On Monday 24 October 2011 05:09 PM, Chandrachoodan Gopalakrishnan wrote: > > > Um, This argument doesn't quite ring true Venkat. > I landed in Bristol with no existing friends circle there. I built one > up. All of us do that: be they work friends, blog friends, silk friends, > family friends, uni friends or whatever. I went to Dubai and did the > same thing.
Doing it in a different city in a different country is not a choice. Many do, so did the writer of that article. It is when you come back for *good* that it makes a difference. You're living in a new society when you're out there. Celebrating Diwali and Independence Day as a community, going for a Independence Day parade in the City with other Indian celebrities wearing traditional Indian clothes. But what do you do here? Sleep in on holidays. Why? Your maids take care of the *lowly* work. You don't do the laundry, wash your car or even clean your bathrooms. Back in the $*other country*, you had no choice. So when you come back, you come back to your original home town. So you feel comfortable when you're down. You get pissed off at the constable demanding a bribe or if the lineman comes and asks you for Diwali Bakshish. But you suck it up because your family says, let it go. This is how it works here. In a different city, you are your own boss. You have no familiar faces to advise you. You probably come in a senior position and your colleagues don't even want to talk to you socially. There are many things that can go wrong, but all that is the thread of life here and one has to adapt. As much as one wants to see clean roads and road manners, it's not gonna happen till the others experience what you did. So you MUST give allowance. And you cannot. So you learn to cope with friends and family. > How does it matter which city you chose to live, if you don't take the > effort to make friends? How did you/he make friends when you moved out > of Bangalore/Mumbai to California? You do the same thing when you get back. I couldn't disagree more. When you come back as a bachelor it is a different story. When you have family, you are coming back for yourself and your family. So it is *family size* times harder to re-adjust. Venkat
