Culture Differences

Distinct cultures do build us a different person. Lets start with education.From the day we are born, we had been told the dos and don'ts. Parents tend to teach us be humble to everyone; we are supposed to thank whoever that help us; respect the elders. Sometimes parents too form us an irresponsible person. For instance, how many parents will scold their children of littering? Or would they even ask them to pick up the rubbish and throw it to an appropriate container? The answer would be a NO. Do we thank to people like servant, waiter, toilet cleaner or even a taxi driver? Well, we don't, as a asian culture. We often thought that those people should serve us because those are their job and they get paid. As a western culture, they are likely to appreciate them even though their job level seemed to be low. P.S. in western countries, they get high payment =/.

Culture do shape us a different character too. A simple example will illustrate this. Imagine, well you don't have to, it happens in everyday in fact =/. A lecturer may ask us questions during lecturers, or he/she may ask us to write it on whiteboard, to show everyone the answers. You would observe the Asians put their heads down all the time and mumble, 'Not me please!'. Whereas you might found the Westerns answer the lecturer with details. They are more open-minded, you can say so. They don't think making a mistake is embarrassing, they eventually learn things from failures. Yet, Asians are afraid to lose.

Another issue that we can always see in Asia countries is grown up and married children used to live with their parents, especially the sons. This do not practise in western countries. In fact, they usually leave their parents at the age of 19 to 21. They will then have their home and life separately. They are more independent since they live with their own in a young age. In contrast, Asian parents still think that the age of 19 is young and immature to live in their own. It is obvious when you compare a 19 year old Malaysian and an Europian. The Europian is far more mature in both mindsets and characters.

Yesterday, I saw an article posted up in internet and it says that London Evening Standard(London newspaper) apologizes to the public by pasting slogans like 'Sorry for being negative', 'Sorry for taking you for granted', 'Sorry for being complacent', 'Sorry for being predictable' at everywhere. Londoners can find all these posters all along TUBE(the trains), on the sides of buses, wall and so on. According to UK news, the new owner of London Evening Standard is trying to reconstruct their readership because recent research shows that Londoners no longer feel positive to their paper and they failed the capital's needs. Full stop. After reading this, instead of evaluating whether this action is neccesary, do think of whether this happens in Malaysia. We can hardly see people apologize in local. Well, is that true that we don't trained to apologize?

This is an picture of the posters that shows on the sides of undergrounds.

In conclusion, cultures and custom are not only stucture a person's character, perceptions, and as well as mindset. Usually we can't compare which of these cultures are way better than another. But it will be better if we learn the down and positive sides from each other. As I mentioned above, we should learn to apologize to whoever, whatever and wherever.