Intercultural Scenario
I arrived in Singapore more than a year ago. It was not my first time but a lot of things had changed since the last time I visited Singapore. After unpacking endless stuffs that I brought, my mother and I decided to go for a grocery shopping. It was around 6 PM and a bunch of people in formal attires were rushing to squeeze themselves into packed trains and buses. When we were going to cross the street, we saw a bus was moving at a high speed. We decided to stand on the sidewalk and wait for the bus to pass but suddenly the bus screeched and stopped right before the zebra cross.
I had no idea what was going on. Did we do something wrong? Did the driver think we wanted to board the bus? However, there was no nearby bus stop and we were practically just standing and staring at the road. We did not send any signals to stop the bus.
The bus driver looked a bit grumpy and waved his hand impatiently, signaling us to cross the street. My mother and I quickly crossed the street, feeling bad for the bus driver.
Interpretation
In Indonesia, zebra crosses are usually not of much use to pedestrians and jaywalking is a commonly observed habit. Most of the time, pedestrians have to wave their hand to slow down the drivers before crossing the street whereas in Singapore, most drivers readily give way for pedestrians when approaching zebra crosses even when there was no signal. To sum up, in this case, the fundamental difference between Singapore and Indonesia cultures lies on the obedience to some specific traffic rules.
Furthermore, miscommunication might arise in the presence of such a difference. In this case, failure to decode each other’s non-verbal cues (waiting on the sidewalk to let the bus pass and stopping the bus to let the pedestrians cross the street) is the root of the ineffective communication.
