift for her colleague. But at the wedding, she found nobody brought such presents and all of them gave red packets. In Myanmar, we have the culture of giving wedding presents and rarely give money. From this incident, we can see the intercultural differences between the Singaporean and the Myanmese on the wedding celebration. I believe there are many more intercultural differences on other matters. Therefore, to communicate effectively with everyone, we should always observe, explore and understand different intercultural behaviors. And I believe this will help us avoid the misunderstandings and miscommunications.

Potential Research Project Proposal

There are four internal shuttle bus services A (A1, A2), B, C and D running on campus. Bus service (BTC) is running to and fro Kent Ridge campus and Bukit Timah Campus (law school). These internal shuttle buses provide students and outsiders free transports services on campus so that they can reach their destinations within short time. However, many students encountered problems of reaching the destinations in time during peak hours. This happened to those students who need to attend consecutive class at the other faculty. Most of the buses are crowded even though the bus frequency range is short. Sometimes students even have to stand on the bus steps and take bus in order to attend the next class in time.

For this matter, we need to conduct a survey on NUS students to find out the feasibilie ways to fit the matter.

The hypothesis is “most of the students face the crowded shuttle bus problem “.

The objective is to find out the feasible ways to fit the crowded bus service problem for students’ conveniences.

The feasible solutions can be submitted to the Office of Student Affairs or School Estate Development Office for implementation.