Week 6 - 7 and I-friend reflections.

What do you often misunderstand in expressing non-verbal expressions to friends of different cultures?

It sometimes happen as UIAM is a diverse community. Some words may carry bad impression but not in other countries. 

Is it hard to verbally communicate with people from different culture using alien language from your own?

It is hard for those who do not speak English and I faced this outside of university.

Culturally speaking, people in your culture speak in high volume with each other, why so?

It is not our culture, in the first place. it is a bad habit. This high volume is spoken to only our close friends, and it exists in any culture, not only in Arabic culture.

Week 5 lectures, and I-friend reflections.

What is your understanding on cultural identity?

Cultural identity is determined by experience of it's citizens.

What is the impact of new media (Facebook, Twitter) on different aspects of intercultural communications.

These media facilitate us to understand other countries and cultures.

Our I-friend.

Introducing to you, our I-friend, El Fadl Boudaia, from Algeria. Adam met him while they were playing futsal together. 

1. What do you like about Malaysia?

- Everything is perfect, the environment, the people, infrastructure and so on.

2. What is your favourite food?

- Nasi goreng USA

3. What interesting places you want to visit in Malaysia if you have the chance?

- Langkawi Islan, Perhentian Island.

4. What is the best memory you have experience in Malaysia?

- Kindness of people, sometimes he felt embarrassed with the kindness of Malaysians.

5. What are the differences in culture aspects between your country and Malaysia?

- Malaysia has a lot of culture since it consists of three races, and religions too. It is like the gathering place of Asian culture.

#TrivialTuesday; Reflecting on Week 4 Lectures.

Therapeutic at times. Find the translations online and read it.

HE WAS BAPTISE!

This week's lectures reminded us of the former Indonesian President, Abdurrahman Wahid or Gus Dur. 

Why?

We were talking about cultural ethnocentrism and outgroup or ingroup bias. Humans have put themselves under the possessions of groups, clubs, parties and other forms of gathering where people of the same interest assemble together for a purpose or two. It is hard to accept and practice 'universal love' as shown by Gus Dur, transcending religion, culture and ethnicity. Gud Dur is an ultimate example of people embracing 'universal love', some might say excessively embrace, but above all, his approach to love and understanding is nothing new. Islam teaches us to love all we can, assume the best as often as we can, without jeopardising our Tawhid. One needs to know his/her worldview and hold dear to it. 

Here are some of then net's most controversial videos on Gus Dur (because the internet culture is an amazing culture, you can find anything here and judge others freely). And some note before you proceed to the videos, know and correct your freaking worldview and don't be a Salafi and judge bluntly. Thanks.

So enjoy everyone. 

#TrivialTuesday; Reflecting on Week 3 Lectures.

Sang Kiai, 2013

Commenting on this week's lectures regarding Values, Beliefs and Norms in societies, we would like to comment on what had been mentioned in class as 'hierarchal' values of Malaysian society or in other words, Malaysians are of a high power distance culture. Social hierarchy is widely accepted and practice in the Malay Archipelago, even before the introduction of Islam to its people. Pre-Islamic era of the archipelago witnessed blind allegiance to priest and Sultans or Rajas in exchange for salvation and security. Those who have the money and power were respected because of money and power and those who are on top, were respected because they were on the above social pyramid structure. When Islam came to the archipelago, it brought with it reasons and logic to make sense of the cultural values of the people in the archipelago back then. 

We view the high power distance culture in this region as the manifestation of justice, or al-Adl, which, have been elaborated further by S.M.N al-Attas in his works, as putting something in its proper place. If a person, or a group of person should be treated above others, and not equal, due to his/her stature in the society, then be it. The Sultan was or still treated with respect, due to their perceived roles as a khalifah, or a leader of the society. With such roles, gives out massive responsibilities, hence, he should be put above others, but below Allah (as the ultimate sovereign), where he belongs.

Whatever it is, we're totally against cultural relativism, because the present is dead, the past is very much alive. Do we have this type of thinking 100 years ago? We'll leave you with this movie, and think about high-low context culture and power distance while watching this. 

Reflecting on my culture.

by: Abdullah Afiq

I was intrigue with the statements made by Mr. Ricaldi on being curious and always asking questions when it comes to culture. In the perspective of Mr. Ricaldi, I think it is interesting for him to get the opportunity to travel the globe and experience all sorts of culture and human behaviour, which at the same time will made it easy for him to do all the thinking and asking. Narrowing the scope down a little bit, as a Malay man living in an urban, mostly urban area, the pop/ hipster culture and Westernisation has really, really taken its toll on the youth and me in particular. It is hard nowadays to find a piece of an existing real 'Malay' settlement in urban areas, even in kampungs, as waves of modernity has swept everything stretching beyond the lines of our suburbs.

With that in perspective, we should find who we are.  What we made from and how we can know ourselves. If we're curious enough on ourselves, and prepare to hear things we might not want to hear about us, we will ultimately know ourselves.

--------------------
by: Adam Khairi

Living in Malaysia that consists of multiracial people could create lots of perception among us. Not enough with that, we also joined by the newcomers such as Indonesian, Bangladeshi and Pakistani that leads us more towards negative perceptions such as stereotyping and ethnocentrism. It is not easy to avoid yourself from perception as you always create one when you observe something that unaccepted and unfamiliar with you. Some of the Malaysian often misperceive that the Indonesian are only work as laborers because they come to our country and work as one. It is happen because like Mr Pellegrino Ricardi said, people see what they want to see but they don’t always see what you see. It is all about mindset. Because most Malaysian is too familiar with the display of Indonesian working as a labourer, they misperceive that all Indonesian are labourer. It is because this is the scenery that familiar with most Malaysian. There is once, I have been described as a Chinese look man by an aunt. Am so confused like I feel like to blow my own head. I see in myself as a man who look like Javanese people as I have Javanese blood in me. Plus, I am chocolate coloured skin. How is that possible?. I did not know what that aunt see in me but I refer back to what have been mentioned by Mr Pellegrino Ricardi, people see what they want to see but they don’t always see what you see. Our assumption is not the same with other because people think differently. In order to get rid of that, we must create mutual understanding by finding the equality between us so that we can globally understand each other and communicate without thinking the nationality or culture.

#TrivialTuesday

For the first post on #TrivialTuesday, I'll be posting on random materials related directly or indirectly to my culture or the culture of others. You get the picture, so let's get started.

For this week's post, I'd like to focus on the most prominent Malay-Muslim scholar, still alive and residing in Malaysia, Tan Sri Prof Dr. Syed Naquib al-Attas. He has explained and expanded the origins of Islam in the context of Malay culture and practices in one of his book. He is, overall, the epitome of a Malay-Muslim intellectual, putting together the mysticism of the Malay culture and Islam, and had proved both subject are in need of each other. As mentioned by Professor Syed Naquib al-Attas in this video, "Tress do not grow without roots". It reflects our culture. We are, bunch of huge trees, with roots. Find our roots, we'll know who we are.

Cross cultural communication | Pellegrino Riccardi | TEDxBergen

Review on ‘Cross Cultural Communication’ by Pellegrino Ricardi.

by: Abdullah Afiq Che Kamaruzaman

The presenter, Mr. Ricardi introduced his speech by putting forward his own definition of culture, as “A system of behaviour that helps us act in an accepted and in familiar way.”. He then highlighted in his speech, the importance of the words ‘accepted’ and ‘familiar’. It is interesting to point out that the presenter highlighted his Norwegian culture which was synonymous with the Norwegian Woods, later on he differentiated the queuing culture in Norway with those in United Kingdom and the third notable example is when the presenter highlighted the difference between parking and driving culture from India, Norway and in Italy. If we were to define culture as how Jamil Farooqui defined it, as a ‘refined and sophisticated way of acting and doing things necessary to lead life’, we must not solely focus on the physical activity of a certain culture, but also why did a group of people acted the way they were, sophisticatedly. Friedrich Hagel viewed that we should analyse the role of human experience which provided meaning to the actor so that we can understand the nature of that action. He further explained that if one were to discover the internal structure or also refers to as the ‘subjective location’ of a cultural system, one can determine how does a particular cultural system exercise power to an individual or a group of individuals.

I feel that it is important to not just look and observe one’s cultural uniqueness, instead, it is better if we took the time to dwell deeper into the reasons or as Friedrich Hagel described it as the ‘subjective location’ of a certain cultural behaviour in order to understand deeper and not only based on solid observation. There are many explanations and approaches to explain a certain culture in depth, but with the given presentation, it is appropriate to touch on the mechanistic explanations of culture. In the mechanistic explanation of culture, it stated that the universe is like a big working machine, working in a system and regulated by certain principles. Likewise, human behaviour acted as it should be, in correspond to the stimuli of the environment. The environment or external conditions have influenced human behaviours which forced them to act in certain ways. This can be proven when the speaker talk about how Norwegians behave differently from Londoners when it comes to queuing, or how Italians don’t care much about their parking habits or driving culture compared to, again, Norwegians. These cultures, had formed ways to conduct and navigate themselves in response to the external factors which they had experienced, for example how to park one’s car, how to drive a car, how to wait in line, how to move from one line to the other, which all of it are all purely a form of response from external conditions men have experienced. Human culture exists, according to Jamil Farooqui, is for “human activities to organised, shaped and direct to achieve the basic purpose of life”, hence, we must ask deeper questions on how a certain system of conduct were practiced by a certain group of people and why that certain group of people try to hold such system dear to themselves. It is fair to say that, most of the Western cultures embraced certain system of conduct as a response to the external factors influencing their lives and some of their cultures were directly determined by external conditions rather than internal conditions. This, I believe vastly differ from the Islamic definition of culture. In the Western culture, according to a thesis written by Max Webber a German sociologist, on Protestantism, scholars derived that the Western culture often change its non-material part because of the influence of its material part. This is deemed necessary as the Western culture might suffer from ‘cultural lag’. 

For the Islamic definition of culture, it is the non-material part are the ones who should govern over the material part. Jamal Faroouqi viewed that the Islamic culture are governed by religious ethos and our system of thoughts determines how we view the outside world, the environment and the nature especially how we perceive the universe. Whatever the Muslims perceive the environment and respond to it, the responses must be governed and determined by holy texts and the religious doctrine, unlike most of the Western culture, the environment, material and nature influence one’s system of thoughts, and no higher doctrine is there to guide it. All are relative to the influence of the environment and other external factors. Matters of how one’s park the car, or how one should drive or wait in line is part and parcel of every society, both Islamic or Western, but when we move further into the origins of a culture, there are ways we differ from one another.

-------------------
by: Adam Khairi

The speaker, Mr Pellegrino Ricardi begin his speech by stating his profession is to help people to communicate better without the nationality. When we talk about cross cultural communication, it is all about perception by understanding what people see.. As the example given by Mr Pellegrino Ricardi, he had British, Norway and Italian in him. He was doing a social experiment to test people perception on him. He boarded in airplane and talk to the crews in English regarding the punctuality of the plane boarding time, because he believe when you speak in English people would take you seriously. He tried again with Italian accent and received bad reaction. This is one of the problem that working with the nationality. People see what they want to see. They don’t always see what you see. They only accepted the things that familiar with them. People only will accept the things that familiar within their social group. Plus, your assumption does not have to be other people assumption. As example, you think that this one particular social group is bad but other culture groups think differently as their perception created through the information that they received from us is different. 

Hence, one of the ways to solve this matter is our ability to dig under the surface and find out the underline values are. Throw away all those status, luxury and find the equality between us. With that we will be able to laid back with each other, following the rules perfectly and make fantastic business environment. We can look on the examples given by Mr Pellegrino Ricardi that portray this issue, the efficient work that done by Singapore Airlines that serve their passenger and the queuing system in Norway. Next, curiosity also helps you to get rid the borders in cross cultural communications. To satisfy that curiosity, you can go around asking people to get the information that you are totally curious about. As example been given by Mr Ricardi, the most curious creature in planet is children. Generally, 4 years old children will ask about 390 questions per day and 82% of the questions will be asked to the mothers as when the children approach the father, the father will ask the children to go to the mother. To conclude, like Mr Pellegrino Ricardi been mentioned as been informed in the video that he has three nationality in him, take the best of all three and try to merge them as one new culture. It is not about across the border but extending the border and creates a new one around us. By that, he believes that we will create a global mindset.