Culture is defined by the society, and to be more specific the people living in the society. How we act, behave, talk and dressed become so unqiue and iconic that they became a culture. For example the hipster culture and the Japanese hard-working culture.

Singapore has a culture- a mixed-up culture. We could not specifically pick up the signicant symbol(s) that we could say "this is singapore culture". However, we could look deeper and find out what makes up the singapore culture. The unique properties of Singapore.

We have 4 seasons. Summer season (that seems to last through the year), Durian season, raining season and very importantly, the shopping season. Singaporeans are (in)famous for the shopping madness. More shopping centres in town are now offering mid-night shopping deals and goodies. And on top of this, we have some mega sales such as the mid-year sales and end-of-year sales. Of course, not forgetting the back-to-school sales. In package tours for Singaporean tourists, the tour agencies will definitely and by default, add in the "shopping" time. Singaporeans are shopping-lovers. They laughing their ways to the shopping malls and the shopowners in turn, laughing their way to the banks.

Secondly, we have a "kia-su" culture. Kiasu-ism (translated as afraid of losing in english), is a prominent trait in Singaporean parents especially when it comes to studies of their children. At the tender age of 3, the poor children are sent to nurersies to learn vocabulary and sentance formation. This is quite justified since research had shown that information adsorption is at its peak during this age and the adsorption rate gradually decreases as the years pass. Then at age of 6 or 7, they are choked with assessments that piled up taller than Mount Everest and packed with tuitions. Holidays became a nightmare for them. The reason for this nightmare-ish arrangement: so that they will keep up with the school. In my opinion, more like so that they will be the first in class. To prove my point, think how do we behave when it comes to about the buffet? We topped all sort of food on our plate. Why? IN-CASE not enough. I shall not describe further. You got my idea.

Thirdly, majority of us like to run the rat race, like the hamster running the wheel to catch the carrot. Everyday at the same time we see the same faces at the particular mrt station. Do the same mandune things for each day with exception of weekends. Some people would deny that "hey.. i do go out for holidays occassionally!". Please remember, what is the ratio of the number of holidays to the working days. Well, some people said "no choice." Excuse. We are not born into this world to run the rat race. We are here to live. Live a life of happiness, abundance and love. What about the rice bowl? Please there are alternatives to earn money besides working for other people. We can be more entreprenuer and venture into business. But in Singapore society, someone in your circle will say "Let someone else try first" or "too risky". This is another trait of Singaporean- kiasi (literally means afraid of death). In this context, it is to mean that afraid to lose (similar to kiasu) but in when comes to business, losing money is like facing death. So end up, most of us are stuck in rat race.

As I mentioned, Singapore culture is a mixed up culture. We are very stratified, we are individual beings that merge to form a particular trait which in turn becomes a culture. Different groups of people in the society produce different cultures, and this is Singapore culture 16:09