The Mini Mibba Cultural Exchange Program

@ flutter.
Whoa, so that means your aunt migrated to Fiji?

@ megurine luka
Unfortunately, I have to say yes but I don't think Singapore is as expensive as Japan. The tourist attractions are definitely costly, but if you venture around the residential areas, you're bound to find that the cost is much cheaper.

As for the maid issue, Singaporeans tend to have them, but we usually have one. Unless you're filthy rich or something, then you'll have more than one maid. The majority of maids in Singapore are either Filipinos or Indonesians.

I live in California but I'm not really connected at all with any of my heritages or the cultures that come with them. I've been told by my mother that I have a bit of French, German, Irish and English in me. I know nothing about the German and Irish side of my family because that is my father's side and I have no connection with them. I know very little about my mother's side as well despite the fact I have more of a connection with them. I've just never really had a close knit family like a lot of people do so I've never been told much. What I have been told is that my great grandmother was born in and lived in England for a long while before moving to France for a bit. In France, she met my great grandfather and the two of them chose to come to the U.S together. That's about as far as my knowledge of my family history goes and I have no knowledge of any culture in my family heritage.

Having been raised in California, I guess I've been raised in a very loose and carefree way. My mother has never really been an overly strict parent. My mother has always been a fairly carefree person and she raised my sister and I in the same manner. My mother has always believed in the "live and let live" kind of stuff, she believes in allowing people to do as they wish as long as they are not hurting anyone or anything. California has a lot of different cultures. At least, in the big cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles we do. The smaller towns are less diverse, but most smaller towns seem to be less diverse than big cities. In the city I live in, we have a high population of Asians, though most are Chinese or Filipino. There's also a high population of Hispanics and Caucasians around here. You can find other races and ethnicity around this city, but those four seem to be the highest in population. I really like living in the city because of the diversity in cultures around here because you can experience so much. Like the festival Chinatown does for the Chinese New Year. I've never seen it in person yet since I have trouble in large gatherings but I've always wanted to go see it in person because it looks amazing.

@ megurine luka
Most middle-class people in South Africa have maids (or maid, singular) -- it was one of very few jobs black women were allowed to have pre-1994 (unless they were extremely wealthy), and it has continued even now.

We have one, and I'd hardly call us 'well off'.

Well, my story sounds pretty dull compared to everyone else's. I'm English, I was born in London and have spent most of my life growing up in a village just outside of London, to the south-west of the city. It's in quite a wealthy, boring, middle-class area, and unfortunately you don't tend to find much racial diversity round here. I'm near enough 100% British, although I'm sure if you go really far back you'll find some foreign immigrants in my family's history - after all, my surname doesn't sound particularly English.

I guess you could say the culture round here is pretty stereotypically middle-class British. We all have the standard 'British' accents (the ones that everyone likes to imitate), I do drink a lot of tea, and I often travel in red buses and black taxis. But it's hard to tell what our culture is like in comparison to how people perceive the typical British culture...if there even is such a thing.

@ PoeticMess.
::omg: I can't imagine surviving something like that! Your Oma sounds so brave!

@notweirdbutunique
She met my uncle while they were both working in NZ. So I have five half Singaporean cousins

@ flutter.
She really was. She died March 2011 in a Florida assisted living home with a really bad case of Alzheimer's. I miss her a lot. She's my hero.

@ megurine luka
Like the user above me said, mostly just super rich people. However, some more well off families might have a house cleaner who comes in once or twice a week.

@ megurine luka
Sort of like "You must marry a blond hair, blue eyed woman and make many blond hair blue eyed babies!" or "Join the army, support your country!" If that makes any sense

@ NegativeA
Oh, I get it and the "join the army" thing reminds me of Korea.

@ megurine luka
I can picture that. North Korea right?

@ NegativeA
Both South and North 'cause the sons of every family, I think, has to serve in the army. But they have a choice to do so or not. I don't know about North Korea though.

@ megurine luka
Singapore has National Service where every boy who has reached the age of eighteen need to serve two years either in the army/ air force/ police/ SCDF (firefighter) or navy. It's compulsory here and those who refuse to serve can be jailed or fine or both.

@ notweirdbutunique
That's somewhat harsh but it's for the betterment of the country anyway. We don't have that in the Philippines.

@ megurine luka
Well, Singapore is a fine country neways. We issue out a lot of fines for almost everything, lol.

@ notweirdbutunique
I heard it's a really clean country and no one is allowed to chew bubblegum?

@ megurine luka
I'd guess. Most of the tourists who came down to Singapore said that the first impression of my country is that it is very clean.

And bubblegum is banned here, so you won't be able to find gum to chew here.

I live in duh Australia, in Victoria. I live in the middle area, smack-bang between the city and the outback/country. The area I live in has a lot of people that migrated from the U.K or Europe in general, and we're no exception. My mother is Welsh with an Italian background, and my father is Croatian with Hungarian/German/Austrian mixed in.

The area I live in is made up of Europeans, African-Australians and Asians. Like, there's nothing else. No Americans, barely any 'Australians'.

I haven't moved once, and there's two types of people here. The so-nice-it's-scary people and the down-right racist-but-funny people (is that okay to say?). I go to a school where it's mostly 'white' people with English and Italian and Greek backgrounds, and Asians.

Because I live in on the side of the city where we're no 'supposed to have an education'. Obvs what I mean by that is that there are hardly any 'private' schools around me, and most of the ones that were have been closed down. All the expensive, independant, high-achieving schools are on the other side of town, with all the down-right snobby white people. And I mean that in a non-racist way.

Because I live near the country as well, every three minutes there is road kill. Like, oh, driving down the highway. LOOK, THERE'S SOMETHING ON THE ROAD. I DON'T THINK IT'S A CAT, BECAUSE WE PAST FOUR OF THEM ALREADY. I'MMA GO WITH FOX. Like, seriously, my dad and his cousins bet on what animals they are.

Also, kangaroos, koalas, all that. In the area I live, we have a lot of lazy people, so the grass gets a bajillion feet high, and on more than a dozen occasions have I seen brown snakes or tiger snakes. 'Straya also has Taipans. But moving on.

Kangaroos, contrary to popular belief, are the most annoying animals you can come across while driving in the bush. Also, yes, we do eat them, though I don't like the flavour.

We also eat Witchetty grubs (not the head), and koalas are pure evil. What else can I say? O__O

I've been attacked by an emu before. They're pure evil and if you have food I highly recommend to NOT APPROACH THEM.

Also, Melbourne - the part where I live - has this thing called MELBOURNE WEATHER. Like seriously, one minute it's pissing down rain, and the next minute you're cooking like a - I'M NOT GOING TO GO THERE.

Anyway, this is just my personal opinion

OH, AND IT'S ONLY THIS YEAR WHEN THEY MADE THE LAW ABOUT RECOGNIZING ABORIGINALS AS THE FIRST LAND OWNERS OF AUSTRALIA.

WE DUH RACIST.

(some, anyway).

Well, um...I'm from Indiana. Yeah. It sucks. I come from a long line of cultures and heritages (French-Canadian, German, Irish, Norwegian, African, English...basically everything but Hispanic, Italian, and Asian).

I live in a smaller town northeast of Indianapolis. We're the type of city that's filled with stereotypical cliques. There's the preppy bitches with the preppy parents that buy nothing apart from Forever 21, Aeropostal, Hollister, and Wet Seal. Then there's the "nerds" who actually give a shit about school and are proud of it. There's the "emo" and punk kids that try to be hardcore and say they hate the world, but aren't hardcore and love life. There's the potheads that walk around with their pants around their ankles and say nothing but "swag, nigga". Then there's the potheads who do nothing but repost pictures about pot and ICP. Where do I fit in? I'm just me.

We honestly eat a lot more foreign food than anything. There's three Mexican restaurants (and I'm talking about authentic Mexican food), a Thai restaurant, four Chinese restaurants, an Indian restaurant, two Japanese restaurants, and a bunch of Italian restaurants. That's not counting the fast food places.

We have what we like to call bipolar weather. Our weather changes every thirty minutes. It's ridiculous.

You'd think that since our state bird is the cardinal, you'd see a lot of them here. Nope. You're lucky if you see one during the entire year.

So, yeah. That's pretty much it

beast of blood.:

I've been attacked by an emu before. They're pure evil and if you have food I highly recommend to NOT APPROACH THEM.

I remember when my family and I went to the zoo and we got attacked by an emu. It was probably one of the most terrifying things I've ever experienced.

—

I'm in a bit of a weird situation, as in I don't really identify with a particular culture, I guess. My nationality is Australian, but I was born and raised in Hong Kong. Our family moved before I could really get the Cantonese language down, plus my parents speak Chinese (my friend pointed out the other day that usually only expats say Mandarin). I used to speak with an English/Australian "accent (due to my English and Australian teachers, and also my mum's accent) and use a lot of British terminology, since the school system and the teachers were usually British, but since moving to Shanghai my accent has changed.

I go to an international school here in Shanghai. Apparently you can't attend the school unless you have a non-Chinese passport, so the majority of the students are Chinese-Americans (some Chinese-Canadians, but not as much) - people who were born in the States because their parents went to college/uni there, who moved back. Then there are the Chinese-Americans who can't speak Chinese, but are learning, usually since their parents were like, you need to learn Chinese. We also have a lot of Koreans, who tend to group together and not talk to anyone but each other, in, you guessed it, Korean. Of course, there are the exceptions in the form of Korean-Americans, but we don't have a lot of those at school.

Following the majority, we then have a lot of white Americans. Also we have some Indians and Europeans and South Americans (and fewer Japanese), but they're usually European by their parents and speak in an "American" accent. At home they speak like German or Spanish or Dutch, depending where they're from. We also have lots of what we call halfies, who are half Chinese and half something else.

It's so cool, there's this girl in my year who was born in Hong Kong, but then moved to Brazil when she was really little, so she speaks Portuguese really well, and probably Cantonese, because of her parents. Her English isn't that good, but I think she takes ESL, which is English as a Second Language. Also there's this guy in my grade whose dad is Swiss and whose mum is Japanese. I'm always fascinated by people who are in the same situation, so to speak, as the two people I mentioned before.

We don't have any "stereotypical" groups, as per what the media tends to display in books/films, but usually in each grade there's that one group of white kids and Americanised Asians. I don't know about the other grades, but in our grade both the girls and boys in this group, save for one or two, act differently when they're around their friends versus when they're in a situation when they don't have anyone in their group around them. Then there's the Koreans in the grades (this is going back to the "each grade" categorisation) who clump together. Those are the two big "cliques", I guess. The rest are just much smaller groups of friends who have something/nothing in common.

In middle and elementary school, I remember everyone knew how to swear in different language. English obviously, since all the classes (save for the global languages one, obv) are taught in English, but also Korean, Chinese, and Canto.

—

Personally, I think I've been pretty well exposed to several other cultures. I've been to 19 countries other than China, some of them more than once (USA, Germany, Australia, Hong Kong) and I've stayed there for two weeks at the least. This isn't to say that mentally, I don't stereotype, because I do, although it's mostly in a joking manner.

Also I apologise for writing so much and hope I haven't offended anyone with my wording or anything. God, I sound like I'm writing an essay or something.

@ dead kings.

BUT THIS ONE HAD A LOOK IN IT'S EYES.
LIKE IT WAS SAYING YOU'VE SEEN TOO MUCH AND NEED TO BE ELIMINATED.

Emus, man (or woman, if we're going to be correct). Emus.