Cultural Issues
Log Book
First Week -
Meetings with colleagues
I had my first lecture and seminar this week. Although I’ve meet some of my course mates last week during the induction meeting, there are a lot of new faces that I have never seen. During the induction meeting with my course mates, I was expecting a lot of local student from UK. I looked around and I saw 5 westerners, they look like British. After introducing ourselves, the 5 westerners were from Germany, Greece and Russia. Many of the international students are from Asia and Africa, there are China, India, Nepal, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, Taiwan, Malaysia, Nigeria and Tanzania.
My feelings were conflicting, on one side, I’m disappointed that there are not a single British in the course, on the other, I was happy to see the diversity of the course. This could provide me the settings and the environment of international business. I’m given the opportunity to work and communicate with people from different cultures, from emerging countries to the most successful countries in Europe. It is interesting to see and understand their culture which will help me in my future career.
Cultural Differences
The first exchange of culture is the hand shake, in terms of time period and firmness, there is a bit of variation but it is not significant. The first sentence that we exchanged with each other is name and countries. Names are probably the hardest to deal with, people find it hard to pronounce and remember names that are not familiar with. For example, it is a challenge for me to remember African names. In order to overcome the complexity of names, I’ve adopted Edward as my english name which ease my colleagues and tutors to call me.
There is another cultural differences that I observed in the lecture by Ms Clare Moonan is that UK and my country have different views on good manners. In the lecture, she said that it is rude not to say thank you or please to the waiter or cashier. In UK, when we order
First Week -
Meetings with colleagues
I had my first lecture and seminar this week. Although I’ve meet some of my course mates last week during the induction meeting, there are a lot of new faces that I have never seen. During the induction meeting with my course mates, I was expecting a lot of local student from UK. I looked around and I saw 5 westerners, they look like British. After introducing ourselves, the 5 westerners were from Germany, Greece and Russia. Many of the international students are from Asia and Africa, there are China, India, Nepal, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, Taiwan, Malaysia, Nigeria and Tanzania.
My feelings were conflicting, on one side, I’m disappointed that there are not a single British in the course, on the other, I was happy to see the diversity of the course. This could provide me the settings and the environment of international business. I’m given the opportunity to work and communicate with people from different cultures, from emerging countries to the most successful countries in Europe. It is interesting to see and understand their culture which will help me in my future career.
Cultural Differences
The first exchange of culture is the hand shake, in terms of time period and firmness, there is a bit of variation but it is not significant. The first sentence that we exchanged with each other is name and countries. Names are probably the hardest to deal with, people find it hard to pronounce and remember names that are not familiar with. For example, it is a challenge for me to remember African names. In order to overcome the complexity of names, I’ve adopted Edward as my english name which ease my colleagues and tutors to call me.
There is another cultural differences that I observed in the lecture by Ms Clare Moonan is that UK and my country have different views on good manners. In the lecture, she said that it is rude not to say thank you or please to the waiter or cashier. In UK, when we order