Evaluating Intercultural Behaviour AGAIN!! (:

Since my previous post was an utter failure in trying to portray an intercultural observation, I am going to make up for it with this post on the same topic!

Two years ago, I was working at the duty-free shop at Changi airport departure hall as a promoter for Absolut® Vodka for the launch of one of their new flavours. There was an Absolut® roadshow display at the airport for a couple of weeks with lucky draws and a sophisticated-looking bar for passengers to try the different Absolut® flavours.

During one of my shifts at the roadshow counter with a guy partner, there were a couple of Australian guys who came to sit and chat with us. Usually, we would serve the passengers some tasters and try to get them to purchase a bottle or two of the vodka. If there were passengers who treated the roadshow counter as a free bar, we were told to try and get them to leave in subtle ways. However, the two Australian guys bought a couple of bottles after trying the latest flavour and started chatting with us as we were packing their bottles. After finding out that they had a few hours to spare with nothing to do before their transit flight, we offered to make them more drinks as we were also bored on our part due to the slow traffic of passengers at that point of time.

The four of us hit it off really well as they shared with us their traveling experiences and we exchanged our thoughts on different matters. We were comfortable with their company and they even shared with us music that they listened to on their MP3 player. At one point of time, the Australian guys started to tell us about the parties they have back at the place where they came from and one of them took out a magazine to show us pictures of the party scenes. We leaned over the counter to get a better look while he flipped through the pages and little did we know, he was showing us pictures of women flashing their uncovered boobs at the cameras! Both of us got a shock at the same time and literally “jumped” back to our side of the counter and busied ourselves with washing the cups and wiping the counter. It was really awkward as we were genuinely taken aback and yet we had to try to keep up with the conversation to appear normal. While they went on ranting about how hot the girls were over there, the two of us were just smiling on the outside and squirming on the inside and we did not know how to respond. After awhile, much to our relief, they seemed to realise our uneasiness on the topic and dropped it.

This just goes to show the different level of openness on sexual references between people of different cultures, namely the Chinese and the Australians in this scenario.