Blog Post #4: Who says food always brings people together?

While on exchange in France, I grew close to some of the other fellow exchange students. The group comprised of students from Brazil, Mexico, Sweden, and Italy. We often spent our weekends combing the alleys of Lyon for new sights and eating-places.

On our virgin adventure in an old Lyonnaise restaurant, I asked some of the friends around me if I could try their food. Immediately, I noticed some discomfort in their faces and voices as they replied with an uncertain ‘yes’.

My other Singaporean friend on the other hand, was gladly helping herself to the others’ food, not realizing no one else was taking from her plate. She was also voraciously ‘attacking’ her chicken main course, putting the chicken parts in her mouth and sucking all the meat off the bone before spitting the chicken bones out.

Eventually, the other international students around her started looking visibly annoyed and stopped eating, and subsequently stopped making conversation altogether. Some had very disgusted looks on their faces. The meal ended in awkward silence, prompting an early return to school. On the way back to school, my Singaporean friend and I felt rather excluded from the rest.

The incident left me rather perturbed, as these were people I considered myself close to. My friend and I were wondering if the rest were being mean, or perhaps even racist to the only two Asians in the group.

Ironically, over some beer later in the week, I asked the Swedish girl about the others' reactions and learnt that in some of their cultures, they were not used to sharing their dishes. Main courses were considered personal, unless it was a picnic or ‘tapas’ session. Hence, they found having someone stick a fork into their food extremely offensive. This was certainly different from our way of sharing food. They also found the act of eating the chicken to the bone extremely repulsive. This was confirmed after checking with some of the others. In that sense, they were very open and forthcoming with their opinions without being personal. Mindful of the others’ preferences, we were more careful about our mealtime etiquette after that.

The group in happier times.

Blog Post #3: Research Topic: Solar Energy in Singapore

Solar energy, specifically photovoltaic energy, is energy created directly from the sun’s incident radiation. The benefits of photovoltaic energy are its clean method of production, its cost (sunlight is free and limitless) and its almost constant availability. Being situated on the equator, Singapore is well positioned to harness this green source of energy.

However, application of photovoltaic energy locally in homes and offices (such as the placement of solar panels on rooftops to harness solar energy to power lights at night) is limited. This could be attributed to the general lack of awareness regarding implementation of photovoltaic systems, poor availability of photovoltaic appliances, as well as the high initial costs involved in installation.

Initial installation costs for these systems can be costly, but can be offset in the long term due to practically zero maintenance costs. In some countries, excess electricity produced at home can be sold back to the power grids, allowing home owners to make a small profit.

Research question:
Are NUS Science students willing to forfeit the high initial costs of installing photovoltaic systems in their homes in order to reap the long term economic and environmental benefits?

Purpose Statement:
This report aims to educate students from the Science Faculty about the benefits of solar energy and its applicability in Singapore. It also aims to persuade them to consider adopting these systems at homes and offices in future.

Justification for attudinal Survey:
Since students from the NUS Science faculty are future home-owners, rising utility bills will be an inevitable issue. Attitudinal surveys will aid in finding out whether these future home-owners are willing to invest in high initial installation costs for photovoltaic systems in order to reap the long term benefits in their homes and offices. Surveys can also help find out what reservations (other than price concerns) they might have about adopting these systems.

Questions from Monday's class on inter-gender communication

I remain intrigued by the question we discussed during class on Monday: whether communication between man and woman can be considered as intercultural communication. I don’t think there was a definitive conclusion.
Personally I ‘like’ how girls always like to ask questions to which (guys feel) there can be no correct answer, for example: “Am I fat?”
Girls, what I want to know is: Can there be a correct answer?

The next issue concerns sexuality. If a guy likes a girl who behaves exactly like a guy, does that make the person homosexual? What is it that you think determines one’s gender and sexuality, the cognitive distinctions or the physical markers? Let’s discuss!