Being an expat

What’s it like being a foreigner ? An expat living outside his or her home country ? I am an expat myself- an Indian living in China. Many readers of this blog are expats themselves. Most of us are expats because our jobs, or the jobs of our spouses, took us away from our native land.

The Economist has a beautiful article on “being foreign”. A superb and stimulating article I strongly recommend. My favourite “newspaper” is The Economist – the magazine calls itself a newspaper, in a quaint British tradition. OK, OK, I am nerdy; anybody who publicly admits to The Economist being his favourite magazine has to be the most “uncool” character in the world.

The article is so good that I offer it for your reading pleasure with no comment. What is your take ?

I’ll post my own view of being an expat later this week.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Letter That Was Never Sent

Nobody in the company knew that my last day was on the 1st of November 2011. When the news was released to all the staffs, many were shocked that the company founders left so abruptly. I did not prepared any farewell speech but I did prepared a farewell email that was supposed to be sent shortly after the announcement. However, for some reason, this email was never sent. As time passes, I find less reason to send out this email. Below was my email to all my ex-employees that was never sent: Hi Everyone from XX Hydraulic I would like to express my pleasure to have the opportunity to work with all of you. Some of you like SP Ng, Eric, Louis, Tay, Ah Huat and Ah Hin were with us since the first day XX Hydraulic was incorporated in 09.09.1999. As you all know, 1st Nov 2011 is our last day with GXXXX and I would like to bid everyone a farewell and hope all the best in your future endeavor.   I am sure that some of you are very curious why we leave GXXXX and what is our future plan.  Working
Read more

This is why business leaders are reviled

If you behave like this, you deserve to be cursed, reviled, and generally hated. Unfortunately many business leaders are exactly like this, which is why a business tycoon is considered by society as a figure to be loathed. The "this" I refer to is Stephen Elop, Chairman of Nokia being entitled to a $25m payout for the the sale of Nokia's handset business to Microsoft. Nokia, as everybody knows, has been in dire straits for quite some time. In 2010, the Board fired its existing Finnish leaders and brought Stephen Elop, from Microsoft, as the CEO to "rescue" Nokia. Elop abandoned Nokia's operating system Symbian and tied its fortunes to Microsoft by adopting the Windows platform. It did not work and Nokia has continued to slide. During Mr Elop's tenure, Nokia's market capitalisation fell  by $ 14 bn - that's the amount Nokia's shareholders have lost. Finally Nokia has decided to sell its handest business to Microsoft for under $ 10 bn. Elop'
Read more

Business Jazz - 4th January 2013 - Guiding Words

It's that time of year again when we tell ourselves we're going to put our best foot forward - change a few things. Some changes will be quite radical; some less so. They will all make our lives better. Change isn't easy, though. Before you know it, your resolutions are in the waste paper basket, along with last year's. Chris Brogan has a suggestion for you. Instead of committing yourself to radical change in the shape of ambitious resolutions, he recommends choosing three words that will act as your guides in the year ahead. They will be beacons for you to steer a course by; criteria on which to base decisions. Paul and Roger discuss this concept and reveal some of their words for 2013. They also talk about the inevitable: Failure. At some time in 2013, we will all fall down. Most probably, we'll do it repeatedly. Then what? You can listen to this week's podcast using the player at the top of the post or download it directly here: Business Jazz - 4th January
Read more