Intercultural conflict

"Describe an intercultural scenario and interpret it in the light of your understanding of cultural norms."


As Singapore brings in more foreign workers, the problem of intercultural conflicts between Singaporeans and foreign workers will surely arise. I had one such bad experience with those foreign workers last week.

I was returning to PGP on Sunday night at 8.30pm. I was going to take a bus at the harbour front centre bus stop, which had many (at least 30) foreign construction workers there. When the bus I was going to take finally arrived, all the workers rushed to the bus, shouting some words along the way and creating a din. As I didn't expect all the workers to take the same bus as me, I did not run earlier, resulting in me standing right at the back of the long queue.

Then the bus driver opened the back door for passengers to alight. However, seeing the back door opened, those workers rushed to board by the back door, obstructing alighting passengers and avoiding payment of bus fare. This totally shocked me. I felt that those workers are very inconsiderate and uncivilised.

Then as the front door of the bus opened to allow boarding, those workers squeezed and pushed. A Singaporean Malay lady trapped between them found herself losing balance and almost fell. Then she shouted, "Can you all stop pushing?" However, those workers ignored her (I wondered if they understand English). But the bus driver came to her rescue when he heard her shout. He stood up, finger-pointed those workers right in their face and use a stern tone to scold them. Another reason for his scolding was that those workers did not tap their ez-link card upon boarding the bus.

For those who had boarded the bus, they refused to move in. Instead they crowded at the card tapping machine, preventing more people from boarding the bus. And they started chatting happily there. So once again, the bus driver had to ask them to "be a gentleman and move in". Once again, I wondered if they understand English as they did not cooperate.

So the bus driver closed the door and drove off. I could not board the bus and had to wait for the next one. But within a few minutes, a big crowd of workers gathered at the bus stop again. When the second bus arrived, I was smart to run after the bus with them. To board the bus, I had to push my way through just like them.

When I finally secured a seat on the bus, I reflected on their behaviour during the journey. These foreign workers came from a land with high population density. In their country, they had to squeeze and push to board a bus. They had grown up in such a culture. When they came to Singapore, they brought the culture along with them.

However, Singapore does not have such a culture and many Singaporeans feel disturbed by their rudeness (the workers do not feel it's rude as it is their culture). This is only one of the intercultural conflicts between Singaporeans and foreign workers. Together with other conflicts, there are a lot of friction between locals and foreign workers. This explains why Serangoon residents are against converting a school into a hostel for those workers.

Not exposed to the cultures of the workers, locals do not accept them in the society. Not understanding why locals do not accept them (because they see nothing wrong with their cultures), the foreign workers will not be able to change their behaviour and integrate into our society.

I feel that the government should do something to solve this problem. Our construction industry is heavily reliant on those foreign workers. They should be taught the Singapore culture (if there is one), things they should and should not do in public. Only when they have adapted our culture can we live harmoniously in this society.

Survey Research Project

"Describe an issue or problem that you would like to research."


I am interested to do a research on increasing hostel fee in NUS. For the benefit of those who do not know, monthly hostel fee was $240 for the academic year 07/08. From 08/09, it will be $300; $360 from 09/10; and finally $400 from 10/11. With an increase of $60 (without GST) per month every year, the hike in hostel fee may put a huge burden on many students, especially foreign students and Singaporean students whose homes are too far away from NUS.

The Office of Students' Affairs stated that the rise is due to higher maintanence cost and it has been a long time that they increase hostel fees. No evident help from OSA was offered to students with financial difficulties.

The hypotheses is that many NUS students cannot cope financially with the hike in hostel fees and therefore, they decided not to stay in campus. The objective of this research study is to determine if the increase in hostel fees makes students unwilling to stay on campus.

A survey is required to study this topic because we need to know how the students feel, what they are thinking so as to come out with solutions to overcome their stated difficulties. As the target group is NUS students, emails will be sent for them to participate in our online survey. Face-to-face interviews will also be conducted to gather more insights.

Possible survery questions to ask include:
1. Do you stay in campus now?
2. Did you stay in campus for the past academic year(s)?
3. Why did/did not you move out of hostel?
4. Are you able to cope with the increased hostel fees?

The objective of the final report is to inform OSA the unhappiness (if any) of the students and possible solutions to this problem. Besides OSA, potential readers include NUS students and companies offering off-campus hostels.