Wednesday, January 21, 2009

cultural interpretations

funny how my professors and student advisors in school said that i was 'very polite, respectful and formal' when they first met me...they got this impression by either reading my emails or talking to me...the thing is as a Malay Malaysian i'm so used to being respecful to older generation or authority figures (teachers and such)...so by calling a person by his/her title (miss, mrs and so on) is 'normal' and using a formal language and ending my emails with 'Regards, My Fullname' is not out of ordinary to me...


when i first arrived here, i found it awkward to call my professors by their name...calling Dr. Blyth as Phil is so weird that i resolved to not calling him at all!when i looked back, it is quite hilarious and now i'm getting used to it...i still write my emails and text messages formally and i still do have the tendency to be really respectful and formal when talking to my professors and student advisors but i wasn't as bad as the first time i arrived....


when i got home, i felt so comfortable calling authority figures by their names, i got quite a shock when i heard my sisters calling their professors so formally...i guess all cultures have different approach on what is deemed as respectful and what is not...my personal take on this is: i don't really mind on either ways...even so, i felt calling a person by his/her name creates a feeling of closeness and opens up oppurtunity of being frank and open...still, calling older people in Malaysia by his/her name does sound funny...i probably think that it is possible to do so here in Auckland since it is culturally acceptable to do so...

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