How to spot an Expat

Groan, grumble, grouse

It’s not the colour of the skin or an accent that gives an expat away, but her felicity at moaning about her delightful circumstances.

China

In Beijing the full complement of complaints included how dirty the streets were, how difficult it was to make local friends - ergo the Chinese were unfriendly/rude -, the inefficiency of service providers, the terrible traffic, the fact that flushing toilet paper often caused the commode to flood, and a tendency towards deceit amongst the people.

Personally I found much beauty in China, the services to be remarkably efficient, the food to be a gastronomic delight, the Chinese themselves to be refreshingly frank and curious, given all of which the fact that you usually had to dispose toilet paper in a specially provided bin rather than flushing it, was hardy onerous.

Moving on

Nonetheless, when we moved from Beijing to Brussels I was looking forward to it. Things would be so much easier “back home,” I was reassured by my European friends, some of whom didn’t seem to realize that not everyone shared their “home” geographically or metaphorically. Everything worked, including the toilets, I was told.

You might pay more for things, but what you got was of assured quality. People in Europe lived by their word, they were ethical. None of that lying and cheating that went on in China with its get-rich-quick culture. The air was clean, the neighbourhoods green. Folks queued at bus stops and didn’t spit up foaming gobs of phlegm on the roads.

Belgium

I spent the next three years in Belgium not only perennially chasing plumbers and being pickpocketed, but also hanging out with the expat crowd (mostly  Europeans who worked for the European Union which was headquartered in Brussels), who never seemed to run out of complaints.

Brussels, they groaned, was an ugly and dirty city. No one cleaned up after their dog on the poo-punctuated streets. There was graffiti on the walls and the city was rife with thieving immigrants from Morocco. The traffic was dreadful. Belgians were corrupt and avoided paying taxes by every means possible. They were lazy. Also they were unfriendly and rude.  

Yet by the time we were set to move again, this time to Indonesia, I had come to look upon my stay in Belgium as magical, or at least magical with suboptimal weather. Weekends had been filled with farmers markets and antique browsing. Brussels evoked the smell of good coffee and waffles. I loved the quirky art-deco architecture that popped up along the most unexpected back lanes.

Random act of kindness

And then there had been a particularly lovely act of random kindness.  Julio, baby Ishaan and I were stranded on the sidewalk outside our home on an unprecedentedly snowy Christmas morning. We’d been trying to get a taxi to the airport, to make our flight to Morocco, the destination for our winter break that year. The sudden bad weather had meant that there was no functional public transport and no taxi available for hours. A young man, who we later discovered lived a few doors down the road, had approached us to find out why we were looking so dismayed. When we’d explained our predicament, he’d offered to drive us to the airport in his car – no strings attached. “It’s Christmas after all” he’d smiled. After returning to Brussels I’d had the man and his boyfriend over for dinner and I can assure you that Belgians are as charming and friendly as anyone any expat might find back “home.”

Indonesia

In Indonesia, the volume of moaning was cranked up to maximum: open sewers, rats, terrible corruption, unhygienic conditions, mosquitoes and unspeakable traffic jams. The wives of some diplomats found living in Jakarta so unbearable they had nervous breakdowns and had to move to Bali, having their spouses fly in on weekends.

For me Indonesia was fascinating: lush, frangipani-scented, eclectic, with the kindest people, who didn’t bat an eyelid when your child acted up in public. It was a Muslim majority country where people offered their non-Muslim guests snacks even as they fasted themselves, during the month of Ramadan. It was fertile start-up territory, filled with dynamic youngsters with big ideas. Women in headscarves and helmets zipped about on mopeds. Jakarta was a destroyer of stereotypes.

Japan

Then there was Japan. Even in this haven of comfort and aesthetics, expats managed to complain about the ugliness of Japanese cities, the inefficiencies of its services, the xenophobia of the locals and the difficulties of the language (!).

In contrast, my four years in Tokyo passed in constant astonishment at the beauty of the landscape and the politeness of the people who made more efforts than in any country I’d live in before to pronounce my name accurately. Most stunning of all was the level of social honesty. Japan was a country where What is Lost, was Always Found. Between the four members of my family, we lost wallets, lunch boxes, phones, jackets, metro passes and a laptop. We recovered every single item, sometimes within hours. Not a sterling recommendation for the Arias-Aiyar family’s personal habits, but a ringing endorsement of Japan.

Peeves allowed

 None of this is to claim that people shouldn’t be allowed their peeves. I am no Pollyanna. I was not happy when I emerged from home in Beijing to step into someone’s freshly spat out phlegm on the road. I was less than delighted when my handbag was stolen upon arrival in Brussels airport. More than once the traffic jams in Jakarta left me in tears (one time it took me 3 hours to get back home from the children’s school, a journey that should have taken 20 minutes). And in Japan I discovered it was more fun to get a tooth extracted than setting up a bank account.

“Home”

The point is that every place needs to be accepted on its own terms rather than  held up against an idealized “home,” which it will inevitably fail to measure up against. When we travel, we need to leave our homes not only physically but mentally too. Everywhere can be exhilarating. Everywhere has its treasures. And everywhere has something to teach us. In moving from one place to another there is an inevitable trade off. You lose something, you gain something. But I believe that what you gain is almost always more than what you give up.

Thoughts?

What’s the nicest thing that's happened to you abroad?  And how do you deal with a moany expat when you come across one? Please let me know in the comments section below and be sure to share this post with your friends if you enjoyed it. I’m 30 subscribers short of 500 …help me make this milestone? :-)