Things I learn from Staying in Singapore (part 1)

Last Sunday I got a chance to be one of the speakers for a talkshow held by my previous school in Indonesia. My ex-schoolmates came to singapore on an International Exposure programme and last sunday, I felt honored to be able to share my thoughts to them. The talk was an informal one just for a few friends and I to tell them about the studying environment in Singapore.

This made me think about the positive side of studying in Singapore. 

Normally I would only criticize about how the Singapore education system made me suffer under stress and all those kind of negative impacts I felt after moving here. However that night I thought that it was about time to tell the world about the other side of the system, it was important to present an unbiased opinion that night. So I thought over it before the talk and I got this:

Studying in Singapore taught me to tolerate other people's imperfections

Moving to Singapore is like going out of my comfort zone, moving to a new environment where everyone is new to me. I meet a lot of friends of different nationalities here, ranging from PRCs, Thais, Malaysians, Myanmarese, to Koreans and of course Indonesians. I realised after a while that all people have their own uniqueness. Each people from different nationalities have their own habits just like how Indonesians have the habit of being late (we seriously have to change this habit)

Staying with different people of a different background and traditions wakes me up from my deep sleep in Indonesia that not all people have the same way of living. In Indonesia, I only meet non-family members outside my house, making me not able to know them deeper. But here, I stay in the hostel where everything you do is seen by the public. Everything that you do will bring an impact to a lot of people.

Staying with strangers is not an easy and fun thing to do. It may cause lots of problems between two good friends. There will be some things that your roommate or hostel mates do that you don't think it's appropriate. There'll be some things that you do that they won't approve of either. Staying with someone besides your family exposes you to a more private and personal level of life of the one you're staying with. Since different nationals have different upbringings, simple things like wearing your shoes into the room may cause conflict between roommates. 

Because of this I learned that to prevent conflicts from happening, I need to learn to accept and tolerate or even better, work things out, these small imperfections in other people. I learned not to deduce that everyone has the same standards of living and not everyone have the same way of solving things. 

Here's a short clip on imperfections, totally love this ad! It's really touching..

Be blessed :)

GBu

-Jennifer-

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