Tip 219: Some No responses are for negotiation

As I support my company's operations across Asia from Australia to India, China and Japan, I face lots of different demanding expectations. In my observation, whether we find a request unreasonable can be associated on how we have gotten used to it.

The Japanese and Koreans have gotten used to putting in long hours and foregoing their entitled annual leaves. They do not find it unreasonable at all to only take 1-2 days leave a year and let the rest go unutilized.

In many Asian cultures, bargaining is part and parcel of most transactions. Many Chinese and Indians do not find it unreasonable to be offered a ridiculously low price for their products. That is because they treat it with jest that it is a game played in life each day.

An American or Japanese who is not used to such unthoughtful and disrespectful gestures may find this an insult to their efforts spent in precisely pricing the product. Or they may just feel it is a waste of time to engage in petty amounts.

An incident at the Indian embassy of Singapore got me thinking. When needing to apply for visa to India in short notice, a visa agent advised me to head to the embassy myself in case I could get past bureaucracy and get the visa in less than 5 days. I waited in a long queue and during my chats with others, noticed that there was one in the queue who got an exceptional treatment. When it came to my turn for the visa interview, I was adamant that I had booked my flight for an important business trip and hoped to get the visa quicker. I got a No answer. I was surprised that rumours of an express service was untrue. I insisted that I could pay for such service, but was declined. Then, I questioned why there were some who could get it faster. The officer was a little furious, and I immediately apologised for my misunderstanding and got my visa in 3 days. So what is negotiable and do many Asians prepare a range and quota of negotiable outcomes? Do some who are used to fixed rules just accept a No response and forego other possibilities?

My dear readers, I would love to hear about how you respond in a negotiation? Do you treat it seriously and provide a precise and well analyzed response and get frustrated that you have to spend so much effort in a negotiation? Or do you just treat it like a game and boldly challenge the offer?

(Photos show the family at the Merlion and the Fountain of Wealth at Suntec city).

Tip 205: Identify the wisdom in traditions

Haruka was back in Malaysia for the Christmas holidays. It was the first time she met her great grandmother who is 86 years old. I thought it was good for Haruka to build relations with her extended family, yet later I realized it could not be as ideal as I hoped for. There was the language barrier. My grandmother was born in Malaysia before getting married to my grandfather who hailed from Guangdong. Eventhough, my grandmother had less Chinese roots since she lived her whole life in Malaysia, she did not attend school as girls then were barred from going to school by their fathers. So, my grandmother could not speak English to Haruka and she thought it would be difficult to play with Haruka. That was until I saw photos of Tangyuan in the local newspaper announcing that the next day on 22 December 2009 was the Winter Solstice Festival. It was an opportunity for Haruka to knead Tangyuan with her great grandmother.

Traditions have been introduced by the elders for many decades or centuries with careful thought on how traditions can instill noble values and bring people together. Societies in the past do not have so much convenience and mobility to keep in touch easily. Traditions such as the Dongzhi is a good time for many to make the effort to travel the distance to knead rice flour together to make as many round dumplings as possible as flour was not expensive previously. It also instills patience as a good dumpling is knead with love and lots of attention to detail to ensure its round and chewy. The glutinous rice flour needs to have just the right amount of water, else it will be too dry for kneading or too wet to hold a smooth round shape. If hundreds of balls are made, patience is required and a desire to want to maintain good standards may warrant kneading the balls over and over by reducing the size and rekneading if its too large or too small. Like the Japanese, the Chinese too had many traditions emphasizing the need to put attention to detail.

Nowadays, we can easily ready made Tangyuan knead by factories or vendors in the market, but nothing beats participating in the traditions and reaping the benefits if we identify with the wisdom behind it. Do it - it takes effort, time, inconvenience and unnecessary stress, but there is good in many traditions.

(Photos show Haruka with her Malaysian great grandmother at our home in Petaling Jaya, Malaysia and Haruka with her Malaysian grandmother at the Singapore zoo and Clarke Quay riverside when she came to visit my new Singapore home. Also, Haruka's first hawker center food. The best we tried in our first 2 weeks in Singapore was the Zion Road hawker center opposite Great World City, Tiong Bahru which is clean and has lots of food variety).

Tip 181: Festivities at Japan's night markets

There is actually no night market in Japan and according to Wikipedia, the most well known of it all is at Taiwan (yet to try it). In Malaysia's Petaling Street, Singapore's new Bugis Street or Hong Kong's Temple Street, they are a lively community of vendors or the public looking for an opportunity at flea markets or 'pasar malam' (as called in Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia) to sell cheap merchandise and food items. These vendors do it as a part time job, some after their day jobs to earn an extra income.












In Japan, this happens only during the Japanese festivities as the Japanese vendors do it as a celebration and as an opportunity to share their food culture. Most of them are restaurant/food business owners who take a day off from their business to participate in the festivities. Some of the festivities include the local masturi, tanabata, summer fireworks viewing, different dance or season festivities. Most of them happen in summer or autumn. This weblink list a complete calendar of festivities all over Japan. They can be major crowd pullers and you need to head out early to book a nice space to enjoy the food.












I was looking forward to the Sumida river fireworks which is the greatest of all fireworks, having a display of 20,000 fireworks over 1.5 hour duration. This tradition dates back to the Edo period, though which much more grandeur currently. It attracts 1 million people annually and we realized that too late. Police and volunteers were already blocking the roads to the prime spots 1 hour in advanced and we could only settle for 2nd or 3rd class viewing spots.












Another lesson learnt was never bring a stroller to these places as the crowd moves on and on, with little patience for a daddy with a stroller needing to negotiate the different pavements. Interestingly, being a daddy changes how an outing will turn out. I used to be able to get all the good spots, by squeezing or talking my way through. I think this will be a challenge especially if I have more kids in the future. I guess having just 1 kid does not provide a good definition of what parenting is.












(Photos show the food vendors at the Bettara ichi (Japanese pickle fair selling bettarazuke) at Kodenmacho, and Haruka in her Okinawan jinbei posing with dancers at the Awa-odori dance festival at Kagurazaka street, Tokyo. Food shown are grilled fish/ajinoshioyaki, yakitori, takoyaki, candy apple/ringo ame, okonomiyaki, bettarazuke, oden and obanyaki).

Tip 123: Understanding cultural norms

Speaking the language of a country, do not necessarily mean you would have learnt all the cultural norms pertaining to common lifestyles of the people. This include how ordering tea could differ. It was a fairly hot day in Hong Kong and a tiring one after carrying Haruka around, so I ordered iced chinese tea at a coffee shop. Chinese from Malaysia would relate to this habit since its pretty common to have chinese tea with ice in a hot weather. The waiter frowned and asked me in Cantonese if I wanted iced lemon tea instead. I said, "no, I would like chinese tea with ice." The waiter then begin to get irritated so I relented to stick to the cultural norm, and said hot chinese tea please. This Chinese cultural norm stems from the belief that brewed tea leaves in hot water would lose their antioxidants when chilled. This in fact is proven, but it seems that chilling hot brewed tea is still more healthy than the cultural norm of conveniently buying a cold can/bottle of processed tea from a vending machine. If in Japan, carrying a bottle from home daily would seem silly since you can conveniently buy a drink from a vending machine at any corner of the street or office. Breaking such cultural norms leaves the impression of being less sophisticated. Same goes to deciding how you want your tea served in England. It would be polite to be decisive and eloquently specify whether one prefers Earl Grey as opposed to English Breakfast, as well as the number of sugar cubes and teaspoons of milk you would have in your tea. Hence, why James Bond looks sophisticated by decisively choosing to have his martini shaken, not stirred. I am sure a Malaysian looks sophisticated in front of a foreigner at the mamak when ordering Teh O kosong (no milk, no sugar), Teh O ais (no milk, cold tea with sugar), Teh O ais limau (lime tea - not lemon!), Teh See (Tea no sugar but evaporated milk). Now, let's have a movie where James Bond orders at a Malaysian mamak stall.

This does not stop there. Match the following combinations of breakfast to the right citizenship and see if you get it wrong, the guest would feel offended. (Rice, miso soup, natou, green tea), (Fish ball noodles, milk tea in a glass), (toast, cup of tea), (naan/roti canai, curry), (porridge, hot chinese tea). It would definitely not make sense to a British for having curry during breakfast since it is a food reserved for lunch or dinner, or to a Korean for having porridge when one is not sick. Does following these cultural norms make for more pleasant conversations and better acceptance? As subtle as these examples sound, they could mean something to different people. If we are getting more mindful that we should not serve Muslims pork, then these subtleties count in the coming global age. Paying an extra attention can gain favor and less frowns. I look back to a breakfast interview I had a long while ago with a Vice President of a company at the executive lounge of a hotel. My interviewer filled his cup of coffee, while I conveniently took a glass of orange juice and somehow I could feel later that it would have been more pleasant at this important first meeting to have similar matching cups at the table where we would be spending an hour of close discussion.

Any other ways to order tea? Any other peculiar breakfast habits of countries you have visited? Do enlighten everyone by leaving a comment. I have also compiled a list of blogposts from my blog on Japanese cultural norms.

(Photos show my first week in Hong Kong with my family at the Hong Kong Zoo overlooking the Hong Kong skyline and the cheapest bowl of prawn wonton noodle that I found at Wanchai during breakfast priced at HKD11 or USD1.40)

Tip 87: Immersing into daddy's cultural roots

Being away from one's home country means that there are many cultural activities and holiday celebrations not practiced. Yet, it takes some determination and diligence to make things happen. Even when we are home and close to our parents and relatives, it does not stop the laziness in each of us to just sit back and relax, instead of making that long drive home, gathering friends and relatives for the traditional Thanksgiving Dinner, spending hours stuffing the turkey, or getting the kitchen messy with flour kneading Tangyuan. Peter Parker in Spider-Man 3 said, "We always have a choice." These choices we make now as daddies to a certain extent shape our children too. I for instance, wished my dad would have made a little more effort to share his Hakka roots and have closer bond with my paternal grandmum so I may get to know my mainland Guangdong roots better. I know a classmate of mine whose dad and uncles made it a family event to make regular trips to their home village in mainland China and still keeping close ties with their Chinese relatives. It adds to the fun when we do enjoy these choices we make, yet at times, a little extra determination is required.

Before coming to Japan, I did spend quite some time building my network. Later with Facebook, it was a breeze to create a Malaysians in Tokyo group. We organized a cheering convoy for the 2008 Yonex Open Japan where our Malaysian women doubles and Lee Chong Wei went to the Semi Finals. One of the students even had 2 large Malaysian flags. Our cheering probably contributed to both of them advancing to the finals. Though daddy spent 7000 yen (USD$70) for 2 tickets for daddy and mummy. Haruka also did not blow her baby trumpet that daddy took along. Other activities include a Hari Raya feasting at a Malaysian restaurant open house and a good chance to exchange greetings and chat about the things we miss about Malaysia. I do miss lots of my Cantonese cultural activities though and it is pretty difficult to coach Haruka on the Cantonese dialect on my own. Though, I do have some plans in the pipeline that I would share later if it materializes. Choices, choices. At least from this blog, my kid(s) can read about them and know the core of my heart since how things turn out and its results can deviate, yet its important that they know I love them.

Are there any fun cultural activity you make efforts to get involved in? Do share. I may be getting out of touch and need rekindling of some fond memories to kick start them myself.

Tip 80: Getting involved in activities of the season

At the start of each season in Japan, there will be processions at many different cities and this promotes awareness to cherish the beautiful and uniqueness of each season. Japanese take the extra mile to catch the beautiful sights at the best places, even if it means spending more money or waiting in long queues. But, to a certain extent, that's something we ought to consider doing. When the playcenter near my home organized Nagashi Soumen as part of it's summer activity for just 300 yen per person (USD$3), we seized the opportunity to let Haruka have her first Nagashi Soumen experience. She is too young to cherish this memory, but the photos and comments posted here can do that job.

Nagashi Soumen or floating/flowing noodles is usually done during summer as an outdoor activity where the soumen noodles are let to flow down a long flume of bamboo on cold water (sometimes ice cold). I had my first experience at a garden of a home in the company of adults aged 20 onwards. Its actually quite costly as you have to order a clean bamboo as you do not see any grow wild in Tokyo. The second experience was equally fun in the company of kids and mothers. There were some additional items besides the soumen which were quite a challenge to catch using a chopstick or fork such as the fast rolling baby tomatoes and mochi. Of course, I had to hold Haruka's hand the whole time and she probably did not know what was going on except the time when I put the items in her mouth. I am looking forward to try these activities again as Haruka grows older and with my future other children. Hopefully, God willing I would still have time to blog about them. And may all this blog post be a special present to my children of my love to them as well as a testament of how much fun I put into parenting in the midst of the sweat and commitments as well.

Are there any fun activities related to seasons and cultural festivals that you do with your children? Do share them on the comment section.