WorldFriends Blog

Strange facts about South East Asia:

1. Angkor Wat, in Cambodia, is the largest religious temple in the world. It is estimated it took 30 years to build!

2. When visiting Angkor, in Cambodia, you can ride an elephant from the South Gate of Angkor Thom to Bayon temple.
3. A golden urn, containing the remains of Buddha, is housed in a stupa (shrine), located on a hilltop in Oudong, 30 miles north of the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh.
4. Though Vietnam is 1,650 kilometers (1,031 miles) from north to south, the country’s most narrow point, traveling east to west, is only 50 kilometers (31 miles) across.
5. Vietnam is the second largest exporter of coffee in the world. Only Brazil exports more coffee, by volume, than Vietnam. Most of Vietnam’s coffee is exported to the U.S.

6. In Thailand barbers are usually closed on Wednesday because Thais think it will bring bad luck to cut their hair that day of the week.
7. All Thai men are expected to be a monk for a short period sometime in their life. Traditionally it was 3 months but today the time is reduced to a week or two.

8. Some people in Malaysia wash their babies in beer to protect them from diseases.
9. Indonesia is the world’s biggest archipelago with over 17,000 islands.
10. There is a saying in Thailand that you don’t have to worry about falling coconuts because coconuts have eyes. Since more people get killed by falling coconuts than sharks each year, they obviously don’t worry about sharks either!

[Source: gapwork]

The global village is here, and is here to stay. Possibly forever. Although recent census figures show that our communities are more culturally and ethnically diverse than ever before, yet many of us still find it challenging to build relationships with people from backgrounds different from our own. How do we befriend someone from a different country? How do we go about getting to know an international student or a new coworker who hails from a different country? Why are our words and/or actions often misinterpreted? Are there ways we can get along better with people from different cultural backgrounds, be it for friendship or professional needs?

Get out of your comfort zone

The only way we can make friends with people from different cultural backgrounds is if we’re willing to come out of our comfort zones and not be afraid to reach out.

Willingness to learn

Are you genuinely interested in your new friend’s culture? If so, express your willingness to learn various things about their culture. It can be anything from the food they eat, how to exchange greetings, their traditions, religion,and even trying their culture’s cuisine. Let your new friend feel welcome and know that you’re open to new knowledge and experiences.

Patience

Sometimes we may not be speaking in our native tongue when with people of a different nationality, or they are not very fluent in your native tongue. It is thus extremely important to be patient for both you and your new friend to understand what each other are saying. This can be very interesting and may even lead to an adventure of its own!

Understanding

Everyone has their own way of doing things, even amongst people from the same culture. Opinions vary even wider across people from different cultural backgrounds. The way we grew up, the values inculcated in us since we were young all have a strong influence on our perspectives, so respect these differences and even embrace such diversity.

Be inclusive

Be friendly, call your new friend, include them and invite them to meals, events, and activities. Also make sure they are included in conversations and discussions.

Your friend would also be most interested in your cultural background, so be sure to share all the quirky bits of your culture! Introduce them to your traditions and eating habits, be an ambassador of your own culture or country even. Discovering each other’s cultural habits is going to be very interesting indeed. Be sure to keep an open mind!

Maggie Q, or actually Margaret Denise Quigley, is a world-renowned actress who initially gained fame in Hong Kong. Many might mistake her as having Chinese heritage, but Maggie Q was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, to an American father of Polish, French Canadian and Irish  descent, and a Vietnamese mother. Very interesting heritage, indeed!

Maggie Q began acting in Hong Kong and elsewhere in East Asia. Many of her film appearances are in English or dubbed in Mandarin because of her non-Chinese background. She has, however, stated that she took Mandarin and Cantonese lessons during her career in East Asia and is able to speak both languages to varying degrees. That must have taken quite some effort, and it has certainly pulled through to her international fame she has gained today.

They say multicultural people tend to be creative, and multicultural experiences make people more creative. Would you say you have multicultural experiences? Do you have friends from different cultural backgrounds as yourself?

There are many popular celebrities who possess multicultural backgrounds. Names like Maggie Q and Daniel Henney come to mind when we think of multicultural celebrities. Today’s feature is on Korean-American actor and model, Daniel Henney.

Daniel Henney has a Korean-American mother and an American father of British descent. Henney started modeling in the U.S. in 2001 and has worked in countries like France, Italy, Hong Kong and Taiwan while he was still in college. His debut was in South Korea with an advertisement for the Amore Pacific’s cosmetic “Odyssey Sunrise”. After which, he became a spokesperson for commercials with Jeon Ji-hyun for Olympus cameras and Kim Tae-hee for Daewoo Electronics’s Klasse air conditioners.

Despite speaking no Korean, Daniel Henney became a household name through the South Korean hit TV drama, “My Name is Kim Sam Soon”. He later adapted a bit of the language and appeared on a few variety shows, such as “Family Outing”. Multicultural celebrity Daniel Henney was a part of an academic scandal in which many sources stated that he had an Economics degree from the University of Illinois at Chicago to bolster his image, while in actuality he had no college degree.

In 2009, he portrayed Agent Zero in the film “X-Men Origins: Wolverine”. In the fall season of 2009, he was playing “Dr. David Lee Cox” in the CBS television drama, “Three Rivers”.

Daniel Henney is one of the many multicultural celebrities that we come across in small and big screens alike. Are you able to name a few more?

Do you have friends with a different cultural background from yourself? Whether your friend is from a different country or a different ethnic background, getting to know each other will prove to be beneficial to both parties as it opens your eyes and perspectives.

The media has promoted multicultural relationships via the power of role models. Celebrities, such as Tiger Woods and Mariah Carey (products of mixed race relationships) are popular role models that support the beauty and talent of multiracial people. Movies are also contributing to the social acceptance of multicultural relationships. “Jungle Fever” and “Guess Who?” are trendy movies that demonstrate the humorous side of interracial dating. While the films do poke fun at cultural differences, they effectively show that interracial friendship and dating are okay.

People from multicultural backgrounds are said to be more creative, simply because they have been exposed to different cultures and can therefore think in different perspectives. Of course, this is not limited to people who have parents of different ethnicity or nationalities. Instead, this applies to all who have had exposure to cross-cultural relationships.

So have you made a friend from a different country or ethnicity yet?

In relation to our last post on Japanese movie, “My Darling is a Foreigner”, supporting cross-cultural relationships, we thought about a topic that generally stirs interest worldwide — Japanese women and what they look for in men. Is it the usual suspects like wisdom? Charisma? Looks? Family background? Money?

Apparently the criteria is simple — a foreigner. A growing number of Japanese women are giving up on their male counterparts, and believe that looking for love abroad will bring them the qualities in a partner that seem rare at home in Japan. Their ideal man is often an American or European, a man appreciative of a wife’s career and more of a partner when it comes to the daily brunt of life.

“They treat you like equals, and they don’t hesitate to express mutual feelings of respect – I think Western men are more adept [at such things] than Japanese men,” says the 36-year-old Ms. Mizuguchi, who works at a top trading firm. “They don’t act like women are maids – I think they view women as individuals.”

So how do you go about making friends with Japanese women?

Knowing how polite and reserved Japanese women are, your friend-making approach has to be somewhat calculated. You’ll definitely want to take it slow and heed the following advice:

• Try not to ‘come on’ to a Japanese woman because that is not how her mind is conditioned.  You have to almost do it without doing it, meaning that you have to show your interest but still leave the ball in the woman’s court.  The easiest trick is to position yourself as a serious student of Japanese art/culture/language/music/food or anything else that she is interested in. The language card seems to work all the time, though.

• Make sure that you praise her beauty.  Japanese society does not allow for open praise and when non-Japanese men do it, it is so refreshing and unexpected that they really appreciate the praise.

• Be patient.  Some of these women may actually be speaking to a non-Japanese for the first time in their lives.  An aggressive approach may scare them since Japanese men are more subtle in their approach.  While showing your genuine interest in her, give her some time to decide to take the next step.

What do you think? Do you agree that Japanese women are most interested in American and European men? What do you think of the approach we’ve suggested? Have your say in the comments below!

Japanese movie,『ダーリンは外国人』(“Darling wa Gaikokujin”) or “My Darling is a Foreigner“, features the relationship between a Japanese girl and a Danish-American man. On Japanese big screens from 10 April, “My Darling is a Foreigner” is based on Sayuri Oguri’s autobiographical manga series about her life with an American husband in Japan, and is set to warm the hearts of many, especially those in cross-cultural relationships themselves.

The subject of cross-cultural relationships is a timeless one, and coupled with the universal curiosity about the Japanese, this movie will intrigue one and all.

Cross-cultural friendships and inter-cultural dating are only on the rise. People are increasingly interested in languages and cultures different from the ones that they’re familiar with. There’s definitely a growing trend in making international friends in Japan, and that’s where WorldFriends plays an important role! According to Yahoo! Japan, there are about 450 thousand Japanese users on WorldFriends, forming 18% of the total users. But did you know that almost half of the total number of WorldFriends users (2.45 million people from 222 countries) are actively looking for Japanese friends? That’s more than 1 million people wanting to make Japanese friends! Yahoo! Japan recognizes that WorldFriends is a powerful service that helps satisfy this growing need for both the Japan and foreign community to get to know each other.

Well done, WorldFriends!