Hi hello & assalamualaikum,
Today, we eagerly want to introduce to our new friend from Afghanistan. Wait, before that let us share how we met him and how did we know him hihi
We can't really remember the exact time when was that but basically, on that day, Weeya and I (Hana) wanted to go home after the class, so we went to LRT Gombak to reach to our destination. Suddenly, there's one guy asking us for direction and uncoincidentally we wanted to go to the same place. As we wanted to go to the same place, we asked him to just follow us.
In the train, we had a chit chat and click! We became friends and still keep in touch with each other until today. Later, we set an appointment to have a leisure talk and ask about him, his culture and so on.
Before that, let's start with his biodata,
Age: 22 years old
From: Afghanistan
How long he has been in Malaysia: 3 years and 3 months
Course: Kuliyyah of ICT
Nationality: Persian
We asked him lots of lots of questions. One of the questions was, if he knows about stereotype. The first response we got, he was quite not understand what is stereotype
. Maybe, he rarely heard of the "stereotype" word. But it is okay, we have explained the rough meaning of stereotype 
. He has the stereotype that all Malaysians are friendly (thumbs up us Malaysians! 
) and the food in Malaysia mostly has too much spices and he doesn't like them a lil bit yet he try to like and adapt with Malaysian food (that's good) . Among Malaysian food that he like most is Nasi Ayam and Nasi Ayam Kunyit. Especially, the sambal and Ayam Kunyit 
. Other than that, we also asked if he has any negative perception towards Malaysian people. He told us that everything is fine about Malaysia, but he has a negative perception(?) about IIUM rules 
. He said that he doesn't know, but somehow he thinks that one of IIUM rules is illogical, which is the dress code. He wondered why wearing a V-neck t-shirt is not allowed during classes as he thinks it is a proper attire. Maybe it is quite weird for them to have a specific dress code to wear whereas in their country they are free to wear any proper clothing. However, he still follows the rules 
Besides, we also asked him about the cultures in his country. In Afghanistan, there are a lot of ethnic groups; Pashtun, Tajik, Hazara, Uzbek and so on. He is from Tajik ethnic group, which is known as Persian people. Same like races in Malaysia, people can differentiate the ethnic groups in Afghanistan from their faces, names and languages. It must be exciting if we get to go there and learn every ethnic groups they have in Afghanistan. We've got a lot more to tell you guys about our new friend, we will post it out in our next entry.
Sum up, he's a good person and know how to fit in with people from another country :)
The same act, doesn't mean the same in different cultures.
or expressing our gratitude. Yet, you might not know that in Africa, on the other hand, the act of raising hand (which is, palm towards them) is you are being rude 
. This fact was told by our previous lecturer who is from Africa. Why? Because raising hand to greet someone is a behaviour that is accepted by Malaysians and it is familiar as everyone is doing the same. However, in Africa, they are not familiar with that behaviour and is not accepted by their culture. Hence, we need to be more careful of doing things during travel, respect them and learn the dos and dont's before travelling 
.
We love they way how they queue in Finland, Norway and Cambodia because they way they queue is different from others. From what we have learnt in Semantics class 
, we were told that when we ask someone from different cultures to describe one word, sometimes will have a lot of different meanings. And, one of the examples is, "queuing". The general meaning of queuing is a line or sequence of people awaiting their turn to be attended to or to proceed. Everyone knows the meaning of queue, but the way they do it are distinguished from others. This is different cultures queue.
This is because, the way they queue makes us to be more patient and relax rather than stand still for a bit long until our turn has arrived. For us, by looking at the above figure, we can see that this variety makes this world looks more attractive as being the same like others is boring 
. 
to their guests. And as a guest, when they offered our mother a drink, our mother will refuse it in the first place. And when they insisted to still get a drink for us, by then our mother will accept the offer. So can you relate with the quote
. Both of us are from different cultures, Weeya is from Sabak Bernam and Hana is from Kuala Terengganu. Majority people in Sabak Bernam, love and used to eat spicy food. The more the taste of spicy is, the more delicious the food will be. The most famous food in Sabak Bernam is Mee Udang! There are a lot of people from many states come to Sabak Bernam to taste the delightful taste of Mee Udang regardless of the distance. Besides, the culture in Kuala Terengganu is not much different with other culture. What we love about Terengganu culture is the nature, because there are a lot of beaches. That's how we grown up living in nature, we will go to the beach in the evening and spend most of the time at the beach. And other than that, we have a lot of food like nasi dagang. It is very delicious!
Since cultures and communication are closely related and even more close to us as we learn communication as our major, we are very excited to learn and dig into the various cultures diversity all over the world.
Authors : Weeya & Hana
