After a meeting with a reseller my boss highlighted my first cultural mistake when I accepted a business card with just one hand, apparently a faux pas in Asia. What I should have done is receive the card with 2 hands, look at it and place it down to the side. In addition, as an extra piece of info, you should certainly not write on business cards and most certainly not write in red as red is a colour reserved for death and considered unlucky. Names of the deceased were apparently written, painted, or engraved in red on gravestones and plaques in the village centers.
The idea of wealth here is the opposite of what is is in Europe. Being pale in Asia is considered a sign of wealth, the idea being that people with tanned skin do manual work instead of office work and therefore earn less. Women even go to the extent of buying makeup to tone down their skin colour and Westerners are seen to be well off purely for their pale skin! Having spoken to some younger Singaporeans that ideology however is changing. It is now more common to see tanned youngsters, the thinking being that they are sporty, look after themselves and can afford to have a lavish outdoor lifestyle. Interesting to hear though as all my time in Europe I have wanted to be tanned !
The work environment is different, I have noticed that my colleagues prefer to send emails to our boss rather than bothering her directly. I, if I have a question just turn around and ask, maybe the Spanish directness rubbing off on me, but I get the impression this is just not done. It appears the preference is to send emails rather than disturbing the boss. I also feel I need to tone down my personality a bit to conform to the Asian's shyness. Everyone is very meek and mild, tending to agree with what others say rather than challenging opinion. In the end I feel the Singaporeans will be get their own way however on the face of it everyone is agreeing with everyone else, everything is fine on the surface even though it clearly is not. To give you an example I sat in a meeting and it was all process driven there were no new ideas, no creative suggestions and ultimately the meeting was vague at best. Having spoken to various people about this topic it seems this is not uncommon and the Singaporeans struggle to be creative however ask them to do something specificly and they will carry it out to perfection. I will continue to blog about this topic because its interesting to me. I feel if some of the people I have met in Singapore worked in Europe they would be eaten to death within hours by our directness, challenging, competitive behavior.
A quick piece about eating which I agree with. During meal times the Singaporeans cover their mouth when they talk to you, even if they haven't anything in their mouth. Just a small observation I have never experienced in Europe.
Singaporeans don't move out until they are married so in some cases can live at home for the best part of their life. I would see that Europeans would see this as odd but here but as the island is small it is possible to access any part of the island using public transport in a relatively easy commute so no need to really move out if you are off to university for example.
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