Curiosity and staying hungry: my journey as a Singapore expat, Part III

“Have you eaten?” “Did you already take your lunch?” “Did you take your dinner?” “Are you hungry?”

If someone asked you these questions, would it mean anything to you? I was living in Singapore for two years before I realized that everyone was asking me about food all the time.

Admittedly, it took me too long to notice that the taxi uncles looked bewildered when I answered with an honest “no” or “not yet.” I did not consider why my traditional Chinese medicine doctor looked absolutely aghast when I responded to her question with “no, I am intermittent fasting.” In hindsight, many awkward moments passed before I thought to question and reflect on these interactions.

Baffled, I finally asked my Singaporean friend: “Why does everyone keep asking me about eating? Are they that interested in my diet?”

He chuckled and explained: “Jemma, lah, that question goes back to the time of poverty when people did not have the means for three meals a day. It is a way of asking if you are okay and if you have enough in life. And the appropriate and polite answer is always “yes”.

There it was, confronting me in the most uncomfortable way. I had been unknowingly committing a series of social faux pas by taking these inquiries at face value. After the initial embarrassment faded, the situation kept gnawing away at me. Why had I missed the opportunity to understand the local culture and accurately read the social cues? Was it due to pandemic fatigue or something else?

Shortly before I relocated to Singapore after my stint in the Netherlands, a colleague gave me a copy of Erin Meyer’s book, The Culture Map. I studied it vigorously in an effort to assuage the uncertainty I felt about moving to Asia. Early in the book, she mentions the adage “you have two eyes, two ears, and one mouth: use them in that ratio.” I vowed to listen more and remain in observation mode.

In both of my relocations as an expat, this was not difficult to do in the beginning. There is a natural curiosity that I feel when I arrive in a new country. It is part of why I love traveling. The beginning and newness of it all always encourages a heightened state of awareness. Every experience feels fresh and special.

Yet even with my intention to listen and observe, I still missed the social cues. What is worse than the embarrassment of realizing you have unintentionally been offending well-intentioned locals in your host country? I can tell you: it’s recognizing that the reason you were doing so is because you have become complacent. At some point, I had dismissed the newness of Singapore and stopped soaking it all in.

It is very difficult to stay in a heightened state of awareness for a prolonged period of time. Curiosity takes energy and attention that gets muted in the shadow of other operational tasks. And there is something so deeply soothing about familiarity and comfort that leads us to search for similarities in what we experience.

I reflected on this again when I took on a new position last year. As I was starting, a colleague advised me: be careful not to think that you have seen this before or know what to do. Despite this advice, it was so tempting in the first months of contextualizing the business to categorize situations as permutations of past experiences. I found myself saying things like “Oh, I have seen this before” or “This issue is just like this other issue from the past” and so forth.

That is one of many paradoxes in leadership: to be effective, we inevitably need to draw on our past experiences but at the same time remain curious and aware. We may lean on our expertise in a given area, but this can also be a double-edged sword. It is obviously useful to think we know exactly what to do, but this also leads to shortcuts in how we make decisions. We develop a preference for things we are familiar with, a psychological phenomenon known as the mere-exposure effect.

Last month, I caught up with a friend who had just relocated back to her home country from Singapore. “How are you liking being home again?” I asked her. She responded, “The best part is that everything is totally familiar.” And the worst part? “Everything is totally familiar.”

Complacency does not occur overnight. It is insidious and sneaks up on us when the reliance on familiarity becomes too dominant. And yet, spending too much time being hyper aware will also burn out our ability to both recognize and interpret what is happening right in front of us. I am not sure there is an easy way to find the sweet spot in the middle. For me, the personal challenge is how to keep watching and listening for signals once the novelty has worn off.?

In my last taxi ride in Singapore before I moved back to the US, the taxi uncle eyed me from the rear-view mirror as I climbed in. “Did you already take your breakfast?” I told him that I had. He nodded sagely. “So many good things to eat here.”?