X was going to meet her boyfriend's grandparents in China for the first time. Since she was not a Chinese, she did not really possess any knowledge about the Chinese culture and traditions. However, her Chinese friends told her that in China, it is important that you bring along a gift whenever you are visiting someone, as a sign of respect to the host.
So she decided to go to the gift shop to see if she could find something there. While she was at the gift shop, she saw this small, unique-looking antique clock. Fascinated by the clock, she decided to purchase it as a gift. She asked the shop assistant to wrap up the gift.
As she walking out the store, she saw a fruit stall along the road. She thought that it would be a good idea to bring along some fruits as well to visit her boyfriend's grandparents. So she purchased four pears.
Later on her boyfriend picked her up and they went to his grandparents' home together. His grandparents greeted them and were very excited to meet their grandson's girlfriend for the first time. X then proceed to take the wrapped gift and the four pears from her bag. When they saw the fruits, their facial expressions changed immediately. The smiles disappeared from their faces. X wondered if something was wrong.
As X passed the wrapped gift to her boyfriend's grandmother, her grandmother heard some ticking sound from it. Immediately she asked X whether it was a clock. X said yes. The grandmother became very angry and started scolding X. X was shocked.
After reading the story above, some of you may be wondering what was wrong with the gift, as well as the fruits. Let me begin with the fruits first. There was actually nothing wrong with the fruits, but there was something wrong with the number of fruits. Chinese people do not believe in giving anything in sets of four, as four is considered an "unlucky" number since the pronunciation of four in the Chinese language sounds like "death".
As for the gift, Chinese people will always avoid giving clocks because the phrase "giving a clock as a gift", when pronounced in the Chinese language, sounds like "wishing someone's death". However, this does not apply to watches, only clocks.
This particular story clearly illustrates the importance of knowing and understanding the culture and traditions of other people because we do not want to get caught in circumstances where we unknowingly or unintentionally upset the other party, as this may result in serious consequences. In a real working environment, we may actually lose a crucial business deal or offend someone important due to our ignorance of their culture.
Friday, February 27, 2009
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Business Correspondence Critique
A few months back, I received this e-mail in my account, marked as "highly important". Here are the details:
From: Sankhala, Suresh Singh
Sent: Monday, July 18, 2008 12:48 PM
Subject: UK Requirement
Dear Friend,
Please do not take this for a junk letter. Bill Gates is sharing his fortune. If you ignore this you will repent later. Microsoft and AOL are now the largest Internet companies and in an effort to make sure that Internet Explorer remains the most widely used program, Microsoft and AOL are running an e-mail beta test. When you forward this e-mail to friends, Microsoft can and will track it (if you are a Microsoft Windows user) for a two week time period. For every person that you forward this e-mail to, Microsoft will pay you $245.00, for every person that you sent it to that forwards it on, Microsoft will pay you $243.00 and for every third person that receives it, you will be paid $241.00. Within two week! s, Microsoft will contact you for your address and then send you a cheque.
And now I shall present my analysis on this e-mail:
Firstly, if you noticed, the subject is written as "UK Requirement", which had absolutely nothing to do with the content of the e-mail in any way.
Secondly, it was not appropriate for the sender to address me as "Dear Friend", as I do not even know the sender nor have I even heard of him. I believe we all agree that the usage of a more formal tone is recommended when communicating with someone for the first time.
Now as for the content of the e-mail, it obviously does not follow all 7Cs of writing. To begin with, the sender should introduce himself first and state who or which organization he is representing since he is a complete stranger to me. The objective of his e-mail was also not stated at all in the first two lines.
The next flaw that I want to point out is the language used. The grammar and vocabulary used is simply inappropriate. For instance, it is stated in the e-mail that "If you ignore this you will repent later." I know it must sound kind of funny right now, but the right word to use should be "regret" and not "repent". The tone and phrasing of that particular sentence is also too strong; if the sender really has something useful to share, maybe he can write something like "Do read on further as I believe the information below will greatly benefit you."
Besides that, the content of the e-mail itself lacks both completeness and concreteness. No details are provided regarding the "e-mail beta test" or why is it being run. There is no further information concerning how this whole "payment scheme" will work as well. The recipient of such an e-mail will not know how Microsoft will "track" them down and deposit money into their bank account. Moreover, even if this e-mail was really genuine, the sender should have attached reliable sources or links for the recipient to refer to.
Apart from that, under normal circumstances, the sender should have provided his contact details (Although we probably could figure out why he didn't in this case).
On the whole, if we look at the overall format of the e-mail (even if we ignore the content), somehow the mail looked as if it had been prepared really sloppily. Although it is short, appropriate paragraphing will make this mail a whole lot easier to read. Last but not least, he did not even bother to end the mail with "Yours Faithfully" or "Yours Sincerely" and sign off with his name as well as job position.
Let me conclude by saying that reading this e-mail in the very first place was not a very prudent way to use my precious time.
From: Sankhala, Suresh Singh
Sent: Monday, July 18, 2008 12:48 PM
Subject: UK Requirement
Dear Friend,
Please do not take this for a junk letter. Bill Gates is sharing his fortune. If you ignore this you will repent later. Microsoft and AOL are now the largest Internet companies and in an effort to make sure that Internet Explorer remains the most widely used program, Microsoft and AOL are running an e-mail beta test. When you forward this e-mail to friends, Microsoft can and will track it (if you are a Microsoft Windows user) for a two week time period. For every person that you forward this e-mail to, Microsoft will pay you $245.00, for every person that you sent it to that forwards it on, Microsoft will pay you $243.00 and for every third person that receives it, you will be paid $241.00. Within two week! s, Microsoft will contact you for your address and then send you a cheque.
And now I shall present my analysis on this e-mail:
Firstly, if you noticed, the subject is written as "UK Requirement", which had absolutely nothing to do with the content of the e-mail in any way.
Secondly, it was not appropriate for the sender to address me as "Dear Friend", as I do not even know the sender nor have I even heard of him. I believe we all agree that the usage of a more formal tone is recommended when communicating with someone for the first time.
Now as for the content of the e-mail, it obviously does not follow all 7Cs of writing. To begin with, the sender should introduce himself first and state who or which organization he is representing since he is a complete stranger to me. The objective of his e-mail was also not stated at all in the first two lines.
The next flaw that I want to point out is the language used. The grammar and vocabulary used is simply inappropriate. For instance, it is stated in the e-mail that "If you ignore this you will repent later." I know it must sound kind of funny right now, but the right word to use should be "regret" and not "repent". The tone and phrasing of that particular sentence is also too strong; if the sender really has something useful to share, maybe he can write something like "Do read on further as I believe the information below will greatly benefit you."
Besides that, the content of the e-mail itself lacks both completeness and concreteness. No details are provided regarding the "e-mail beta test" or why is it being run. There is no further information concerning how this whole "payment scheme" will work as well. The recipient of such an e-mail will not know how Microsoft will "track" them down and deposit money into their bank account. Moreover, even if this e-mail was really genuine, the sender should have attached reliable sources or links for the recipient to refer to.
Apart from that, under normal circumstances, the sender should have provided his contact details (Although we probably could figure out why he didn't in this case).
On the whole, if we look at the overall format of the e-mail (even if we ignore the content), somehow the mail looked as if it had been prepared really sloppily. Although it is short, appropriate paragraphing will make this mail a whole lot easier to read. Last but not least, he did not even bother to end the mail with "Yours Faithfully" or "Yours Sincerely" and sign off with his name as well as job position.
Let me conclude by saying that reading this e-mail in the very first place was not a very prudent way to use my precious time.
Sunday, February 1, 2009
Resolving Interpersonal Conflict
X had always been very different from other children. From a very young age, he displayed extraordinary intelligence. He could somehow understand almost everything at a quicker pace and that enabled him to pick up both language and mathematical skills with ease. Apart from that, he also possessed an incredibly high memory capacity where he was able to not only remember many things, he could memorize things which are highly complex in nature as well. But what was most amazing about X was that even at a very young age of 4, he could already start reasoning things out and tried to make sense of the world around him.
Unfortunately, his parents did not realize that their child was somewhat gifted (or more advanced than other children, if you prefer to call it that). They brought him up as if he was just an ordinary child and did not cater to a lot of his mental, emotional and psychological needs accordingly. As a result, the child grew up constantly feeling that his parents never understood him at all, leading to increasing feelings of resentment towards his parents. On several occasions, he tried to drop some hints concerning what he was feeling deep down inside but his parents could not picked them up at all. He wanted to tell them directly but just could not find the words to express his emotions. After all, he was still a child and did not know how to talk to grown ups about such complicated and somewhat awkward matters.
During his teenage years, he frequently quarreled with his parents about almost everything. One fine day, X requested for additional pocket money from his father since he wanted to buy a book that he really liked. Now his father was financially strapped that particular month. Coupled with a long stressful day at work, his father was really in a terrible mood. He scolded X for always spending so much of money and told him very sharply that it was a NO. X then got mad, perceiving that his father was once again being “un-understanding” towards him as usual. He slammed the door after his father left the room. His father, seeing that action as being disrespectful kicked the door open and shouted very loudly at X. X yelled back and soon a shouting match started. Fortunately, X's mother intervened and stopped both parties from taking it any farther. After that incident, X was badly shaken and felt hatred for his father. He contemplated running away from home for a few days just to give his parents a scare. After all, his parents had never really realized that they did not understand him and maybe doing something drastic might just be the thing to get their attention.
If you were in X's shoes, what will you do?
Unfortunately, his parents did not realize that their child was somewhat gifted (or more advanced than other children, if you prefer to call it that). They brought him up as if he was just an ordinary child and did not cater to a lot of his mental, emotional and psychological needs accordingly. As a result, the child grew up constantly feeling that his parents never understood him at all, leading to increasing feelings of resentment towards his parents. On several occasions, he tried to drop some hints concerning what he was feeling deep down inside but his parents could not picked them up at all. He wanted to tell them directly but just could not find the words to express his emotions. After all, he was still a child and did not know how to talk to grown ups about such complicated and somewhat awkward matters.
During his teenage years, he frequently quarreled with his parents about almost everything. One fine day, X requested for additional pocket money from his father since he wanted to buy a book that he really liked. Now his father was financially strapped that particular month. Coupled with a long stressful day at work, his father was really in a terrible mood. He scolded X for always spending so much of money and told him very sharply that it was a NO. X then got mad, perceiving that his father was once again being “un-understanding” towards him as usual. He slammed the door after his father left the room. His father, seeing that action as being disrespectful kicked the door open and shouted very loudly at X. X yelled back and soon a shouting match started. Fortunately, X's mother intervened and stopped both parties from taking it any farther. After that incident, X was badly shaken and felt hatred for his father. He contemplated running away from home for a few days just to give his parents a scare. After all, his parents had never really realized that they did not understand him and maybe doing something drastic might just be the thing to get their attention.
If you were in X's shoes, what will you do?
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