GAP: bribes and kickbacks

I laughed and laughed and laughed... http://www.todayonline.com/pdf_open.asp?id=1208VOC020 GAP. In this case, Dave Barry is faced with language, cultural gap... Last week Mama told me a case of her cousin's son whose months-old marriage is soon going to be over. She blamed the wife for being in a too-far-to-abridge lower social status than her cousin's son. Hhhmm... it's not applicable to every relationship, I believe. In our class yesterday, our lecturer highlighted the gap between SG and other developing neighbouring countries. Pertaining to T & Ethical Issues, we were talking about bribery... He took an example: Transparency International Corruption Perception Index, in 2005. In total of 158 countries, Singapore was ranked 5th. China was 78th, Vietnam 107th, India 88th, Cambodia 130th, Myanmar 155th and Indonesia was the 137th. There is a tremendous huge gap between SG and those countries where we most probably will work and live in. And we might get depressed if we do not know how to cope with the gap... In "Strange Virtues: Ethics in a Multicultural World", Bernard A. wrote a lot of examples, real-cases, from Indonesia. He lived there for some 20 years... gosh! I think he knows better than me in how to deal with corruption, bribery in our country... LOL. Mmm... I got my first job here in SG, so although I do understand that such practices do happen in our country, I've never been equipped to deal with them in real life... I am not enriched in brainstorming my motives, to make decisions, etc. *sigh* I learned that we should decide beforehand and stick to our conscience. We need to examine our motives all the time and cry out before God... I liked our lecturer's prayer, admitting our weaknesses in this fallen world with the fallen systems, asking for God's wisdom and strength to cope with the challenges.

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