Friday, November 7, 2008
Interpersonal Relationship
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Cultural Imperialism
On the ride home after school last evening, I couldn't stop wondering about Singapore's identity. We're such a young but immeasurably successful nation. Within forty years, we developed and emerged to be one of the key resounding players in the global market and had been promoted as a First World nation.
I gave some thoughts about our cultural identity. As we know it, Singapore is a amalgam of Chinese, Malay, Indian and European immigrants. In the last ten years, however, Singapore saw, and is continuing to see, a vast number of foreigners to enter Singapore to seek a better living here. We have the Westerners, the Japanese, the Koreans, the Arabs, the Thais, the Filipinos, the Indonesians, the Indians, the Chinese (and the list goes on). Singapore thus, achieves a significant degree of cultural diffusion with its unique combination of these ethnic groups which has given her a rich mixture of diversity.
I feel that, because of the continuous migration, Singapore’s culture has been greatly imperialised. Cultural imperialism is defined as the practice of promoting, distinguishing, separating, or artificially injecting the culture or language of one nation into another. Ms Hui prompted us to think about the relationship between cultural imperialism and media globalisation.
I guess it makes sense for a thriving economy like Singapore to be immersed in the process of globalisation. We have nothing but our people, our creative and innovative ideas and our skills. We invest in anything we can lay our hands on. We bring foreign talents into our country and they, in return, inject their cultures and traditions to us. We built up on the latest technology and are up to date with big players such as America and Japan. With such developments, we have greater access to media products such as magazines, tv programmes, internet and so on.
And such, it is typical that we will be highly inclined to adapt the different cultures that are presented to us. Our people, especially the young, absorb the media products to a great degree. This is to a greater extent true with respect to “Americanism”, as they are the dominant players in the mass media such as film, news, comics, and television hit shows. This is largely due to the fact that they are more financially powerful to invest in good productions. Singapore purchase these products for entertainment purposed. In return, the American culture has been imposed onto Singaporeans. We have thus become more liberated and “westernized”.
I guess we are a living example of cultural imperialism at work. haha!
Friday, October 10, 2008
Culture Differences
Broadly but simply put, "culture" refers to a community with which we share common experiences that shape the way we understand the world. Most of the time, culture is the root of communication challenges.
Below is a clip in which we see the cultural differences between a group of Sudanese and the Americans. The Sudan boys obviously know about the American culture through forms of media such as magazines and television shows. However, they still experienced the "culture shock" when they arrived in Pittsburg, USA. They do not even know what butter is and mistakenly took it as a small bar of soap or even cheese. This shows the different lifestyle the Sudanese and Americans lead.
You can also see how the Sudanese have difficulties adapting to the new lifestyle. They cannot relate the significance of Santa Clause to the Birth of Christ during Christmas. However, just like Americans, the Sudanese also want their rights to freedom and education. It shows that while there are stark differences between culturs, the values of humanities (of each culture groups) also coincide with one another.
Learning and understanding the ways in which various cultural groups relate to each other is the key to opening channels for cross-cultural communication. Becoming more aware of cultural differences, as well as exploring cultural similarities, can help individuals communicate with others more effectively.
So what is your take on cultural differences?
Source--> http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/player/places/countries-places/sudan/cultural-differences-ggtu.html?source=pincl
Saturday, October 4, 2008
Beauty In The Breakdown
Let Go by Frou Frou
I am communicating with you. I am communicating with you through this song. What do you think I am trying to tell you?
Sunday, September 28, 2008
The Singapore F1 Grand Prix - Putting us on the World Map
I believe that the event being held in Singapore marks the beginning of an era where Singapore has redefined itself as a global tourism hub. With the emergence of Dubai and Macau as new "super-powers" in the tourism industry, Singapore has also now seemingly communicated its masterplan to become their South-East Asian counterpart. The successful and highly exciting F1 night race event, which coupled with the upcoming casinos and integrated resort, looks set to propel Singapore as a choice tourist destination for the affluent globetrotters due to its central location within Asia. This has been helped by the accessibility to transport links, multi-racial and multi-lingual nature of our country.
What remains to be seen though is how our country develops to accomodate the negative externalities that will come with being such a prestigious tourist hub. Can Singapore also then communicate to the skeptics within our own population that there are substantial positive externalities that might be reaped?
Monday, September 15, 2008
The Fall of Lehman Brothers
Many economists have been lamenting about the fate of Lehman Brothers since the first sign of the economic downturn in the first half of the year. After a long drawn back and forth saga, its spokesperson today announced that Lehman Brothers is set to file for bankruptcy in order to protect the value of its remaining assets. Other victims of the crisis include investment banks Merrill Lynch and Bear Stearns, each of these being bought out by Bank of America and J.P. Morgan respectively.
We only now begin to appreciate the full extent and impact of the subprime crisis on the economy, with three former banking powerhouses disappearing from the street in the span of a year. Nothing like this has ever been witnessed in history and that goes to say alot about the damage effected by the subprime mortgage fiasco.
It all came about when banks and other mortgage brokers decided to securitize mortgage loans with poor credit ratings (high risk of default) and sell these structured investment products to individual and institutional clients. The structural problems inherent within the US banking system were then exposed as these re-packaged products were given ratings of AAA (high investment grade) by rating agencies such as Moody's or Fitch. Therefore, how they could substantiate such ratings will always remain a mystery for most of us, up till now, when we realise that the fees paid to these rating agencies were from the people responsible for coming up with these investment products themselves.
We also notice that the widespread dissemination of these products to investors all over the world has led to another huge problem of tracking the extent of losses. This has led to continuous speculation that there are further losses and write-downs to be witnessed, and this consequently caused a lack of investor sentiment throughout the globe.
I believe we have yet to see the final act of this spectacular fall-out from the subprime crisis and there will be further casualties in the pipeline (AIG?, Wachovia?, Washington Mutual?). The Federal Reserve will stop bailing out institutions who are poor capital positions for political as well as, economic reasons and hence we will indeed see more blood being shed on the streets.
In such a state of economic emergency, i think we should continue to save more money and invest it in relatively safe asset classes such as 1-yr governement bonds etc to protect our capital and earn slightly above interest rates. This will ensure we still manage to grow our wealth, as little as it may seem, slowly but steadily.
So what are your views on the latest world economy?
Sources: Channel News Asia, 15th September 2008
BBC News UK, 15th September 2008
Bloomberg.com, 15th September 2008
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Local Movie Review - Leap Years (3.5/5.0)
1) I was working.
2) I wanted to watch it with my boyfriend (who was then still studying in London)
And so, when my COM101 project mates were brainstorming on a movie for our project, I took the opportunity given and suggested this particular movie for us to analyse and critic.
Despite not being chosen to present our findings on "The Leap Years", it is definitely one of the best locally produced films I've ever watched and have thus decided to mention it here. The entire story is based on a Catherine Lim (famous local author) story. And I find it interesting that the producers had cleverly injected a confluence of cultural and social concepts to emphasize and define an abstract concept such as love (as perceived by the female protoganist--and later on, by the audience).
An illustration of this point was when the local custom of Chinese fortune-telling was used at the start of the movies as the preferred method to convey Eastern idea of love and match-making. This was later met with quotes about love and affection from Western philosophers and writers such as Shakespeare. Therefore, this East meets West concept about the show really impressed me as it truly captured the integration of the many different cultures and social norms within the Singaporean society, thus showcasing our uniquely varied "identity".
Monday, September 1, 2008
Will Hurricane Gustav blow down barriers to humanitarian aid?
Looking at images of the 2 million people scurrying for their lives as hurricane Gustav approaches is not a pretty sight. They have been urged to leave their material belongings and just take whatever is necessary for survival. We in singapore, are safe from these natural disasters, and have an adbundance of tangible or material goods throughout of entire lifetime. We should however never take this sense of security for granted. Instead, we should also move out of our comfort zone voluntarily just as these people have been contrived to, and lend a helping hand wherever it may be needed. Be it donating clothes, food or its monetary equivalents, there needs to be a requisitely swift response to help our brothers and sisters in need.
A better world can only be reached through reaching out.
Source: Business Times, 1st September 2008