After my GCE ‘A’ level
examination, my parents decided to bring the whole family to Australia for
vacation. I was delighted to visit a foreign country and experience an entirely
new culture there and also to pamper myself after the arduous ‘A’ level examinations.
We arrived in Brisbane and I was
immediately taken aback by what I experienced there. The Australians generally
were a very friendly bunch of people. Some of them would smile at you if you
walked past them. They would even strike up a conversation with you on the bus
even though they have never met you before. I vividly remembered on the first
day, we had trouble finding our way back to the hotel and we requested help from
this friendly Australian man with his wife. Not only did they showed us the
direction to take but also painstakingly walked with us along the direction for
a few hundred meters, to make sure we did not get lost.
This was a culture shock to me and my family
because having lived in Singapore my whole life; I was so used to the Singaporean
culture, where you get the impression that everyone is thinking of themselves.
Singaporeans can be rather cynical as well and hence striking up a conversation
with random people on the bus and going all out to help a stranger, were surely
gestures which I have never come across before in my life in Singapore. In
general, I observed that the main difference in culture between Singapore and
Australia was that Singapore’s society tends to be more individualistic while
Australia was more of a collective society. In Singapore, having been drilled
from young to be competitive in everything we do, we lost our basic ability to
be compassionate towards others. Every other person we encounter is like a competitor
to us in this never ending rat race. Hence a culture of individualism arises,
where simple things like a stranger asking for help could be perceived as a case
of someone trying to con another person. There is always this default mind set among Singaporeans that every other person is always trying to get the better of you
or that they are trying to get ahead of you, whether it is in terms of studies,
work or even getting ahead in a queue for chicken rice!
If there is one thing I have learnt
from my vacation trip in Australia is that different countries have differing
cultures and these cultures are shaped by the people as a whole. Given
Singapore’s competitive culture and fast paced lifestyle, it is natural for
Singaporeans to exhibit such behaviours. However in the midst of staying competitive,
we should not lose our basic moral compass and get ahead of others at the
expense of disadvantaging them.
