My Singapore Sling: Culture Shock
I’m thoroughly enjoying my newfound home. At least, my home as it is to a visitor accepting hospitality more impeccable than The Shangri-La Hotel (believe me, I’m the expert after spending just a few hours there). The sensation of utter acceptance into the rhythm of domestic life here has me in awe and each day I feel myself becoming more and more of a local, without adopting the terrible creole Singlish. But don’t worry, ‘adapting’ to the way of life here didn’t happen over night; it took a few solid weeks of feeling utterly confused and amazed before the whur of noise, sight and sound began to take a cohesive form. It was well worth the wait.
Despite the rewards yielded so far, I have no intentions in staying here for the long yards of life - it’s merely a detour from the instability of life in Sydney for an even more unstable life experience. Except that this time, I’m dwelling on the outskirts of Asia, so young in spirit but old in tradition and forever welcoming to my insatiable urge for culture shock. I have no doubt that I’ll be carrying more than just a few trinket goods in my luggage home. It seems that I have just begun to scratch the surface of this surreality.
To describe my feelings here beyond the thrill of creature comforts is not so easy. Imagine a freshly dried canvas so eager for its watercolour strokes, a lucky bamboo shoot escaping its vase or a small patch of fertile soil. It’s good three hours behind Sydney and more often a ride on a civilized expressway so aptly named, for it is entwined with lush greenery that makes it impossible to decide where the city ends and the jungle begins.
Strangely enough, until I took a ride in a taxi in the passenger seat, each journey seemed more like a common tag-along than a full-fletched adventure. But taking a bus is far more interesting because you are able to observe the inhabitants of the eerie city-jungle hybrid in their native behaviour - shopping, eating, conversing in broken English, Malay and Mandarin sentences and shopping, yet again. No wonder the shopping centres are open until 10pm everyday.
And it’s here that I offer a heartfelt thank you to Jasmin for her immense patience with me so far. My most profound learning experience so far is cross-cultural communication and not in the superficial sense of language barriers alone. Communicating with Singapore’s residence, whether in English or otherwise, is largely based on body language, intuition and vocal tone. I never need to be told twice in Tamil, ‘Don’t take pictures of my shop’ or scolded in Cantonese, ‘You Westerners like to squeeze everything [for quality assurance], don’t you?’. Sometimes half of the fun of communicating here is living in blissful ignorance that you could rightly well be spoken about a thousand curses and still remain oblivious. The sword swings both ways because you would never know who sings your praises.
When I hit the budget airlines to Thailand in a week’s time, it will be a renewed cycle of culture shock that I am all to ready to confront with good humour and perseverance. The most fulfilling and interesting certainty about human behaviour is our universal desire toward caring for those we love most and forever making an effort to get to know strangers before we label them as good or bad. But without an equally open-minded conception of foreign culture, we’re all doomed to miscommunication and dissent, right?
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