Intercultural communication problems

Hello, xin nian kuai le (Happy New Year ~!!!)

Today I also had a long day, How was your's day? ^_^

As almost (maybe everyone?) everyone in class knows, me myself is a exchange student from Korea. It will take like 5 hours to write every difference and so on... (little bit joke? kk)

Before starting about my own experience, I think i should give some basic information about myself to help everyone about why i can feel like that. I was born in Korea but when I was 1 yrs old my family went to United State. And then around 12 yrs old I went back to Korea and stayed there until I came to Singapore. So mostly my character was built in U.S. and 40% of Korean Style.

May I start?

When I first came to singapore I didn't have that much problem talking or interacting with peoples here. It might because Singaporeans are used to so many people from all over the world, and they know how to communicate with them. And maybe because Korea and Singapore shares similar culture that is called 'Asian Country Common Culture', such as, Being in hurry when they need to, likes to hang out with friends not only one or two in big group.
In addition, 'Korean Wave' might have helped me out. Korean soap drama, singers.

But there was some conflict with others. The major problem I had was some misunderstood with Europian, even Americans.

Here is one example, I was in a group project. We had 5 peoples in our group. It was my chinese module and we were spose to do a play in chinese for our final term presentation.
At first there wasn't any problem, spliting up assignment for each person, deciding how often we should meet. We were satisfied with our group the atmosphere was very smooth going, very comfortable. And even though we had 1 month left for the presentation everyone put one's hardest effort.

After our draft was made, we needed to gather and practice since we are doing a play in front of the class. Having some practice on tuesday we decided to practice on wednsday, since our play was on thursday. But one of the American friend said that he can only show up at 12 pm to 1 pm. And the reason was that he needed to attend class from 9 to 11:30, and need to have lunch, and after that from 1 pm he need to meet all of his 6 class tutor for questions he had.

So we asked 'when is your test?', he said 'after 2 weeks'... We were all standing there with a WHAT?? face. We told him since our play is tomorrow and we really need to practice if we want to do the performance smoothly. And he said his meeting with his tutor is also important, so he can't take up more than one hour for practice.

We tried to make him understand since he is the one that wanted the main role we gave the role to him, but now he is acting like he is someone that isn't that important in the senario.. So me and couple of friends gave up, and was upset since we skipped several lecture because of this.

This was not the end. On presentation day, even after class had started he didn't show up. Our class was from 4 pm to 6 pm, and he said he have a field trip from 12 pm to 4 pm, and show up no later than 4:15. Since our group number was quite the last one we said o.k. The problem was he showed up at 5:10(our presentation spose to be on 4:50, and because he didn't show up we ask our next group to do first) drunked.. Not heavly, but quite drunked that he kept on forgoting when he should act, which place that he is spose to be standing, didn't memorize his script.

Is this because of cultural difference? Or is this something else?

If you were in my Situation what would you have done?