Hi guys, we're back to blogging once again! (:
This week, we have learnt about intercultural interactions and how people from different continents differ from each other (especially how westerners are different from those in the east).
This is one little example of a intercultural interaction I have with my physics tutor. He's from Australia, and he is over 50 years old. He's a good teacher, and is very open. Once in class, he suddenly shared about his personal life, about his younger brother. He started reminiscing about his time spent with his brother, even though his brother lost an arm. Then, he started tearing, and we were all quiet, and didn't know what to do. I think the whole class is caught off guard.
With us being Asians, it is already a rare sight to see teachers sharing something so personal to their students. When he started tearing, I was more surprised than anything else, as I would have never imagined it coming. Here is this white-haired Caucasian tearing in front of his class. Yes, a guy. I'm stereotypical. We don't get to see guys tear, what more my own teacher! In the Asian perspective, cultural norm is that guys don't shed tears because it shows weakness, and less masculine to be so emotional.
However, when you see the situation from his perspective, we would understand that he is just being himself, without the restrain of expressing himself freely to his students. He probably would not bother what our opinions of him are (low context, if I didn’t get it wrong). And also, to him, he is not raised up in an environment with such values, and hence he would not have the consciousness to stay away from sharing too much of his personal life with us.
It was indeed an interesting experience, in which I get to see how different Asians and Caucasians behave.
