My Cross Cultural Experiences through moving schools in Australia and Singapore.

by khadiono (student)

I have been very lucky to encounter some cross cultural experiences in my life. In fact, cross cultural differences have been a part of my life during the last 3 years. I was living in what I like to say as “Indonesian luxury”. Most people in Indonesia particularly in the big cities are pampered with the luxury of having someone to do almost everything for them. This happens because of the high level of unemployment that forces people to willing to take whatever job they can get. The result of this situation is the high number of people working as drivers and house maids for a very low wage.

In November 2009, I had to transfer to Perth, Australia where everything changed for 180°. My life of “luxury” is gone by the wind the moment I stepped into Perth where I had to do everything by myself. Well, not really in the start though, I actually enjoyed a little bit of holiday when I get there. Since my school hasn’t started yet, my mom and dad stayed there for a week and we had a quality time together exploring Perth. Still, at that time I was living in dream. After the holiday week came to the end, reality stroked, I had to start taking buses, clean my room, do my own dishes, and so much more. I had a very bad culture shock because I didn’t realize what I signed up for, it just stroked me. Since I didn’t cope very well with all this, my mom accompanied me there for the first month while my dad flew back home.

Starting my class was another story, I came to the school and I found myself being an alien there because there were very few Asian students. My English at that time wasn’t really that good, so making friends with Westerners was quite a challenge. Besides, I was super shy and wasn’t able to even start a conversation with them. One thing I know about the westerners are that most of them are actually very active and sociable where in the other hand, Asian are more reserved. The hardest thing for me was to get into groups since I was a transfer student which means that I never had the chance to get to know each other from the previous grades like the rest of the class did. So, to be able to get into groups was quite a challenge for me since I didn’t know them and they already know each other pretty well. Well, eventually I did meet some friends coming from my country which cools down the heat a little bit for a little while.

Living in Perth was also very different compared to my hometown. Perth was a very quiet city, especially at the evening because everything closes down before 6pm. This was a very big transition for me because back in Indonesia I’m used to go out at the evening where everything is pretty much still very lively. In Perth, the neighborhoods were located in the countryside and it was very quiet as well in the evening. You can take a walk at 6 or 7pm and literally not coming across with anyone. What are worse are those shopping centers ...

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Since I was underage when I moved to Perth, I had to live in a homestay chosen by the school for me. I was placed with an Irish-Australian family of four; Shane the dad, Louise the mother, Sean the son, and Allanah the daughter. Fitting in with them was actually pretty good since I can get along pretty well with them. Their culture is actually very similar with mine because my parents especially my father is actually running the family by implying western culture. My father was actually influenced by the American culture because he lived in the US for 10 years. There is one significant difference though; my family is very strict about cleanliness so we kind of get used to live in a very clean and organized house while my homestay family was exactly the opposite. It gave me a little bit of discomfort for the first few days. This all added up together gave me quite an amount of stress which made me came to a decision to leave Perth and move back to my country. At that time, I wasn’t able to cope with the cultural differences occurred.

After I went back to Indonesia, I enrolled to Kaplan in Jakarta to take my Diploma in Business Administration. In order to complete my diploma, I had to transfer to Singapore to finish the last 4 modules for approximately 4 months. In February 2011, I finally stepped my feet to Singapore where I had the chance to experience another cross cultural experience. Well actually, I’ve been to Singapore a few times before for holidays so I can actually predict what it is going to be. For me, the cross cultural differences started when I interact with the Singaporeans where they tend speak Chinese to me because they thought I came from China or a local. I don’t speak Chinese at all but in fact, even though I am a Chinese decent we just don’t speak Chinese back in Indonesia. I am also very impressed that in Singapore we can take public transportation conveniently which I refused to at first. Back in my country, I can’t take the public transportation because the public transportation is not very safe and clean. I can also say that unless you want to feel how it’s like to get robbed you should not take the public transportation in Indonesia. With that mindset, I was a little bit reluctant but after observing and understand that the transportation is actually pretty decent and people take them all the time I was able to accept it.

In Singapore, I rented a room where at that time I was the only tenant there for the first 3 weeks. After that more and more tenants filled all the available rooms. The other tenants were from China and India also they were all female which made me to actually live in a house with people with different cultures. It was actually a great experience since I had to adapt with their style of living that made me able to accept their cultures. Although, there is one thing that I couldn’t stand at all, one of the Chinese tenant was unbelievably nasty. She always left the bathroom with an unbearable condition where there was shit all over the toilet. I found it very funny that a girl was actually capable to be very disgusting. Later I learned that in China, most people don’t really care about bathroom cleanliness. They care more about other parts of their house that are visible to other people such as the living room. In the other hand, my family does care about cleanliness in every part of our home which is the complete opposite. I’ve been trying to tell her to be more considerate but I couldn’t seem to be able to grab her attention. Fortunately, I only rented the place for 4 months and in the future I wouldn’t want to rent a shared unit anymore.

Going to the class was quite a little bit of challenge for me because I don’t really know anyone on the class. The DipBA18 class was filled with mainly international students coming from all over Asia. I noticed that most of them are from China, Vietnam, and Korea. Being the only Indonesian in the class, the barrier for me was the language because everyone obviously speak in their very own language and most of them was not comfortable speaking English. This problem emerged when we were working in groups and we had to discuss about our assignment. It was pretty difficult to come to an understanding when there were arguments because we were struggling to explain what we were trying to say. Despite that, I think it was actually a pretty interesting experience learning to adapt with people from different culture.

My experiences in Australia and Singapore have taught me a lot about cultural differences. It’s very important to not underestimate the power of culture. We should really learn about a country’s culture before we decide to move into the particular country to make sure that it would fit our lifestyle. Although, adapting to a completely new environment and learning about others’ cultures can be a very interesting process and it’s also a very good way to get to know what we are dealing which is good for business. I believe that my experiences will give me something that others might not have because when we are doing business in other countries we will have to do it according to the country’s culture.

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Student Name: Kevin Hadiono

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Date: November 30, 2011

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