Fostering InterCultural Communication

One of the best experiences I've had in life is when i had the chance to join a committee within my faculty to plan for the 2010 7th Global Student Forum (GSF), an international engineering forum held annually, This event took place at the Marina Bay Sands. As a committee member, I was responsible to look to the accomodation and logistics matters of the SPEED club members, which comprised of over 30 people from all over the world and were here to take part in the GSF.

Throughout the week long period of hosting these international members, other than facilitating official matters like registration for the event, checking into the hostels/hotels, there was also the 'casual' side of it where we brought our new found friends around Singapore for food and exploration.

Through this one-week event, I had met so many people. Before the event kick-started, I had made it a point to mingle with as many people as I could to get out of my comfort zone, as well as to gain more knowledge about the world and its people. Most of these people in GSF have created a deep impression in my peers and I as they were people who want to make a difference to the society and the world. People from different backgrounds are exposed to different environments, hence possessing a variety of wants, needs and aspirations. Ie. The Ugandan who always seeks to improve his society and country, such as promoting the idea of compulsory education for the children or even simple things which we took for granted like having sanitary water sources in the neighbourhood. And there was the Americans and Europeans who seeked to improve technology via automation or programms or to spread their knowledge of technology to more people.
It was really interesting to see how everyone beared the same intention to improve the world, yet they saw different aspects of how to do these improvements due to the very nature of where they came from.

As this event was held during a school week, I only had the time to be there physically in the night. We brought them to food markets and hawker centres and ordered a variety of foods. By the 3rd night, I started to find out more on the impact brought about by intercultural behavior. I made it a point to go to every single table to ask them how the food was and what they thought of it. Just listing a few interesting points: the Ugandan I spoke to loved how unique the hainanese chicken rice was, the Portugese and Mexicans could not believe we ate frogs' leg porridge and refused to eat it, most of the Americans, as most of us may already know, thought that the durian fruit smelled like socks and dirty clothings. etc etc.

The GSF event is one of the most rewarding academic event which I have helped out at. Perhaps it could be due to the reason that this is an international event which involves all the countries all over the world and hence, allows me to meet international people. The most important lesson which I had taken away from this event, was that I had learned how to speak to people from different backgrounds eg. nationalities and religions, with a higher sense of awareness and sensitivity.