The Observations

“To acquire wisdom, one must observe”

We started off the balmy morning with a trip to another temple; Doi Suthep. After the extremely exhausting climb up the stairs (to remember: if a gondola ride is given as an alternative, it is better not to act hero), I found myself in the midst of an opulent temple of gold. I consider this as my very first time entering a Thai Buddhist temple, and I found myself being enthralled its sheer vastness. However, soon the chatter of tourists and the constant clicking of cameras spoilt what I thought would be a serene, scared abode for worship.

As requested by the professors to not overwork ourselves, we kept the day light, with the only agenda in mind for the entire day of capturing behavioural observations of Thais shopping in the supermarkets. Armed with a well-crafted template to record down every aspect of purchasing decisions, we set out to sneak observations of how an average Thai consumer would do when choosing items in a supermarket. Time to hone our skills as chikopeks! (for the good cause of a research of course~)  

Our confidence, however, was soon shattered.

What we envisioned was a relatively easy task of writing down actions turned out to be harder than expected. We realised that what we had set out to record as per the observational templates were very much different from what actually happened in real life. Often, it was questionable if participants actually looked at the nutritional labels, and it seemed like the crux of our research was in jeopardy.

In hindsight, I admire my group’s ability to be fluid and flexible when things did not turn out as expected. We quickly regrouped, re-evaluated and refined our note-taking procedures. One method is to only classify looking at nutritional labels as only if the subject looks at the back of the package for more than five seconds. Though this method has its limitations, it was a risk that we were willing to bear given the limited resources and time we had. We quickly sprang into action as though no hiccups had happened.

What turned out to be sort of a nightmarish experience led to a better remainder of the day – shopping! I am definitely not an avid shopper as my groupmates would attest to (I pretty much don’t really buy anything), but pardon me for saying that it was fascinating to witness the girls in my group and their superb bargaining skills! I’ve come to a concrete conclusion that when it comes to buying and bargaining, just let the girls handle it (We males are so horribly rotten at this particular endeavour. I humbly accept defeat.) “Cheap Cheap!”

-Day 3