GLP Cross-cultural Colloquium

It wasn't the best time, at all. I had an assignment to hand in before 4.00pm today, a quiz to submit before 5pm, gloomy sky which suggested carrying an encumbrance human call umbrella as the chance of raining is real. The great me signed up for a colloquium which started at 2pm few weeks ago thanks to two occurrences of canceled colloquium due to the convenor "feeling unwell".

But surprisingly, I found myself enjoying the three hours instead, despite receiving tonnes of negative feedbacks from friends who had done the colloquium before and obviously weren't happy with the way it was conducted.

The convenor did a great job at engaging us, stirring up numerous discussions that were very very relevant to cultural complexities that arise when we become more 'global'. Should we have the right to offend people? When we have two people with conflicting cultures who should adapt and which culture should dominate?

The problems that arise from different cultural values are far from obvious. A question that leaves myself wondering is how willing I am to let my (future) children to adopt the Australian culture (some of which I could not find myself accepting), if I were to stay on and live here? It's easy to take a stance in principle, either to enforce my own cultural values from my home country, or to just completely let go and let them do whatever the environment dictates, but in reality both are just too extreme and a balance ought to be taken. The million dollar question is, where is the delicate balance here?

Observing the people around me tells me they are different from myself, even if they are ethnically the same as I am (i.e. Chinese) or even if they are originally from my home country (ie. Malaysia). The way ABC's behave and carry themselves around are just not like us, who are born and raised in another country. I've got to admit at least theoretically that immigrants should adapt to the culture of whichever country they chose to live in, after all that's the choice they have made. But how easy is that?

80% of Australians speaks English and only English. Some knew a tad bit about their mother tongue but they are far from being fluent in it. It's been an emotional issue, in particular when we put ourselves in the shoes of their parents who may (secretly or openly) wish that their children grow up to be just like them, with the religion and values they themselves hold to. In the colloquium there were quite a number of people with immigrant parents saying that they have conflicts with their parents, often over issues which stem from a cultural intolerance. I guess one common scenario is that Asian parents sometimes don't want their kids to date with people from another cultural background (in particular, the Caucasian) but their kids just fall in love with someone who don't fit the definition of their parents' ideal future son/daughter-in law.

Oh well, there is no right or wrong answer or one-size-fit-all solution to this problem, and this problem won't go away as long as there is still a constant flow of immigrants into Australia seeking a 'better' life. The refugee problem is quite an issue now, though what concerns me the most is the Commonwealth government policy to cut the number of skilled-immigrants LOL.

I have to admit that the temptation of staying on in Australia after our tertiary education is strong, for almost every international student. It's a good place to live and work after all. But immigration is getting hard these days.

Who knows what will happen next.