Evaluating Intercultural Behavior

Five years ago, when my elder cousin and I were walking along the street at Chinatown, a Westerner tourist approached my pretty cousin to take a photo with him as he wanted to take a photograph with the locals. Initially my cousin revealed her unwillingness to take the photo to me as she did not wish to take it with strangers. However, after convinced by me that it would be fast, my cousin went on to take a photograph with the Westerner. When taking the photograph, the Westerner put both of his hands on my cousin’s waist and I saw that my cousin’s face turned white at once. To make the situation worse, he gave my cousin a hug to thank her for the photo before leaving. That was when my cousin finally yelled at him, “Hey! Don’t touch me!” The Westerner tourist was very much caught by surprise due to the huge reaction by my cousin. My cousin and I eventually walked away without hearing him out.

Given that the Westerner tourist had no hidden agenda, clearly, the situation here is due to the difference in cross cultural non-verbal communication style. Westerners are brought up to be more open-minded and straight-forward and the Asians are generally more conservative and less direct. This forms a kind of cross cultural communication difference between Westerners and Asians and thus, in turn, creates the difficulties in understanding each other which leads to the existence of misunderstandings between each other like the given scenario. Firstly, the direct approach by the Westerner was thought to be bold by my cousin who is conservative. Asians generally do not have body interaction with people whom they do not know, except for handshake, thus the Westerner had scared my cousin off with the intimate action, as seen by my cousin.

However, to solve the problem of difference in culture, understanding of each others’ cultures is important. With globalization, information of the cultural background of the countries is accessible on the Internet, books, etc. Should the Westerner have known more about the culture of Asians, he would not have scared off my cousin, leaving her with the thought of him trying to take advantage of her!

Potential Research Project Topic

As a Chemistry student who will not go through Industrial Attachment (IA) during the course of study in NUS, I hoped to work as an intern in areas which are related to my field of studies during my last vacation so that I could gain some hands-on practical experience before graduation. It was tough to find a science-related temporary job through job agencies or from newspapers, hence I went to the NUS eJob Service website to search for related internships available for application. However, I realised that there were very few job postings looking for science undergraduates and most were seeking for engineering, IT and business students.

From what I observed, Engineering students have to undergo IA during their course of study in NUS as it is a requirement for graduation. This is beneficial to the Engineering students in their job search upon graduation as they would be equipped with prior working experience related to their field of studies. Although Business students do not go through IA, there is the NUS Biz Career Service, from the School of Business which provides a dedicated suite of professional career-related services to the Business undergraduates and MBA students. What about the Science students?


(Screen shot of full-time job listing provided by NUS eJob Services)

As mentioned, job listings in the science field provided by the NUS eJob Service are relatively few, compared to other fields. Thus, in contrast, Science students who wish to take up a full-time job or internship in the science field have to be more independent in their job search. They are also more likely to face difficulties since, unlike the Engineering students, most of the Science students in NUS do not have any hands-on experience from Industrial Attachment and Internship (with the exceptional of students from certain disciplines such as Applied Chemistry).

In view of this, the general research question on this issue would be: Do the Science students from NUS feel that there is sufficient internship or job opportunities offered by the school? A survey would be carried out to find out how many of the Science students wish to work in profession in science field, whether they feel the services offered by the NUS Career Services Centre and the various departments from Science Faulty fulfil their needs in job search and applications. Lastly, the survey would investigate whether they are in favour of the establishment of a similar career centre as NUS Biz Career Service, which caters specially to NUS Science students to provide them help and support in their internship or job search and to provide the kind of services they wish to attain from this career centre. To meet the objective of the research study of establishing a career centre within Science Faculty, the research report would be submitted to the NUS Faculty of Science, Vice Dean of Graduate programme as a student's feedback for consideration of establishing a Science Career Centre.