Getting To Know Each Other

This article is somewhat in line with our CEO Dr Lim Suet Wun's call for us to help our new and especially foreign colleagues to integrate into, not only our TTSH culture, but also our various diverse traditional, racial, ethnic, religious and social cultures.

As most in the department have already realized, about two weeks ago, I sent out a personal e-mail to ask some of you to share your stories with us. This call was particularly directed at our foreign colleagues whom I felt have so much to share with us. We, the locals, have so much to learn about you, your cultures and your lifestyles and every thing about your country. And I am also certain that there are so much you want to learn about us, Singaporeans, too.

Questions like, what is kiasu, kiasi and where our lahs originated from, might be some burning questions you dare not ask. We can give you the background histories of such topics which will do you a world of good once you get a basic understanding of such issues.

I am very glad that our CEO is thinking along the same line as I had set out to achieve.

You do get the picture, now that he has made it clear in his currently on-going town-hall talks, that we must make the effort to understand each other, as much as we can, because of our diverse Asian backgrounds, beliefs and practices.

Just as Singaporeans ought to help our foreign colleagues feel at home, we too need our foreign colleagues to help us feel at home with them too. It has to be both ways.

My aim over the next few months is to be able to share, on this platform, the various observances and rituals of each race, religion and culture. I hope to present each article to coincide with the occasion of the moment.

For example, since Good Friday and Easter are next in line, I feel it would be best to share an article or two on how the Christian community in Singapore celebrate these feast days. Hopefully, foreign Christian colleagues can then share with us how these holy days are celebrated in their own home country.

By such sharing, we can then come to understand each other better and relate to each other in ways that we would otherwise may not even consider doing.

In between local holidays, I hope we can pull in articles written or shared by our foreign colleagues and perhaps fill in an article or two about festive days celebrated back in their own native lands where such festivities are not celebrated here.

Something simple like a wedding celebration, or the celebration of a new born child are some examples we can work on.

We might even go a step further to have our foreign friends giving us an on-line tour of their hometowns, complete with photos taken during their growing up years in their villages. We might even get tips on where and what to see should we one day decide to visit these countries. Won't it be great to know that our future holiday plans to visit your country are due to your ambassadorship?

The opportunity to learn from each other is so huge and vast. Let us not allow it to go to waste when we are so privilege to be in such a position to learn so much from one another.

My hope is that we can come out from the inner sanctum of our own national communities and mingle with the outer circle of cross-national and borderless friendship, and to allow social-integration among us, so that we can all have a better working and personal relationship with each other.

We are all but of the same human species, regardless of our various backgrounds.