Glaring cultural differences

Malaysians will never be rude to a Datuk or a Tan Sri because they choose the people to bully.
I arrived back in Kuala Lumpur on Jan 11. I hadn't been too certain whether I would even get on my flight from Dublin on account of record snowfalls (the worst in Europe in 30 years) and icy runways.

Straight back into 30-degree heat in my snow boots, thermal knickers and winter coat was a bit of a shock to my system.

After the initial unpleasant jolt and the necessary adaptation into a more tropic-friendly ensemble, I got straight back into the flow of the climate here.

A lot like the initial culture shock of settling back into life in Malaysia - and in both cases, at times, I find myself in a fractious mood as a result of cultural and climatic differences.

The weather is easy enough to deal with, what with non-stop air-conditioning being the norm here.
As for everything else that annoyed me, I didn't really notice it initially as I was too busy eating my way around Malaysia.

From roti canai in Cameron Highlands to Sarawak laksa in Kuching, I was just far too caught up with stuffing my face to notice much else but the plate of food in front of me.

It was only after my digestive system started giving out about all the food additives I was ingesting that I had to start paying attention to other little details of Malaysian life.

I have a long list of pet hates (which gets longer as the days go by). For a start, we're just a rude nation.
We're rude to family, friends and neighbours. We're rude to maids, security guards and supermarket cashiers.
We are not, however, rude to Datuks, Tan Sris and their spouses. We know our place in the pecking order, you see.

We are rude when we drive, when we park and when we engage with others in commercial transactions.
When it comes to small and medium- sized businesses, there is no such thing as customer service in Malaysia.

Large multinational corporations have the money to send their staff for training and as a result, they're just a lot easier to deal with than small businesses which seem to think that they're doing you a favour by taking your money off you to provide service for you.

I have lost count of the number of times I've handed my money over to people who have just been plain rude.
It was only when one day, as a result of a particularly nasty heat wave, that I snapped at some small business-person and watched as he then did a turnaround and apologised to me, that the realisation struck me about one of the fundamental rules of surviving in Malaysia.

“Don't give face.” That's what politeness is viewed as in Malaysia - giving face, as opposed to it being just the norm of social engagement.

Malaysians pick the people they choose to be polite to, as opposed to Europeans, who pick the people they choose to be rude to.Don't get me wrong. It's not as if I think I'm beyond all this.

I used to be the quintessential rude Malaysian as well. But moving away from Malaysia, I was exposed to a culture where rudeness is not just frowned upon, it verged on the illegal!

God forbid you're rude to the supermarket cashier anywhere in Europe, or you might find them refusing to serve you. You see, we Malaysians are far too accepting of this rudeness.

I don't know why this is so, but I do know that I don't want to be in a position where my principal form of engagement with my friends, family, neighbours, mamak stall operators, restaurant waiters, supermarket cashiers and petrol station attendants is based on hostility.

I do realise that my visceral reaction to this rudeness (which like all other Malaysians, I used to be pretty blasé about) is all about me and my personal journey of adapting culturally to life in Malaysia again.

Six years ago, when I made the move out of Malaysia, I had a hard time adapting to the cultural differences in Ireland. Returning to Malaysia, I find this cycle repeating.

My experience is actually part of the typical human reaction to cultural adaption. Known as the W curve, it is the theory of anthropologist Kalvero Oberg, who in 1960 coined the term “Culture Shock”.

Oberg, who viewed culture shock as an occupational disease that international travellers face, theorised that in a move to another culture, there is an initial 'Honeymoon' period when all is rosy and one's mood is buoyant.
It then heads to a low mood period when one goes through the crisis of culture shock. After this, there is an upward mood mobility towards recovery and adjustment.

If one were then to return to one's culture of origin, the mood curve repeats itself by beginning with a 'Honeymoon' at home period, followed by a downward dip with another crisis as a result of the shock of re-entering one's home culture.

This low period is then replaced with an upward mood trend of recovery and adjustment at home.
Following Oberg's logic, I am bound for that upward trend of recovery and adjustment at some point in the future.

I'm not prepared to integrate back into Malaysian culture by being rude all the time, and polite some of the time. I'd rather it be the other way around. How about you?

A DIFFERENT SPIN
BY SHEILA STANLEY

Sheila Stanley is an ex-journalist and a mother of two children who hopes that they do not pick up the bad habit of being rude.

Testosterone Makes People Suspicious of One Another

Image: flickr/an untrained eye

A dose of testosterone might be enough to save gullible types from being ripped off, a new study reveals.
Testosterone is linked to aggression, competition and social status. Now scientists have found that the hormone also reduces naive individuals’ confidence in others.

“Testosterone reduces trust just enough to make people vigilant and careful,” said psychologist Jack van Honk of Utrecht University in the Netherlands, who led the study published May 24 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

In the study, a few dozen females received half a milligram of testosterone under the tongue — enough to increase hormone levels tenfold. The women viewed pictures of faces and judged how trustworthy they looked. The drug decreased ratings by about half, and the effect was only strong for females who are normally easily fooled.

Van Honk speculates that the effect does not occur in cautious individuals, because the hormone would make them so paranoid that they would become socially disabled.

“I think that people are going to see that testosterone has beneficial effects on social behaviors and carries properties that might be important for applications in certain psychiatric diseases, one of them being social anxiety disorder,” he said

“It’s interesting work that fits nicely with recent work suggesting that testosterone influences social motivation and perception,” said Pranjal Mehta, a psychologist at Columbia University who was not involved in the study. Future studies should test whether testosterone decreases trust in all individuals in more competitive situations, he said. “It’s absolutely critical to test the effect of the hormone in real-world social contexts,” he said.

Previous studies have found that oxytocin, a hormone involved in bonding, increases faith in others. The two hormones together may keep trust at an optimal level, van Honk said. In future studies, he would like to determine which brain circuits regulate trust through these hormones.

 By Janelle Weaver

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Shuttle Atlantis, mission accomplished, leaves station

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla.--The shuttle Atlantis undocked from the International Space Station on Sunday, wrapping up a week of assembly work to install a new Russian module, a backup Ku-band antenna, six new solar array batteries, and more than three tons of other equipment and supplies.

With pilot Dominic "Tony" Antonelli at the controls, the shuttle's payload bay docking mechanism disengaged its counterpart on the space station's forward port at 11:22 a.m. EDT as the two spacecraft sailed 220 miles above the southern Indian Ocean southwest of Perth, Australia.

The shuttle Atlantis pulls away from the International Space Station on Sunday after a week of assembly operations.

(Credit: NASA TV)

 

"Houston and station, from Atlantis, physical separation," shuttle commander Kenneth Ham radioed.
"Space shuttle Atlantis, departing," flight engineer Tracy Caldwell Dyson said, ringing the ship's bell in the Harmony module as the shuttle drifted away.

"Atlantis, station is now in attitude control," flight engineer Timothy Creamer radioed a few moments later. "Hock, I've gotta tell you, you guys were consummate professionals with a great sense of humor, we were so glad to see you, loved working with you. See you soon, brother. Stay safe."

"Copy all, T.J., and same comments right back at you, brother," Ham replied.

Atlantis slowly pulled away to a point about 400 feet directly in front of the station where Antonelli began a 360-degree photo-documentation loop around the lab complex.

"I get to fly the separation," he said before launch. "I'll do a one-lap fly around of the space station. We train that a lot in the sim. It turns out the view is much better for real and the flying is more fun when you can actually feel the vehicle moving around."

The astronauts beamed down spectacular views of the space station as the shuttle looped up, over and behind the lab complex as the two spacecraft sailed above Mexico and the central United States on a southwest-to-northeast trajectory.

During a week of docked operations, the astronauts installed the 17,760-pound Russian mini-research module known as Rassvet and staged three spacewalks last Monday, Wednesday and Friday to install a backup Ku-band antenna system, an equipment mounting platform and to replace six batteries in the port-6 solar array.

The astronauts also delivered 2,192 pounds of equipment and supplies that were carried up in the shuttle's crew cabin, along with 1,300 pounds of fresh water generated by the ship's fuel cells. Some 1,763 pounds of equipment and experiment samples were transferred from the station to the shuttle's crew cabin for the trip home.

Altogether, the Atlantis astronauts carried 28,792 pounds of equipment and supplies to the space station. Total cargo being carried back to Earth, including the old P6 batteries and the cargo pallet holding them in place, came to 8,229 pounds.

The space station, approaching the Great Lakes, during a pass above the central United States shortly after the shuttle Atlantis undocked.

(Credit: NASA TV)

 

The Atlantis astronauts plan to carry out a final heat shield inspection Monday before packing up and testing the shuttle's re-entry systems Tuesday. Landing back at the Kennedy Space Center is targeted for 8:48 a.m. Wednesday morning, weather permitting.

Three hours before undocking, the two crews gathered for a brief farewell ceremony in the forward Harmony module.

"This is time when we have to say goodbye to our friends, our colleagues, the excellent crew of shuttle Atlantis that did an excellent job performing three EVAs, installing the new Russian module, having good fun, enjoying living on station and working in space," said Expedition 23 commander Oleg Kotov.

"They show good example of friendship, professionalism and classic attitudes in their behavior. ... So again, thank you Ken, for excellent job. We enjoyed working with you."

"Well Oleg, we are one happy shuttle crew," Ham replied. "And we are happy because of all of your effort, too. I think through our entire docked timeframe here we were a 12-person crew that operated together. And that was the only way we got everything done. ... So we are happy. But this one is to friends we're going to leave behind, and new friends that we've made, close friends. We've had a great time together.

"We are going to close the hatch shortly and we're going to depart," Ham said. "And of course, as always, it'll be a little bit sad. But we'll see you all on the surface of planet Earth again soon."

Kotov, Creamer, and Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi plan to follow the Atlantis astronauts back to Earth in nine days, departing June 1 (U.S. time) aboard the Soyuz TMA-17 capsule for a landing in Kazakhstan to close out a six-month stay in space.

Cosmonaut Alexander Skvortsov will take command from Kotov, remaining aboard the station with Caldwell Dyson, and Mikhail Kornienko as the Expedition 24 crew. They will be joined by cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin, Douglas Wheelock, and Shannon Walker, who are scheduled for launch aboard the Soyuz TMA-19 spacecraft on June 15.

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by William Harwood

 

Bill Harwood has been covering the U.S. space program full-time since 1984, first as Cape Canaveral bureau chief for United Press International and now as a consultant for CBS News. He has covered more than 115 shuttle missions, every interplanetary flight since Voyager 2's flyby of Neptune, and scores of commercial and military launches. Based at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Harwood is a devoted amateur astronomer and co-author of "Comm Check: The Final Flight of Shuttle Columbia." You can follow his frequent status updates at the CBSNews.com Space Place, where this story was first published.

Fabulously 50-ish and free to splurge on fun?

OLD is the new young. Middle and old age are traditionally seen as times of conformity, responsibility, risk aversion and settling down.

Yet instead of retiring with slippers to listen to the classics, many of the “new old” are still pursuing the rock 'n' roll lifestyle of their youth.

“New old” consumers

A quarter of Americans over 50 play video games - up almost threefold since 1999 - and the average “frequent game purchaser” is 39 years old, according to the Entertainment Software Association.

Recording Industry Association of America data shows that the over 40s are the only age group whose music purchasing has risen in the last decade.

The average motorcyclist is 47 years old, according to J.D. Power and Associates, and other Pew Research Center data shows that three-quarters of baby boomers own mobile phones and nearly a third have created a social networking profile.

The National Council on Aging claims singles aged 55 and older are the fastest growing group of online daters.

Something very different is occurring. At the other end of the age divide, it seems to be cool to be aged and gets even better when one has money to enjoy it.

Recently, Procter & Gamble, the US consumer goods giant, extended its partnership with NBC Digital Networks, the online publisher, to create a range of websites tailored specifically for “boomers”.

“Knowing that more than a third of all Internet users are adults between 45 and 64 years old, we saw an opportunity to work with Procter & Gamble to create a site network that can actively fuel this age group,” Devin Johnson, VP, NBC Digital Networks, said.

Mintel research studies show that around 10% of female boomers currently buy cosmetics and beauty goods online.

Members of this group spend around 13 hours a week surfing the Internet at present and typically favour the e-commerce services of major retailers like Wal-Mart, Target, CBS and Walgreens.

“Female baby boomers are one of the largest beauty care segments, known for their spending power, proactive health habits and dedication to product research,” said Kat Fay, a senior analyst at Mintel.

“Innovations like virtual makeovers, new product Tweets and online-only sweepstakes draw in consumers and provide them with benefits and discounts they can't find in an actual brick-and-mortar store.”

Overall, Mintel predicted that the number of female boomers purchasing skincare brands such as Procter & Gamble's Olay and Unilever's Dove via the web will rise by 30.9% from 2005 to 2015.

Ageless consumerism

According to a recent Synovate PAX study that covers the top 30% most affluent and influential consumers across 10 markets of Asia Pacific, the 50+ group have a higher likelihood than younger (25~49) consumers of owning financial and investment products, offshore investments and real estate, but there's more - even in home entertainment, they show their spending power.

The Asia-Pacific consumer market is transforming. There seems to be an ageless consumerism where the “new old” is indulging in consumer products and services that are meant for younger generations.
With such attitudinal and behavioural shifts, it's time to reassess your retirement planning.

Obviously not every boomer conforms to these new typologies. But statistics suggest more and more do. It's time to start thinking about your future spending.

If you think you are a “new old” consumer, you need to grow your money if you want to enjoy the fun and benefits of these “age-less” products and services. I'm already talking to my clients about it!

COMMENT BY CAROL YIP
>Carol Yip is a personal financial coach and also founder and CEO of Abacus for Money.

Solving the Sime Darby equation

A QUESTION OF BUSINESS BY P.GUNASEGARAM

THERE are two parts to solving the problems at Sime Darby Bhd and they have to start simultaneously, although it will take longer for one.

The first is to understand completely the reasons why one division - energy and utilities or E&U - had massive cost overruns, needlessly undermining the good showing of the others.

From that the Sime Darby board must do two things - decide who was responsible and take appropriate action against them. Next, it must lay down the policies, rules, checks and balances to ensure that such a thing does not happen again. These have to be done publicly to restore faith and confidence.

 

It will require close, coordinated work and effort by chairman of the board, Tun Musa Hitam (second from left), his board, particularly the head of the working group investigating the cost overruns, Datuk Seri Panglima Andrew Sheng (left) and acting CEO Datuk Azhar Abdul Hamid (second from right).

 

The second - the more important and more difficult - is a task for Sime Darby management, guided by the board which will set policy, oversee management performance and insist on corporate governance standards.

That is the complex and difficult task of how to create value within the Sime Darby group across all the five operating divisions (six if we include other businesses such as China and Health) without undue risk.

It will require close, coordinated work and effort by chairman of the board Tun Musa Hitam, his board, particularly the head of the working group investigating the cost overruns, Datuk Seri Panglima Andrew Sheng, and the newly appointed acting CEO, Datuk Azhar Abdul Hamid.

Calls for Musa and the board to resign must be studiously ignored until the full investigations of the working group are revealed and responsibility for the various misdeeds ascertained - the board has a responsibility to complete what it started.

Most board members have had distinguished careers and reputations - a former deputy prime minister, a former chief secretary to the government and chairman of the Employees Provident Fund, a former head of Hong Kong's Securities and Futures Commission and former Bank Negara adviser, a former head of an international accounting firm, a former director-general of the Education Department, the chairman of Permodalan Nasional Bhd and so on.

The board should be given a chance to put matters right. One can be forgiven for thinking that they would have had good grounds to do what they did, that is to ask the previous CEO to go on a leave of absence prior to the expiry of his contract.

While thoroughness of investigations is important, speed too is of the essence especially since it has been seven months since the working group was set up to investigate the problems.
Sime Darby has found out that mere merger will not create value - what is much more important is what you do after the merger. Synergies can be destroyed by risky moves into areas where the group has no core expertise.

By the same token, any move to break up Sime Darby just three years after the merger will be too premature and will mean that best value for the various parts will not be obtained in any sale.

Among the first things that Sime Darby has to evaluate is its risk management. Have the risks in a project been measured as much as that is possible and could the risks have been mitigated?

Large returns almost always come with large risks. The larger the size of the project, the greater is the risk to the entire group. If risky projects must be undertaken, then it must be done in a way which insulates the group from the effects. That's not easy to do in practice.

Whatever prompted Sime Darby to get into the Bakun project? It has no core expertise in building dams, it does not have civil construction expertise apart from fabrications and Bakun was a project fraught with problems right from the start. Bakun was fundamentally a wrong decision.

Sime Darby needs to reappraise some of its investments in China - a port and a water supply project - in both of which it has no core expertise. That's a sure way for projects to go down the tube.

Feasibility studies are just that and can be engineered to show anything good or bad. The difference is the amount of expertise and competence you can bring to bear on a project. If you have no such expertise on board, stay away until you do.

Nobody - unless for reasons of patronage and corruption - gives away projects with great returns for little or nothing, even if the parties are considered to be friendly. A healthy scepticism should surround projects which look too good.

Sime Darby needs to scrutinise each of its divisions to see how value can be added and to ensure that value which is already there is not diluted but protected and enhanced.

Even within the now notorious E&U division, there are gems such as the power producers and fabrication yards which are doing well and have the potential to do better. A strategy of careful related diversification, never at any time biting off more than be chewed, can yield good returns.

The plantation division holds valuable land in prime areas near urban centres in Peninsular Malaysia. The way that these are transferred to the property division and then developed must be closely watched. Selling land cheaply, although these give great returns because of the low original cost, is a no, no. Better to keep the land and develop it in-house to earn more money.

Instead in some instances, properties have been sold into joint ventures at less than market prices to be developed by expertise from the other parties. It is not even clear what further expertise they bring to Sime Darby which has in the past developed whole townships.

With tens of thousands of hectares of land with development potential, probably the largest among any company in Malaysia, the board and management must ensure that they are carefully developed with maximum benefit to the group.

That's by way of flavour of what can be done. But for that and much more to take place, there is one over-riding requirement - the right people in the right places being allowed to do the right things. This is not about agendas, it's about running a business well.

The Government should resist all attempts to politicise this issue and turn it into something that it is not. The simple fact of the matter is that cost overruns have ballooned to nearly RM2bil and resulted in nearly as much provisions over the years with a near RM1bil provision for the current year ending June 30. That has to be explained and the responsibility for that established.

The Government should steadfastly give its full support to the board and management to clean the company up, run it professionally and competently, and yes, create value throughout all its operations without any interference from vested interests.

The benefits from such moves will be tremendous - it will help restore Sime Darby as the company with the largest value on Bursa Malaysia and more importantly provide a steady and growing return to its major shareholder, Permodalan Nasional Bhd which operates units trusts in which many millions of Malaysians have invested.

Sime Darby's success is important for Malaysia and Malaysians. Let's not hinder, wittingly or unwittingly, the measures that need to be taken to put this conglomerate back on the path of growth, profitability and prosperity.

>Managing editor P Gunasegaram believes that neither a merger nor a de-merger adds value. They merely highlight or downplay value already there.

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