Batgung

After living in Hong Kong for so many years (15+ and counting), and continuing to enjoy life here very much, I started thinking about qualities or characteristics it takes to be a ‘successful’ expatriate.

Allow me to preface my list by explaining what I mean by ‘successful’. I don’t mean financial success. Many expats who make lots of money in overseas posts are never the less extremely unhappy, and vice versa. What I mean is simply that the successful expatriate has the ability to find life in a foreign country congenial, and even pleasant.

So, let’s get started.

Adaptability. Clearly, adaptability is the cornerstone of expat success. But what does the word really mean when you must put it into practice? In essence, I think it means being able to find contentment in unfamiliar circumstances. It means being able to accept a certain degree of discomfort and internal disequilibrium, and say, ‘That’s all right. I might not like this all that much, but I’m not going to let it rule my life’. I can’t overstate how important this is. It’s sad to watch an expat who’s determined to recreate his home country life in his new foreign situation. No matter how many steps he’s able to take, there’s always going to be something that isn’t right. His employment terms might allow him to rent a house that’s just as nice as his house back home, with a yard or garden that’s just as big, with a car that’s just as powerful – but he will inevitably find a whole mess of worms in the apple. The grass in the yard will be spiky instead of smooth. The car will have a great sound system, but all his favorite radio stations will of course be inaccessible. The house might be beautiful and well-furnished, but the fridge won’t have an automatic ice maker. You might think this sounds like a lot of petty rubbish, but you’d be surprised at what gets people worked up when they’re outside their comfort zones.

My Achilles' heel in this area is the weather. I'm interested in weather, and I'm more aware of how weather works than most other people, although I'm just an amateur enthusiast. But that's also a nice way of saying that I am prone to allowing unpleasant weather (i.e. the entire summer in Hong Kong) to bother me far more than I should. Over the years Mrs Tall has had her patience frayed repeatedly by my incessant commentary on matters meteorological. Finally, a couple of years ago, she turned to me and said something along the lines of: 'Why do you let something as petty as the weather rule your life? It's only your temporary physical comfort that's affected. Why do you let this obsession affect your mood and your enjoyment of all the other things going on in your life?' And I thought about that for a while, and I've been a lot better since.

Unconcerned obliviousness. What adaptability doesn’t mean is the ability to understand everything that’s going on around you. Although being curious is great for expats in general, it doesn't work well in many specific situations. That is, expats often find themselves in situations in which they simply don’t know what is going on, and it’s inconvenient or impossible to find out. Many of these little moments of cluelessness are language-related, but certainly not all of them. All cultures have mores and traditions that are opaque to the uninitiated. As an expat who’s looking to adjust, you of course want to start learning about these little cultural foibles, but you often can’t do so right at the moment you’re encountering one. You’re often much better off, and a much more pleasant person to be around, if you can simply cultivate a state of ‘unconcerned obliviousness’ from time to time: you don’t know what’s going on around you, and you can just live with that for the time being – without getting upset. To paraphrase Robert Heinlein's sci-fi classic Stranger in a Strange Land, you should remember and cherish an alien experience, but refrain from trying to 'grok' it until you have time to savor it in repose.

I find this quality hard to cultivate. I suffer from a beady-eyed curiosity that often makes me impatient – I want to understand now. And there are still lots of things I don't understand at all.

Optipessimism. You might think that bright-eyed optimists make the most successful expats, but I’m not really sure that’s true. Yes, it’s helpful to wake up every morning and think ‘Today’s going to be a fabulous day!’ But it’s also difficult to prop up a high state of enthusiasm after the initial rush of moving overseas wears off. I wonder if sometimes people who are determined to see the bright side of everything are more likely to ‘snap’ the most violently and end up really hating their expat lives. The disappointments are too frequent and too profound.

On the other hand, a confirmed pessimist will always find plenty of grist for the complaint mill when living overseas, and this can become a self-feeding spiral of discontent.

This is one area, then, in which the via media is really the right way. Allow yourself to enjoy new and unexpected enthusiasms; equally, allow yourself the occasional sulk; but don’t let either get hold of you. Easier said than done, I know.

So, expat readers: am I on the mark here? Any tips from your experience? Do leave us a comment or visit our forum to tell us what you think.