Assalamualaikum everyone! How are you doing? Hope you are doing fine
So, before we start, we would like you to play this, a very very worthwhile and captivating video entitled Cross Cultural Communication by Pellegrino Riccardi. Just hit the play button below
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Today, we would like to share with you, our understanding about what culture is and the dissimilarities between cultures after watching the above video on TEDx Talks YouTube channel. Speaking of which, the speaker, Pellegrino has the credibility to talk about cultures because he has been to many countries. He has experienced a lot during his journey. According to him,
Culture is a system of behaviour that helps us act in an accepted or familiar way.
These two keywords; acceptance and familiarity brought us to a clearer definition of culture.
The same act, doesn't mean the same in different cultures.
Living in a community or society makes communication very important. We communicate everyday, even to ourselves (monologues). Communication does not only exist when two persons are talking, but, body language is also included as a method of communication. There are some body languages we used to express something and not all cultures could interpret them the same as what you think. Let us give you an example, in Malaysia, when we meet someone we know, we would raise our hand as a token of greeting
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 are all doing the same thing in slightly different way."
We found this quote interesting because the example given by Pellergrino about queuing in some countries are different, is unique for us which makes us want to learn about other cultures more eagerly
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.
These two keywords; acceptance and familiarity brought us to a clearer definition of culture.
The same act, doesn't mean the same in different cultures.Living in a community or society makes communication very important. We communicate everyday, even to ourselves (monologues). Communication does not only exist when two persons are talking, but, body language is also included as a method of communication. There are some body languages we used to express something and not all cultures could interpret them the same as what you think. Let us give you an example, in Malaysia, when we meet someone we know, we would raise our hand as a token of greeting
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 are all doing the same thing in slightly different way."We found this quote interesting because the example given by Pellergrino about queuing in some countries are different, is unique for us which makes us want to learn about other cultures more eagerly
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.
From this visual, we can see how they interpret how "queuing"is. Looking at the way the Cambodians are queuing, we have always wanted to do something like that (lazy huh?). Hahaha, no, it's not like that! 
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 
.
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 .
That's all from us. We are glad if you can give your comment and opinion also regarding this topic. Toodles! 
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
In western culture, if they offer us something and we refuse to take it. They won't asking it again but different with Malay culture, when someone offers us something, we refuse to accept it, they will keep asking it over again until we say yes. We know this is a politeness we have to show to the people. Thus, for us when people communicate they often don't say what they mean and don't mean what they say has positive and negative side. But from the example we gave, We think that's positive act. Heee we love our culture 
. 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
