Mai kaypoh lah, social skills and University Challenge

Hello again guys, I am sharing another post here about a difficult conversation I had with my sister that has left me frustrated again. Allow me to give you the story so I can get it off my chest so you can see why her response was inappropriate - hopefully, there are some lessons about social skills that we can all learn here so it's not just me attacking my sister. I love my sister but sometimes, I have to bite my tongue when she exhibits extremely poor social skills. There has been an 'incident' at work and obviously, I can't talk about what happened here as it is a confidential matter but as a result of this work related incident, the company has engaged the services of a very good lawyer to deal with the case and resolve this dispute that arose from the incident. Now everything is quite straightforward so far, it is completely normal for companies to engage legal experts whenever they are in any kind of dispute. So when I spoke to my sister and she asked me what I was doing at work, I told her about the situation and she said something totally inappropriate. "Stay out of it and let the lawyers deal with it." I had to explain to her that no, I didn't get a choice in the matter - despite the fact that the lawyer is a leading expert in his field, he doesn't have all the facts of the case at all as he is an outsider and so in order to build a clear understanding of the situation, he needed to talk to various members of staff in order to gather all the facts. Thus like everyone else in the company, I am involved - I couldn't simply "stay out of it and let the lawyers deal with it"; no, I have been in fact instructed to work with the lawyer and help him procure all the information he needs for this case. So I'm simply doing my job when I am supplying the lawyer with all the information he has asked for.

I took offence to my sister's "advice" because of her tone - it was rather reminiscent of the way she used to tell me to shut up and mind my own business when my parents were arguing.  I am the youngest child and I have two older siblings, so I was often dismissed in a very condescending way as a child. I was often told, "大人是你不会明白, 所以你别插手" (you won't understand what goes on with adults, so mind your own business). It was never nice to be told something to that effect, because I understood enough to know that my parents had a terrible marriage - otherwise they wouldn't be  fighting with each other like that. Of course, within that context, there was nothing I could do as a child if my parents were fighting all the time. But to be told to stay out of the dispute at work and let the lawyers deal with it without even understanding the situation - well, it did feel extremely condescending and dismissive. I did double check with my husband, would my sister have felt that I was too stupid to get involved in this matter with the lawyers? My husband reminded me that my sister would never make such an assumption and that my sister does think very highly of me, that she would be the first to point out how I am the most intelligent amongst the three siblings. Rather, her reaction may be a cultural one, it could be a very Singaporean tendency to want to mind your own business and avoid conflict - this reminded me of the character Mrs Khoo from the Singaporean movie I Not Stupid (2002); Mrs Khoo was always telling her children to mind their own business or as we say in Singlish, "mai kaypoh". So perhaps my sister was just being like Mrs Khoo in this case preaching this "mai kaypoh" mantra and that knee-jerk reaction is all a part of her cultural identity. 

I can see certain situations where this it would be wise to mind your own business and not be a busy body. So in the movie I Not Stupid, the protagonist Terry Khoo was a naive young boy who witnessed a woman littering whilst eating bananas, discarding the banana peel on the pavement. Terry then approached the woman about what her littering but before he could finish what he wanted to say, the woman gave him an angry scolding. When his mother witnessed the incident, she told Terry that nothing good can come from being a busybody and if he had minded his own business, he wouldn't have been scolded by that rude woman. Likewise, when my parents were fighting during my childhood, I could see how nothing good could have come from my intervention. But this is not just a mantra for children, I remember some years ago when a colleague - let's call her Sally (not her real name) was obviously upset, I had overheard her talking on her mobile phone and it was some kind of family argument. I didn't know the details as she had not shared anything with me, so I was faced with a choice: do I approach Sally to say, "hey I noticed that something is clearly troubling you, if you need to talk, I'm always here for you. Let me know if you wanna go for lunch together and have some time to chat about it?" Or I could pretend I didn't notice anything and simply practice the "mai kaypoh" mantra. In the end, I decided that trying to ask her to share the matter with me might be going a step too far - maybe it wasn't something Sally felt comfortable talking to me about and hence I just ignored the fact that something was clearly bothering and upsetting her. 

Here's why I feel that my sister's response was wrong: firstly at that point, she simply didn't have enough information to tell me to 'mai kaypoh' - she didn't realize that this wasn't an option at all for me when I have been instructed to work with the lawyer. Secondly, I do feel like I'm being a great help to the lawyer in this process; I'm not some dumb kid who is woefully out of my depth biting off more than I can chew - I'm resourceful, intelligent, insightful and I most certainly know what I am doing. Thirdly, I wasn't even asking my sister for advice. The 'incident' and the 'dispute' are highly complex matters that I don't expect my sister to understand, given that she comes from a totally different industry and she doesn't even understand what my company does. I was simply hoping for a listening ear and I wanted to share with her what I was going through. But I simply wasn't going to treat my sister in a condescending manner by saying, "oh I'm dealing with such complex matters to do with financial services, this is way too complex for you to understand." Instead, I tried to explain what was happening to her simply to inform her what I had been busy with - I didn't expect anything in return apart from her attention, I most certainly wasn't seeking her advice or expecting her to solve any of my problems. Yet somehow, she felt compelled to give me advice and tell me what to do. Not only was the advice so far off the mark it was totally wrong, I also felt bad about chastising her for her poor social skills because I know she meant no harm. She's just clueless and didn't know how to react in this situation, there is the complete absence of malice on her part too of course. 

This is the kind of social situation that we could all potentially face anytime; so imagine if I did go to Sally (that colleague who was very upset) and asked her what was wrong, she then started telling me about a problem that was very complex. It is clearly a situation where I am not in any kind of position to help, like I cannot even begin to suggest a solution. In this case there are two ways to deal with this situation: the first is to assume that Sally has already tried to find a solution to the problem and to show interest in what she is going through by asking more questions. Likewise, my sister could have asked me more open ended questions like, "so how long is this process going to take? What is it like dealing with the lawyer? Are you stressed out from the process and are getting enough help from your colleagues?" The other option is to say, I may not know anything about this topic, but my friend (insert name) is an expert on the matter, would you like to speak to him/her? I encountered this recently when a friend told me that he had a cancer diagnosis and I was definitely not in any kind of position to offer solutions or advice. So instead, I got him to speak to another friend who is a cancer survivor - I simply put the two of them in touch and let them get on with that conversation. After all, there's no shame in passing the buck to an expert; my family probably realized this when my nephew needed help with his A level economics last year. The only person in the family who was in any position to teach him was me, so they asked me and of course I agreed to help. By the same token, my sister could have easily said, "hey, I think you should speak to (insert name) about this - s/he would have undoubtedly dealt with something similar in his/her job and would've more insight into this." 

A lot of people get confused about what it means to have good social skills - they think it means having so much knowledge about a wide range of topics that you can tackle any conversational topic from cancer treatment to office politics to further education. Actually, having good social skills means knowing how to say the right thing rather than treating it as a quiz. There is in fact a BBC game show I adore called University Challenge - two universities will each send a team of four and the quiz master will ask them questions on any topic from classical music to physical geography to differential calculus to organic chemistry. I love playing along to see how many questions I can answer and there is a Singaporean student Max Zeng participating in the current series who is so brilliant that he is getting a lot of attention and fans online. But no, you can be a kind and supportive friend to someone who has just been given a cancer diagnosis without being a cancer specialist because if your friend wanted medical advice, s/he would have gone to see a doctor but your friend is after emotional support instead (which a busy doctor in a hospital may not have the time to provide). Thus I often get frustrated with people and this isn't just my sister I'm talking about here, this is such a common mistake that people make because they treat such social interactions as a question on University Challenge. With my sister, I always give her the benefit of the doubt because I know for a fact that there's never any malice involved, she isn't trying to antagonize or mock me. However, she is simply coming up with the wrong response because of her lack of social skills.

I would like to point out also that the 'mai kaypoh' response isn't always a suitable response as well when you encounter someone who is feeling down. Sometimes Singaporeans are so conditioned to react like that it becomes their default response even when it isn't appropriate. Let me give you a simple example of how this is beaten into the heads of Singaporeans: when my family last visited me in London, my parents behaved so badly it was really driving me nuts. There was one evening when I was in the kitchen preparing dinner but I was visibly upset by just how my parents were so obnoxious and difficult to deal with. My nephew said to his parents, "uncle Alex is upset, I'll talk to him to make sure he is okay." His parents leapt into the "no don't, mai kaypoh" response and told him not to do so, despite the fact that I would have loved it if I got some emotional support from my nephew then. I think his parents simply defaulted to that response because they treated it like some kind of University Challenge scenario whereby they were worried he may not come up with the right things to say but I would argue that even if my nephew didn't say the right things, the fact that he cared enough about my feelings to want to come and talk to me would have meant so much to me; and I certainly wouldn't have berated him if he didn't come up with the right words in that situation because I'm not trying to test him then, I just needed to emotional support. Instead, he was told to simply 'mai kaypoh' at a time when I really needed a bit of empathy and kindness so I must say, my sister and her husband made the wrong decision in this case by defaulting to this option. 

Another instance of my brother-in-law defaulting to the 'mai kaypoh' stance was when we were skiing in Spain. I was in charge of everything because I have been to Spain so many times before and I am fluent in Spanish, however on the morning of the first day, nothing went to plan. I didn't sleep well the night before, we took a wrong turn on the way to the ski resort and then the ski school which I tried to arrange lessons for my family simply didn't have a coach available that morning. So there I was, very  frustrated, running around the ski resort going into every ski rental shop and ski school asking if they had a ski instructor available that morning. I was upset, I was frustrated but my brother-in-law told my sister and nephew, 'don't kaypoh: we don't speak Spanish so we can't help him and we'll just get in the way." However, I felt like they simply didn't care, they were busy taking photos of the beautiful Spanish mountain scenery whilst I was left on my own to make sure they got everything they needed to have a great day at the ski resort. I finally exploded at my husband to tell him that I was so sick and tired of being taken for granted, so my husband then went to tell my sister, brother-in-law and nephew that their 'mai kaypoh' stance was the totally wrong response and he then told them to come to me at once to tell me that they appreciated me working so hard to do everything for them on that trip (which they did at once, of course). I don't think that my sister, brother-in-law and nephew would take me for granted but this 'mai kaypoh' stance is a big of part of their culture thus they think it should be the default response, even in some situations when it clearly isn't. 

So there you go, what do you think? Have you ever encountered people who always simply default to this 'mai kaypoh' stance? Do you think my sister was wrong to ask me to 'mai kaypoh' when I told her about what I was handling in the office? Furthermore, is the 'mai kaypoh' attitude a very Singaporean or Asian thing or have you encountered this similar attitude outside Asian communities as well? Is there a time and place for a 'mai kaypoh' stance? Do you get irritated by people who feel the need to give some advice even on topics that they know absolutely nothing about? Would you give a sibling the benefit of the doubt if they did or said something really stupid on the account of poor social skills? Is the absence of malice enough to make you overlook the matter? Please leave a comment below - many thanks for reading.