Funny enough, this seemingly trivial little fact was only made aware to me recently.  I guess when you take something for granted, you don’t really care about it, until somebody point it out to you.  

I am talking about Squatting Down.  Yes, the trivial exercise that most of us seems doing without even think.  But I recently learned that apparently there are two types of Squatting.  

The first one is called Western Squat, this is the Squat where your heals don’t touch the ground.

The second one is called Asian Squat, this is the Squat where your heals do touch the ground (like what this guy in the next picture does).

Now, I think the two regional terms above don’t indicate discrimination, they merely are just describe where it originally came from.

Moreover, I learned that not everybody could the Asian Squat, something that I’ve done all my life, hence took it for granted.  It was actually quite funny when I watched some friends trying to do it but kept falling over because they were losing their balance

Anyway, I was thinking today, why’s that?  Why we, most Asians can do it, but not others?  A quick Googling (you really can find anything via Google this days) lead me to a conclusion of what might’ve caused this.

In my opinion, it is a matter of Cultural differences.  You see, back home we have wet Bathroom and Squat WC/Bog/Toilet (whatever you call it).  So, since we were children, we’ve already trained (forced) to squat on the Bog to do ‘our business‘.  Consequently, we all are able to do it.

As for myself, my family house has sitting bog for a long time already, but it took me a long while to actually brave myself to sit on it.  For a very long time, I just did as I was used to do, i.e. squatted on top of the sitting toilet  It really was a change of mind-set for me (there is another change of mind-set that still has relation with toilet, which I will tell you on the next post).

When I did my research today, I came across this funny Youtube clip that sums up all of this

[Original clip by mhl12]

Related Posts:

Culture Shocks: The Intro to the series

Culture Shocks #1: The Queue Starts Here

Culture Shocks #2: Do You Take Milk With Your Tea ?

Tea … you wouldn’t understand the ‘extend’ of the Brits’ obsession for drinking Tea until you actually live for a while in this country.

I didn’t realize how much drinking tea were so integrated to the British life that, like football, cricket and rugby, it had become part of the culture, probably more than those 3 sports combined.  Nor little did I know that tea can have so many types, colours and tastes.

Tea Boxes

Before I came to England, the only references I got about English’s tea drinking habit were from English Period Movies, or English Novels/Children Books, mainly Agatha Christie‘s, Enid Blyton‘s.

And who can forget … Captain Jean Luc Picard

.. only when I got here that I could finally get how Earl Grey tastes like, and to tell you the truth I kinda like it.

Earl Grey

Sure, from these ‘literature’ or from ‘what people generally says’ we could get some sort of assumption or at least some imaginations of how it was, but that was all. I (and probably many others) had always had this sort of assumption/imagination, that everybody in Britain would stop doing whatever they were doing at 5 o’clock in the afternoon, where they would sit down and sip their nicely brewed tea while eating some biscuits.  This was probably true … long time ago   In reality, the one that I’m living now, many people simply don’t have time even for lunch, let alone for a cup of tea.  It doesn’t mean that they stop drinking it though, they still do, just the time and the place that has changed. Instead of 5 o’clock, they do it whenever they want it, and instead of the ‘Drawing Room’ they do it where ever they want.

In Indonesia, tea is of course nothing new for the people who live there, after all Indonesia is one of only few places in the world where tea is grown (en-masse) and that 7% of the world tea exports comes from highlands of Indonesia.

Tea Picker

As a matter of fact, according to history, Indonesia had played a quite important role in the process of introduction of tea to the European.
As you’ve probably have known, Tea (Camellia Sinensis in Latin) was originated from China and it’s been enjoyed by the Chinese for thousands of years.

Tea Species

During the beginning of the Colonial Age in the late 16th century, it was believed that the Portuguese was the first people that brought back and introduced tea from China and the Far East to Europe.  But it was not them who were the first ship tea commercially, it was the Dutch (who occupied Indonesia for about 350 years). By the turn of the century the Dutch had already established trading posts on the island of Java, and it was via Java that in 1606 the first consignment of tea was shipped from China to Holland.  From Holland, tea began to spread around European continent and eventually made its way to England.  You can read more about the history of tea in the UK Tea Council website.

Tea Plantation

Below is a photo of ‘Cutty Shark‘, the ONLY remaining Tea Clipper Ship in the world. Clipper is a specialised ship with narrow hull and tall masts packing as many as 35 sails, they were very fast (25 knots).  They could sail from China to England in about 100 days or less (this is before they built Suez Canal, so they needed to go around the Cape of Hope).  Before Clipper time, the quickest journey using normal ship used to take 9 months!  Cutty Shark was ‘parked’ in a dry dock in London Greenwich.  Sadly it was ravaged by fire last year.  Fortunately I managed to take the picture below long before that happened.

So, in a way Indonesians have been known to tea for quite some times now, and we all grew up drinking tea since we were baby (some parents give their baby tea instead of milk).  We drink it hot, we drink it cold, we drink it in any occassion, in no specific time, and unlike the Japanese, we don’t have a special ritual to drink it (at least not that I know of).  One of our favorite tea is one particular branded bottled tea called ‘Teh Botol Sosro‘, it’s so ubiquitous that other products of bottled tea are called the same name (‘Teh Botol‘ – Bottled Tea) regardless of the brand (just like coke for Coca Cola). We would drink this bottled tea almost every time we have a chance to.  This is probably as close as we could get in regards to national obsession in tea drinking, though still not even close to the English’s.

Teh Botol Sosro

One thing that was a culture shock to me was the fact the they drink tea with ‘milk’ !!!  What the **** ?! That’s exactly what I thought when I was asked whether I took milk with my tea.  Were they mad ? Not only that it looked disgusting … it tasted awful !  I couldn’t believe that there was anybody in their right mind would drink that thing !  Alas, it turned out to be that almost ALL of them drink tea like that   It took me quite a while to accept this, and as a matter of fact I had a chance (accidental .. mind) to taste it myself.  I am sorry, no offense to my British friends, but that was my first AND my last time I would drink ‘white’ tea.  Btwy, recently some studies discovered that putting milk in the tea would block the health gains

Another interesting thing I learnt in conjunction with this habit is the word ‘tea’ itself.  Here it doesn’t always mean the ‘drink’, it also means ‘dinner’, depending on the situation when you say it.  It took me a while too, to realize what my housemate meant by ‘having my tea’ while in fact he was having his dinner in front of him and not a cup of tea.  It turned out that, in the past people would have dinner very late, about 8 o’clock.  So they invented the tea drinking habit to ‘fill in’ the gap between lunch and dinner, which was around 5 o’clock and originally was the domain of upper class ladies in the drawing room.  Later on, the middle and lower class worker had also their ‘tea’ but with more substantial meal, around 6-7 o’clock in place of the late dinner.  The former is called ‘low tea‘, because it’s served in a low table, and the latter is called ‘high tea’, because it’s served in a dining-table (higher).

These days, at least in London where I live, since everybody only come from work after 7 o’clock, not many people are having ‘tea’ anymore, instead we usually have dinner, or even supper (for even later).

There are many other things that we could talk about, such as the types of the tea, where they grow, or how to make a perfect brew, and so on and so on, but I am going to leave these for you as a matter of excercise

Ok, I’m going to shut-up now I was meaning to talk about drinking Tea with milk, and ended up giving a History Lesson Admittedly though, it’s been an eye opener when I was researching this post, I’ve learnt quite a lot of things these past few days, things that I took for granted.  Hopefully it’s been as entertaining for you as it has been for me.

‘Cup of Tea anyone?’

Related Post:

Culture Shocks (Intro to the Series)

Culture Shocks #1: The Queue Starts Here

Culture Shocks #3: I don’t Know Squat

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It All Began Like This …

As for the Brits, one can see how they view queueing by just watching the following episode of Mr. Bean

In the UK, you can find queues everywhere you go, anywhere you need to pay or get services at counters, at the bus stop, even during traffic jam (nobody is trying to use the hard-shoulder).  People would queue for hours, often under freezing winter cold or blazing summer heat (sometimes with fatal consequences).  At some places, queuing is often enforced by putting a snaking rope to constraint the line, sometimes with a sign ‘The Queue Starts Here’ to mark the starting point and in a few occasions, a Bouncer (or two) will guard the end

It’s not that people like it, oh no no no, they would moan about it (another of Britain’s favorite), especially when it takes too long, but nevertheless they will do it. Anybody who would dare to try to jump the queue would be instantly treated with contempt, scolded and shouted at, like criminal.

Queueing is part of the UK norm, part of their culture, and it’s one of the Culture Shocks that I like very much. It’s one of Britain’s cultures that I have managed to integrate into myself.  Personally I think it has made an improvement to my own sense of discipline. So much so that when once I went back to Indonesia for a visit, I forgot that I didn’t have to queue and had to watch with horror while people kept jumping in front of me.  Of course then I was forced to ‘relearn’ this old habit and started jumping like the others (sadly).

As a final thought, I believe every nation should learn to adopt this habit.  I think it promotes fairness and teaches us how to be patient

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Related Posts:

Culture Shocks: The Intro to the series

Culture Shocks #2: Do You Take Milk With Your Tea ?