Imagine a hypothetical situation where I was a nonchalant Sociology major staying at a hall in NUS and a group of Japanese college students arrived for exchange. Since they were going to take the same modules as me, I was assigned to take care of their every need. At first thought, communicating interculturally with Japanese college students should be an easy task. They were of the same age and there would be no generation gap. Furthermore, they should be able to converse in fluent English and should know about Singapore culture. I was so wrong. They spoke little English, mostly conversing among themselves in Japanese, and communicating with me using hand signals and facial expressions, which were often misinterpreted by me.

When they came knocking on my door for the first time, they bowed to me and gave me a cute Japanese diary. That was nice of them. I said thanks and went back to my computer game.

Throughout the semester, as I knew that my lecturers always waited till 15 minutes after the actual start time of the lecture to begin their boring speeches, I always brought them to lectures 10 minutes late. This made them extremely unhappy, and I thought they were just being weird.

Thinking back, I should have read up on Japanese culture before they arrived. This would have informed me of their social customs of bowing as a greeting and giving gifts at our first encounter. I would have then prepared a gift in return and returned the bow. I would also have known about the importance of punctuality to them and made it a point to bring them early for lectures. With a higher level of cultural self-awareness, I would also have been more alert and empathetic of their nonverbal cues and been a better host.




The objective of this study is to determine whether most students in the Science Faculty at NUS think that the current taxi system can be refined.

With millions using the bus and rail on a daily basis, Singapore claims to have an efficient public transport system. However, there is one aspect of it that I feel is not up to standards. The current taxi system is expensive and not usually used by the price-conscious commuters of today. It is also not a mass form of transport and thus environmentally unfriendly. However, it is speedy and convenient for commuters who are in a rush, carrying bulky items or are traveling after midnight. It can also get commuters to places not easily accessible by rail or bus. The pros and cons of taking a taxi extend beyond the above mentioned. I see taxis as a necessary evil.

My main research question is "Do NUS Science Faculty students think the taxi system in Singapore can be refined to reduce the car population on the roads in order to save the environment?" This would mean less pollution and less natural resources being used up. My hypothesis is that this possible but it would require a huge revamp of the current system. I would like to save the environment, which is why I feel a survey is important to gather feedback from a larger audience.

A survey allows us to learn about what motivates the survey respondents and what is important to them. In highly competitive Singapore, staying in touch with the public is necessary to facilitate continued competitiveness. Rather than relying on my hypothesis, I can gather objective information to make sound data-driven decisions. Therefore, I can immediately address issues that are important, rather than wasting resources on things that no one cares about. With a large survey group, there would be uniformity of results, which would then support or contradict my hypothesis.
Edited 5pm 06/09/08

Labels: taxis

Thanks for your comments! I did not intervene. You guessed wrong Yuk Lum. The only family activity that we all engage in is dinner, so that suggestion didn’t work out too well. As for Gwen, your suggestion for my brother to please my Mum worked. My brother has tried to spread his time equally during the weekends by spending more time at home with my Mum. My brother’s girlfriend still comes by, although less often, and does not stay too long or too late nowadays. His girlfriend is rather smart too, buying a handheld Sudoku game for my Mum, who spends all her time on it. This has worked out fine, and my Mum is now talking to them again. I guess the Sudoku game did the trick. Haha!