Vincent OG
Member
Anatomy Of An Ex-Pat
Thoughts On What It Is To Be An Ex-Pat ~ By Peter Lamb
I discovered two curious facts this week. British people are moving to foreign countries in greater numbers now than at any time since the Second World War, and the international space station is going into it’s third year of permanent occupancy. Taken in isolation these two facts hardly answer life’s great questions, but together they add up to a small revelation. Well, they did for me. They explained why I lost valuable social points for not knowing the name of an Albanian chef.
It’s not possible to write a short practical guide to moving abroad without simply stating the obvious, and surely most information is location specific. I shan’t tell you that you need drive, determination and adaptability because you know that already. You know that talking to ex-pats (your would-be new neighbours) and learning from their experiences is also fundamental stuff.
But wait. Is it fundamental stuff? Is it possible that simply talking to an ex-pat is more difficult than it seems? If you go about it properly, the information you’ll get from these people is priceless. But the approach is usually handled badly. To understand why, you have to understand ex-pat mentality.
Advice for people thinking of moving abroad focuses on the foreignness of the new surroundings - the legal aspects, medical, schooling and work-permits. You are encouraged to contact ex-pats who live in the area and ask them detailed questions. That is the extent of advice regarding ex-pats. They are useful people. They speak your language. They have made all the mistakes that you wish to avoid. They are a wealth of useful information. All this is true, but what you may not realise is that you are making contact with an extremely complex social group and making sense of the information they give you may require a PhD in anthropology.
So how do moving Britons and floating astronauts/cosmonauts explain a situation concerning an Albanian chef? Lets examine the first curious fact. More Britons are moving abroad now than at any time since the Second World War. Why is that? It cannot be that Britain has suddenly deteriorated. Greater prosperity, early retirement opportunities or travel confidence perhaps? Or changes in technology making it possible for people to work at a distance? I’m sure all these things play a part, but they are not the reason. They are the means. We want to move somewhere completely different and we always have. It’s genetic. Ask someone if they ever wanted to be a lumberjack or sell a kidney and they will say yes or no. I suggest that no would be the most popular answer. Ask someone if they ever thought of moving abroad and the answer will be yes, or a whole range of excuses why they couldn’t. Rarely do they give a simple “no”. That would seem like they were missing some basic human desire. Some of the oldest evidence of modern man comes from Olduvai Gorge in Africa, dating back three million years. Without this desire - this genetic need to move to other locations - Olduvai Gorge would be getting pretty cramped by now. Even if we moved away simply for the sake of elbowroom, would we really have felt it necessary to occupy the lands within the Arctic Circle?
Why has the international space station gone into its third year of permanent occupancy? Will it get burgled if left unattended? Will it develop the musty smell of an old caravan? I suspect that we humans have a genetic need to inhabit different and preferably difficult places. Why else didn’t the prototype Eskimos turn back at the Arctic Circle and head south? There was plenty of room in warmer latitudes. JFK said of the race to the moon, “We are not doing this because it is easy, we are doing this because it is hard.”
These primeval factors turn a disparate and diverse collection of human beings into a cohesive, if not coherent, troupe. Rather like monkeys. There is a structure to it, a hierarchy. Competition is rife. Two opposing forces are at play. A common language and shared nationality force them together in an alien environment, and the difficulties of sharing a life with so few people not of their own choosing tries to force them apart. When you ask an ex-pat for advice, you are not simply asking a normal person for directions to the post-office. You are asking to join the group, and he may give two different people two different pieces of advice. An ex-pat has formed very strong social bonds with a select group of people who, most of the time, he finds irritating. Think of it this way. If you plan to move to Bulgaria, don’t think that you are going to live amongst Bulgarians. You are going to live amongst maybe ten strangers from your own country who have also chosen to live in Bulgaria. That is a different situation.
The hierarchy of the group depends on many factors. First and foremost is how long they have lived there. Someone who has been there for ten years will be higher up the scale than someone who has been there for only two. That is why ex-pats are so helpful to newcomers. Newcomers put them all up a grade. It would seem impossible then, for a two-year person to outrank a five-year person. Not so. There are many tricks available. One is the language trick. A grasp of the language can send you straight up the scale and seriously annoy other people. Picture the scene. A group of ex-pats in Greece are sitting drinking coffee and one mentions that he’s popped out to his nearest skoopythenikes and, well, would you believe it, it wasn’t there! Heaven’s, they all exclaim, and raise their eyes as though they know what a skoopythenikes is. They immediately rush home, thumb through the dictionary and inwardly fume at how someone who’s been there less time than them seems to know more Greek. The simple technique of learning a word for a totally obscure object throws the whole colony into panic and the subtleties of social ranking suddenly change. A skoopythenikes is, by the way, a wheelie-bin.
Another way to score social points is to claim a greater number of friends among the indigenous population. Get invited to a local wedding and your fellow countrymen will speak of you in revered, hushed tones. They speak of you, but may never again speak to you. If locals acknowledge you but not another ex-pat, you gain points. That is how I lost points by admitting that I didn’t know an Albanian chef. I hadn’t appreciated how important it was. I had slipped down a snake in this game of snakes and ladders by failing to integrate fully into the local community.
Language is hard. Integrating into the local community is hard. Getting things done is hard. An ex-pat will grab any chance he can to outdo his competitors is this genetic game of “doing difficult things well”.
If you consider the anthropology of an ex-pat colony when seeking advice about your intended new home, the information and practical help they will give can make the difference between success and failure. Never tell them that you are fluent in the language, because they can’t play the language trick on you. Never tell them that you have good friends among the indigenous population because they need to have more local friends than you. Never tell them that you spent ten years up the Amazon because that sounds hard and you will be instantly hated. They need to be respected for their achievements, and they will expect you to start life in this group at the very bottom. Give that impression and they will become a formidable force, swinging into action with help and advice. They will become the most important, useful, and irritating part of your new life.
Thoughts On What It Is To Be An Ex-Pat ~ By Peter Lamb
I discovered two curious facts this week. British people are moving to foreign countries in greater numbers now than at any time since the Second World War, and the international space station is going into it’s third year of permanent occupancy. Taken in isolation these two facts hardly answer life’s great questions, but together they add up to a small revelation. Well, they did for me. They explained why I lost valuable social points for not knowing the name of an Albanian chef.
It’s not possible to write a short practical guide to moving abroad without simply stating the obvious, and surely most information is location specific. I shan’t tell you that you need drive, determination and adaptability because you know that already. You know that talking to ex-pats (your would-be new neighbours) and learning from their experiences is also fundamental stuff.
But wait. Is it fundamental stuff? Is it possible that simply talking to an ex-pat is more difficult than it seems? If you go about it properly, the information you’ll get from these people is priceless. But the approach is usually handled badly. To understand why, you have to understand ex-pat mentality.
Advice for people thinking of moving abroad focuses on the foreignness of the new surroundings - the legal aspects, medical, schooling and work-permits. You are encouraged to contact ex-pats who live in the area and ask them detailed questions. That is the extent of advice regarding ex-pats. They are useful people. They speak your language. They have made all the mistakes that you wish to avoid. They are a wealth of useful information. All this is true, but what you may not realise is that you are making contact with an extremely complex social group and making sense of the information they give you may require a PhD in anthropology.
So how do moving Britons and floating astronauts/cosmonauts explain a situation concerning an Albanian chef? Lets examine the first curious fact. More Britons are moving abroad now than at any time since the Second World War. Why is that? It cannot be that Britain has suddenly deteriorated. Greater prosperity, early retirement opportunities or travel confidence perhaps? Or changes in technology making it possible for people to work at a distance? I’m sure all these things play a part, but they are not the reason. They are the means. We want to move somewhere completely different and we always have. It’s genetic. Ask someone if they ever wanted to be a lumberjack or sell a kidney and they will say yes or no. I suggest that no would be the most popular answer. Ask someone if they ever thought of moving abroad and the answer will be yes, or a whole range of excuses why they couldn’t. Rarely do they give a simple “no”. That would seem like they were missing some basic human desire. Some of the oldest evidence of modern man comes from Olduvai Gorge in Africa, dating back three million years. Without this desire - this genetic need to move to other locations - Olduvai Gorge would be getting pretty cramped by now. Even if we moved away simply for the sake of elbowroom, would we really have felt it necessary to occupy the lands within the Arctic Circle?
Why has the international space station gone into its third year of permanent occupancy? Will it get burgled if left unattended? Will it develop the musty smell of an old caravan? I suspect that we humans have a genetic need to inhabit different and preferably difficult places. Why else didn’t the prototype Eskimos turn back at the Arctic Circle and head south? There was plenty of room in warmer latitudes. JFK said of the race to the moon, “We are not doing this because it is easy, we are doing this because it is hard.”
These primeval factors turn a disparate and diverse collection of human beings into a cohesive, if not coherent, troupe. Rather like monkeys. There is a structure to it, a hierarchy. Competition is rife. Two opposing forces are at play. A common language and shared nationality force them together in an alien environment, and the difficulties of sharing a life with so few people not of their own choosing tries to force them apart. When you ask an ex-pat for advice, you are not simply asking a normal person for directions to the post-office. You are asking to join the group, and he may give two different people two different pieces of advice. An ex-pat has formed very strong social bonds with a select group of people who, most of the time, he finds irritating. Think of it this way. If you plan to move to Bulgaria, don’t think that you are going to live amongst Bulgarians. You are going to live amongst maybe ten strangers from your own country who have also chosen to live in Bulgaria. That is a different situation.
The hierarchy of the group depends on many factors. First and foremost is how long they have lived there. Someone who has been there for ten years will be higher up the scale than someone who has been there for only two. That is why ex-pats are so helpful to newcomers. Newcomers put them all up a grade. It would seem impossible then, for a two-year person to outrank a five-year person. Not so. There are many tricks available. One is the language trick. A grasp of the language can send you straight up the scale and seriously annoy other people. Picture the scene. A group of ex-pats in Greece are sitting drinking coffee and one mentions that he’s popped out to his nearest skoopythenikes and, well, would you believe it, it wasn’t there! Heaven’s, they all exclaim, and raise their eyes as though they know what a skoopythenikes is. They immediately rush home, thumb through the dictionary and inwardly fume at how someone who’s been there less time than them seems to know more Greek. The simple technique of learning a word for a totally obscure object throws the whole colony into panic and the subtleties of social ranking suddenly change. A skoopythenikes is, by the way, a wheelie-bin.
Another way to score social points is to claim a greater number of friends among the indigenous population. Get invited to a local wedding and your fellow countrymen will speak of you in revered, hushed tones. They speak of you, but may never again speak to you. If locals acknowledge you but not another ex-pat, you gain points. That is how I lost points by admitting that I didn’t know an Albanian chef. I hadn’t appreciated how important it was. I had slipped down a snake in this game of snakes and ladders by failing to integrate fully into the local community.
Language is hard. Integrating into the local community is hard. Getting things done is hard. An ex-pat will grab any chance he can to outdo his competitors is this genetic game of “doing difficult things well”.
If you consider the anthropology of an ex-pat colony when seeking advice about your intended new home, the information and practical help they will give can make the difference between success and failure. Never tell them that you are fluent in the language, because they can’t play the language trick on you. Never tell them that you have good friends among the indigenous population because they need to have more local friends than you. Never tell them that you spent ten years up the Amazon because that sounds hard and you will be instantly hated. They need to be respected for their achievements, and they will expect you to start life in this group at the very bottom. Give that impression and they will become a formidable force, swinging into action with help and advice. They will become the most important, useful, and irritating part of your new life.