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Expatriation and Repatriation

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Expatriation and Repatriation

Post by earthfriendly » Fri, 04 Sep 2015 12:01 am


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Re: Expatriation and Repatriation

Post by earthfriendly » Thu, 14 Jan 2016 12:58 am

I changed the title from "Repatriation" . An expat in SG.

http://blogs.wsj.com/expat/2016/01/13/a ... wo-cities/

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Re: Expatriation and Repatriation

Post by Strong Eagle » Thu, 14 Jan 2016 5:41 am

I certainly relate to those articles after eight years on the red dot. I'd like to go back... I think economics and a changing conditions in a global economy make it impossible.

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Re: Expatriation and Repatriation

Post by Primrose Hill » Thu, 14 Jan 2016 9:56 am

I like to go back too but where is a question and what will I be going back to is another.

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Re: Expatriation and Repatriation

Post by earthfriendly » Mon, 29 Feb 2016 1:54 am

A Singaprean expatriate in China.

I have problem with the hygiene, food safety, pollution in some areas, oppressive govt and money gouching culture in China. But the warmth and humanity of the people somehow compensate for these lousy living conditions. For me.

Ayi = auntie . Rather than calling them a maid or domestic servant. They are called aunty. Connotation = an aunty / relative coming to help you in your household. An enduring way of addressing domestic helper.

"She then made 80 dumplings and chucked them into the freezer just in case we felt like having a snack. Talk about being over enthusiastic."

https://alywinchew.wordpress.com/2016/0 ... -for-what/

"I cannot believe people are having a discussion about whether to boycott Madonna’s concert. I cannot believe that Eric Khoo’s erotic movie is deemed too erotic. Can a circle be deemed too round? :mrgreen: "

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Re: Expatriation and Repatriation

Post by sundaymorningstaple » Mon, 29 Feb 2016 4:20 pm

I read that blog this morning around 8:30. Interesting read and I had to laugh at the comment you quoted as well when I read it.
SOME PEOPLE TRY TO TURN BACK THEIR ODOMETERS. NOT ME. I WANT PEOPLE TO KNOW WHY I LOOK THIS WAY. I'VE TRAVELED A LONG WAY, AND SOME OF THE ROADS WEREN'T PAVED. ~ Will Rogers

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Re: Expatriation and Repatriation

Post by earthfriendly » Tue, 01 Mar 2016 1:53 am

From the comment section.
and if we were to follow our passions/gifts and work three quarters as hard as we do now I strongly feel we would still be a successful nation – and a much happier one at that.
It’s as if you cannot say even one thing bad about Singapore to suddenly be on the receiving end of alot of flack. Kind of reminds you of the PAP. It does seem to show a level of insecurity but i think more so a deeper sense of irrational thinking....................

I think that it must be hard on the human psyche to have a big brother government constantly micro-managing everything you do. I only realised this after I had been living away from Singapore for a while. It’s almost like OCD to want to control every small little thing. You can’t, it’s irrational."
Last edited by earthfriendly on Sat, 05 Mar 2016 2:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Expatriation and Repatriation

Post by Brah » Wed, 02 Mar 2016 8:23 pm

Strong Eagle wrote:I certainly relate to those articles after eight years on the red dot. I'd like to go back... I think economics and a changing conditions in a global economy make it impossible.
And here I am trying to do the opposite and so far not finding it easy....
Ape Shall Not Kill Ape.

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Re: Expatriation and Repatriation

Post by JR8 » Thu, 03 Mar 2016 2:56 am

earthfriendly wrote:From the comment section.
'Everyone has a compararive advantage, and if we were to follow our passions/gifts and work three quarters as hard as we do now I strongly feel we would still be a successful nation – and a much happier one at that.'
I'm unsure what this means, 'Everyone has a comparative advantage'. It reminds me of naive youthful idealism, that everyone has talents, and such talents hold equal value (if not remunerative worth). The 'noble' street-sweeper and manual labourer, nobility apparently earned through manual toil and getting dirty. I recall believing this and preaching it one time to my parents when I was 13/14, I think they nearly passed out in horror... hehe...
It’s as if you cannot say even one thing bad about Singapore to suddenly be on the receiving end of alot of flack. ... [edit]"
Evolving countries tend to carry insecure baggage, a short-fused defensiveness. I'm not sure SG has acquired the innate self-confidence yet to loosen up and laugh about itself.
'Do it or do not do it: You will regret both' - Kierkegaard

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Re: Expatriation and Repatriation

Post by earthfriendly » Sat, 05 Mar 2016 2:53 pm

JR8 wrote:
earthfriendly wrote:From the comment section.
'Everyone has a compararive advantage, and if we were to follow our passions/gifts and work three quarters as hard as we do now I strongly feel we would still be a successful nation – and a much happier one at that.'
I'm unsure what this means, 'Everyone has a comparative advantage'. It reminds me of naive youthful idealism, that everyone has talents, and such talents hold equal value (if not remunerative worth).
I have zero idea what that means. Could it be the latest internet buzzword :P . I took it out of my post.

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Re: Expatriation and Repatriation

Post by earthfriendly » Sat, 05 Mar 2016 3:14 pm

Brah wrote:
Strong Eagle wrote:I certainly relate to those articles after eight years on the red dot. I'd like to go back... I think economics and a changing conditions in a global economy make it impossible.
And here I am trying to do the opposite and so far not finding it easy....
It is getting harder for me with each passing day. See the following link. The PM held a meeting with a bunch of SG bloggers. Guess what the agenda is. At the end of the meeting, he made the announcement that "they" all agree that people should not be allowed to hide behind anonymity in the cyber world. Noticed the wide spread ID ing in that island. You got to provide your IC number even for the most mundane activities. Makes it easier to sue, should the need arise. Fear and paranoid. That is how they rule.

https://www.facebook.com/joeltheobscure ... nref=story

And then you have this. One of the most powerful corporate executive going to great length to protect the privacy and rights of ordinary citizens (ok, ok, maybe more apt to call them "customers") like myself. Against the almighty FBI. I am so deeply moved.

http://www.starrfmonline.com/1.8735399

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Re: Expatriation and Repatriation

Post by Mi Amigo » Wed, 09 Mar 2016 5:06 am

In a sense, after a few years 'away', I don't think you can really ever go 'back' anywhere because both you and the place will have changed too much. I have (mostly) fond memories of my nearly ten years in Singapore but I'm under no illusion that it would be the same if I were to go back there. I don't feel any 'pull' in that direction, which is not meant as a negative comment on the place but just an observation of my state of mind.

Similarly, I have lived outside of the UK for so many years that it no longer feels like returning 'home' when I go there. I love to visit the place (weather notwithstanding) but as a couple of the above-linked articles described, I feel like a 'guest' there nowadays.

So I no longer consider myself to be 'from' anywhere in particular, and the strange thing is that it doesn't bother me any more. 'Life changing' events over the past year or so have taught me to live more in the present and I like the quote I read recently that "it's not where you are from, but where you are local" that counts.
Be careful what you wish for

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Re: Expatriation and Repatriation

Post by JR8 » Wed, 09 Mar 2016 6:02 am

I know precisely what you mean. I feel the same and it got rammed home once again after I visited home (London) again last year. In fact there's also been a kind of repeat the two times I've returned to SG after my original SGn posting. Orchard Road stays the same but everything else changes. It continues to be quite disorienting.
In a way unless you're from somewhere that doesn't change, perhaps very rural and static, in some sense you don't ever 'go back'. That's half of it; it's not only the place it's also you that can change. Silly as it might sounds, maybe the film character John Rambo had it right, 'there is no going home'.

'Where you're local', hehe. I wonder where that might be... last time I went home I felt like an alien. Walked into a pub, my ex-local, must have put countless thousands over that bartop. That's now a bra$$erie. The manageress got chatting all posh but friendly asking where i was from etc, so I said 'Well, here. But I haven't been back for 6/7/8 years, and this used to be my local from about '88'. And of course that associated me with when it had been the 'local boozer', which she'd have nil knowledge of, just it wasn't at all posh then and '''not quite what we're pitching towards today'''.... lol...

It's like returning to your own version of your neighbourhood 'Cheers' bar, except no one knows your name, and the only thing the same is the 4 surrounding structural walls, everyone and everything else is gone...

[This sounds melancholy, but it's not really, I accept it now as just how it is. It's more simply reflective of how it seems to pan out].
'Do it or do not do it: You will regret both' - Kierkegaard

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Re: Expatriation and Repatriation

Post by sundaymorningstaple » Wed, 09 Mar 2016 8:47 am

JR8, I found the same situation last Sept when I went back for my 50th class reunion. I'm not from a city but a town of 10K only. I drive into & through town and nothing has changed much at all (the outskirts have new shopping centres, big box stores and the like but inside the town limits it's like being transported back to 1965 again. Then I parked the car and took a walk down the street and that's when it hit me full in the face. It was like a movie set. The town infrastructure was still there but when you got up close you realized that nothing was the same except the exterior walls (and those kept that way due to the historical nature of the town in the first place - It was the original capitol of the old colonial Eastern Shore of Maryland). But everything IN those building was new as were all the people. Houses that sold in 1965 for 14K were now selling for 500K and most of the town was overrun by the 'elite' from Washington DC and Annapolis MD. It has become a retirement or summer place type of atmosphere where all the streets are rolled up at 10 pm. For me the only refuge was the farm and nature there that hasn't changed at all. But I am now wondering if I could go back as well. Never though I'd say that, but this last trip was something of an eye-opener.
SOME PEOPLE TRY TO TURN BACK THEIR ODOMETERS. NOT ME. I WANT PEOPLE TO KNOW WHY I LOOK THIS WAY. I'VE TRAVELED A LONG WAY, AND SOME OF THE ROADS WEREN'T PAVED. ~ Will Rogers

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Re: Expatriation and Repatriation

Post by JR8 » Wed, 09 Mar 2016 7:18 pm

Yep, that's it. I've done the visiting home thing a few times, and still each time it surprises me how progressively further and further it changes. I think the thing is when you're away you have an image of what home is and you miss it, perhaps rather romanticise it during darker days abroad.
When you live there changes are slow, progressive, accepted. You don't see the gradual evolution when you're away but just get the occasional big shocks when visiting.
The pub I mentioned was the local for the neighbourhood and I knew every regular in there, from the postman and tube-driver to some pretty big-shots. That's one thing I miss about such places, walk in the door and it's a great equaliser, no one cares who you are. Also it used to be a good place to get the low-down on what was going on in the 'hood :) since back then the neighbourhood was still a place where people knew each other and stopped and chatted in the street etc. Ironic in a way that those very virtues are what brought in 'new money' that have turned it into the anonymous enclave it now is. The new money work all hours, they are rich, they don't want to go and hang out in a 'boozer'. Most pubs in the area have gone through this transformation. Now to try and survive they have prof kitchens with menus featuring GBP30 main course dishes, wine-lists (lol!), but the places are eerily empty. But who can afford pub beer at GBP5/+ a pint, when it's less than GBP1 from the mini-mart on the corner...

I don't think I made it out of DC and down to Maryland. But I did get out of NYC and down the Jersey Shore, small towns with evocative names like Manasquan and Lavallette, that felt like the modern day had mostly passed them by. Traffic aside, they were lovely for a summer weekend and perhaps a trip out fishing. And maybe that's it, the transient w/e visitors with a bit of $ don't want to visit a rather scruffy local boozer, so the residents there come to find their bars serving up plates of prettied-up $50 blue-fish ceviche and $15 craft-beers to go with it.

I know what you mean about 'could I go back?'. This recent trip was hoped to be rather nostalgic, but also kind of an unspoken testing the waters before the big move back there in a couple of years. Now I'm left wondering if I want to go back there, as I can't yet quite reconcile how it's changed. My home is still there and rented out, so I pretty much have to return there. But imagine 'going home', and finding you positively dislike it... [/weird maaaaan].
Maybe the Maryland coast is similar to the Jersey Shore in this way, just 150-200 miles apart, one 'links' with NYC, the other DC... hmm? It must be pretty strange living in an area like that, summers completely swamped with tourists, and winters with tumbleweed rolling down Main street.

How do you think you'd cope with having spent recent decades in an ultra-urban environment, vs moving back to somewhere very rural? No convenience store on the corner, having to drive everywhere etc.
'Do it or do not do it: You will regret both' - Kierkegaard

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