7th January Reflection

“Hello, my name is Xinyu and I am a student from Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University. Nice to meet you!” This would be my basic greeting to my interviewees and/or people that I meet along the way. I never truly understood what this statement meant until today.

Such a simple statement; yet it carries such a weight. Confused? Read on.

With this greeting, I immediately distinguish myself as a Singaporean, to the locals. I am a foreigner, and I represent a whole other culture and set of beliefs. I do not, and probably will never in my life, know what it feels like to grow up a Thai, nor will the Thai people know how it’s like to be born and bred in Singapore. Our understanding of each other’s cultures and way of life will merely reflect a thin layer of the whole narrative, tainted with our own individual perception of things, as influenced by our own culture.

Everyday I discover a new layer of perspective to the same one topic. Today was no different. During the focus group discussions that my group had with students from Chiang Mai university, I was constantly reminded that though we belong in the same age group, the same education level (at the moment) and belong to the same earth, we are so different from how we see the world. Of course, this difference in perceptions is no exception to people who come from similar cultural backgrounds, but the difference in Thai food consumption and Singaporean food consumption is one that really reminded me that being a Singaporean may be a privilege to me, but to them, I am not very far off from what they have.

For example, I was told that going to imported fast food chains like MacDonalds and KFC is seen as a privilege here in Chiang Mai, and people typically choose to consume traditional foods. I then shared with the students that MacDonalds and KFC was seen as a very popular food choice in Singapore. Through this basic exchange of the two observations, we see a difference in socio-cultural contexts, and the effects of the economic development status of the two countries being compared here.

I have come to the conclusion that we all tie our own experiences from our environment to the opinions and observations that we have made, and more often than not settle for that side of the story, not being able to digest the other sides of the story, or twisting it with your own set of lens. I think our research topic is one that has a high potential of including so many nuances to any particular observation just by looking at the various stakeholders! Super excited about how our research is developing.

This conclusion definitely value added to my attempt to always think of all sides of the story before making my own stand. Currently, I am doubting the accuracy of the phrase “I totally know how you feel”. Because right now I’m extremely sleepy. Do you “totally” know how I feel?