#future expats

[mananaporlamanana]

Losing Fences

Progress is progress. After getting another $7000 estimate from concrete removal guys, my father talked me into scrapping that idea altogether (for now) and just removing the fences. So Favio and his buddy decided to do the work themselves with hand-held grinders. We'll pay them per hour and they'll keep whatever money they can get from the recycling yard.

He sent a picture of the barn, something we had never been able to take because you literally could not see it over all the fencing.

And here's a picture of what they're taking down. These are old cages for partridges (I can't make this up). The fencing is cemented into the ground over and covers about half the property, or approximately 2 acres. When the airsoft gun range was open, the guys draped black tarp over everything to hide themselves so they could sneak up on their opponents.

[lookthetart]

The best joke must be italian boomers judging and condemning economical emigration when it is done by africans but praising their own children and grandchildren when they emigrate to the Netherlands to escape the shit economical situation the same boomers created

[thefutureexpat]

Tia.

New York City

1982

[tatianasy]

March in Paris

Perrotin - Susumu Kamijo

Musée National Picasso - Faith Ringgold

[daedrabela]

My life plan at 20-21 was to move countries by 25. My first choice was Norway, but over the years I've been more open to other places. I'm 24 now and nowhere closer to my goal because I lost several jobs and had to use my savings to survive. Is there anywhere else I should consider more than the others? (This poll won't determine where I go, but whether or not I consider a specific country more seriously)

[abbeywealth]

Maximize Your Pension Benefits: A Guide for Expats in the UK

Are you an expat living in the UK, planning for a secure and fulfilling retirement? Let's explore how you can make the most of your pension benefits:

1️⃣ Understand Your Options: Familiarize yourself with the different types of pensions available to expats in the UK. From workplace pensions to personal pensions, knowing your options will help you make informed decisions about saving for your future.

2️⃣ Stay Informed: Keep up to date with the latest pension regulations and changes. Stay informed about contribution limits, tax implications, and any updates that may affect your pension planning as an expat.

3️⃣ Seek Professional Advice: Consider consulting with a financial advisor who specializes in UK expat pensions. They can provide personalized guidance tailored to your unique circumstances, helping you optimize your pension strategy and maximize your benefits.

4️⃣ Consolidate Your Pensions: If you have multiple pensions from different countries or employers, it may be beneficial to consolidate them into a single pension scheme. This simplifies management and makes it easier to track and grow your retirement savings.

5️⃣ Explore Investment Opportunities: Assess your risk tolerance and explore investment options within your pension. By diversifying your investments, you can potentially enhance your pension growth and increase your retirement income.

6️⃣ Consider Annuities or Drawdown: When the time comes to access your pension, weigh the pros and cons of annuities and drawdown options. Each has its advantages and considerations, so choose the option that aligns with your financial goals and retirement plans.

7️⃣ Plan for Currency Fluctuations: If you plan to retire abroad, be mindful of currency fluctuations and their impact on your pension income. Consider strategies to mitigate potential currency risks and ensure a stable income in your chosen currency.

Remember, every expat's pension journey is unique. By understanding your options, seeking professional advice, and staying informed, you can maximize your pension benefits and secure a comfortable retirement. Start planning today to enjoy a financially rewarding future!

[steveneveral]

24 January 2023

I've been doing a lot of introspective thinking over the past few weeks and have realized that while I am living a good life, I also need to make a decision soon about what I'm going to do next with it.

Yes, COVID may have pushed back some of my plans, but I still need to make some decisions within the next few years.

I have decided to stay in Korea for another two years, so until the summer/fall of 2025. By that time I will have been in Korea for over nine years.

This also got me thinking: As of February 20th of next month, I will have been in Korea for seven years. I arrived here in Korea as a teacher on February 20th, 2016.

I have kept track of many of the people I went through EPIK training with and while many of them did 2-3 years in Korea and went home, there are still a handful of people that are still here. I know someone I went through my EPIK training with back in 2016 who was placed at a school near me in Paju city who still lives in Paju but works at a different school now.

But that's the thing about life: everybody is making their own decisions about what they should be doing and how they should be advancing their lives, and that's okay.

I will enjoy the time I have left here, but I also need to keep looking at the future. Just like my time here, it will certainly have its ups and downs, and I just need to do my best to roll with them.

In other news, I still have not been in contact with my former friend. She tried sending me messages about some event a group she is a part of is looking for, but I didn't answer.

I seriously think she doesn't know what she did in December. Frankly, I am beginning to not care at this point. I'm taking my time to grow mentally and emotionally past her, and I know that I will be better for it.

I've run an outline of what she did past several friends (without mentioning her name to them) and they all kept telling me to cut her out of my life. If she was willing to do something like that and not even apologize for it, then she should just pound sand.

I'm continuing to work on that.

More to come.

[13thpythagoras]

Bush was told about 9/11 before it happened on a level that he is basically complicit. How many times does Bush have to hear about the 9/11 plan before it happened, and nod in agreement, before we conclude he is literally in on it and part of the planning of it and approved of the plan? 

Bush met with Bin Laden's brother two days before the attack on 9/11, it's well known and documented. Though Bin Laden and 19 of the 20 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, Bush chose to invade the Saudi’s enemy, Iraq.

Maybe to prevent future 9/11's we should punish traitorous presidents; the TSA clown show is not even making a single soul safer. Traitorous presidents get millions killed. 

The TSA clown show is not even armed with more than pistols, and the ones with pistols are probably more spineless than Uvalde PD. They’re just there to molest and grope us, it would not be difficult for 20 hicks from anywhere in the world, armed with AR-15s, to storm an airport wing and and hijack a checkpoint as well as a dozen aircraft and force takeoff of dozens of aircraft at gunpoint.  TSA cannot and would not stop that if someone tried it. This type of 9/11 attack could happen again tomorrow but the TSA couldn’t stop it anymore than a stick of butter could stop it. Again and again it always comes down to American citizens and everyday heroes like Todd Beamer to do the real work of saving lives and protecting people. 

The TSA is not ready for a brawl, they are literal toothless it- clowns there to look at and fondle people’s private parts; they make no one safer and 9/11 could happen again tomorrow in how I just described, the TSA is powerless to stop anyone from doing it again. They literally are just there to molest people and kids. I personally don’t even like flying because of TSA. 

[mananaporlamanana]

Favio made this video to show to other potential demo contractors. The 8,500 eu company decided to pull out so we're back to square one looking for a crew. It's a good video. He does video and sound editing on the side.

[thefutureexpat]

Slow Motion Through Paris

March 2023

[tatianasy]

Dispatches from my journeying often end up here. Looking forward to sharing more: 

https://thefutureexpat.tumblr.com

https://www.instagram.com/future_expat/

[alexanderwales]

Book Review: The Ministry of Time

I picked up The Ministry of Time when I was in Berkley. It was prominently placed, it had a bold and colorful cover, and I'm a sucker for time travel of any kind. When I brought it up to the counter, the cashier told me that it was one of her recent favorites and really brilliantly realized for being from a debut author. The inside cover promises "an ingeniously imagined, hilarious romp through time, space, and the human heart".

As a veteran of time travel stories, I think they fall into two basic camps. The first camp is the thinky camp, interested in the time travel elements, the layers of cause and effect, the twists and turns that history or characters might have undergone for want of a nail, branching universes and stable loops, the raw matter of causality itself. The second camp is mostly interested in history, whether that's alternate history or historical characters. These are stories where the premise is that modern warship gets transported back to Ancient Greece or whatever and then we just do not interact with time travel in any meaningful way until the end of the book, if that. Sometimes (maybe even often) time travel stories straddle these two camps, but when I read a time travel story I usually immediately clock it as being one or the other.

For the first three quarters of its word count, The Ministry of Time is so firmly in the latter camp that I thought it would just stay there. The basic premise is that the titular ministry has pulled people through time and set them up with "bridges" who are essentially civil servants that live with the temporal "expats" and get them acclimated to the near-future modern world. Our protagonist "bridge" is a British-Cambodian woman, while her "expat" is Graham Gore, a member of the doomed Erebus and Terror mission to explore the Northwest passage. He's very loosely based on a real man about whom so little is known that his character is invented from whole cloth, but there's quite a bit of historical grounding.

Kate & Leopold was a 2001 film about a modern woman who works at an advertising company (Meg Ryan) and gets embroiled in a love affair with an aristocrat from the late 1800s (Hugh Jackman). It's a romcom, and I thought about it a lot when reading this book, which turns out to mostly be a slow-burn romance. It hits a lot of the same beats. Gore is a man out of time and we milk this for entertainment value as we watch him acclimate to the modern world in various ways, seeing the things that he loves and the things that puzzle him. He's also a gentleman from a simpler time, and his nobility stands in contrast to the boorishness of the modern male. A lot of this is stock: I don't read many romance novels, but "man from the past" is a whole genre, whether he's come through to the present or the female protagonist has been sent to the past. I am pretty sure that the first book of Outlander is this, but I only watched half of the first season of the TV show.

(The other piece of media this reminded me of was the Norwegian show Beforeigners, which hits the "past is a different country" and "refugees from the past" theme a lot harder, at least for my money.)

The Ministry of Time does all this far better than Kate & Leopold did. Part of this is simply the writing quality, but there's also at least a little engagement with ideas of colonialism, the horrors of the past, how we assimilate into the dominant culture, and what that means. Gore is well-realized, and our protagonist has a lot of complexity to her, which brings some brushes with identity and living in the wake of someone else's trauma (particularly because the protagonist, like the author, is mostly white-passing half-Cambodian). It's just that this isn't the sort of time travel novel that I like, because it feels like the core premise, traveling through time, gets set to one side while we focus on the relationship between the past and the present, and how fuckable guys from the past are. I appreciate that there's some depth to the female fantasy on display here, but I don't find this particular female fantasy all that interesting on its own. When I realized, about twenty pages in, that this was primarily going to be a well-written romance, I could feel my enthusiasm for it waning.

Aside from the romance between these two, which is the largest chunk of the book, we have a few people from other eras. They're not given nearly enough depth for my taste, but they serve their purpose well enough, and help add another dose of "actually, the past was kind of shit", which I think any work that is flirting with romanticizing the past needs. The two main ones are Arthur, a gay man from World War I who doesn't get enough screen time, and Margaret, a lesbian who comes from the 1600s. I think there's probably a lot to say about identity and queerness, especially because modern notions of these things are not historical, but as with many things, the novel touches lightly on them and then flies off to the next thing like a timid dragonfly.

The best thing about the book, and the reason I kept looking forward to it, is that the prose is really really good. On almost any random page I open up, I can find a passage that delights me. There's a real art to the metaphor and how it's employed, and I really enjoyed most of it, even the ones that maybe made me scratch my head a little bit. Things like "sparrows gusted along the curb" or "I looked into Margaret's face, the sultry peach color of her mouth and her acne glowing with unprinted newness" or "sheepish, excitable expressions, like children caught drawing on the walls". On the prose level, I was a big fan.

The setting for the novel is near-modern London, a city that's suffering the effect of climate change, with blisteringly hot days where they can't do much more than lay on the floor and wait for the heat to pass, and occasional flooding. The ministry itself is a bureaucratic monolith in a way that feels like it's a piss take, but it doesn't go terribly far toward saying anything here. There's a genre that I'm trying to coin a name for called bureaupunk or bureauporn where we focus on huge organizations with matrix management and endless meetings and paper trails, and how that all feels to live with, but this doesn't quite go to that level, even if it gets close. (The ur-example of this is The Laundry Files, for a future post.)

On the plot level ... I hesitate to use the word "sucks", but I had a lot of problems with it even before we get to the last fourth of the novel where it shifts gears from being a slow romance.

To start with, why are they forcing this man to co-habit with this woman in a way they acknowledge to be scandalous from his perspective? Why didn't they select a bridge that would ease him into the 21st century? Why co-habitation rather than, say, a bridge having regular check-ins or something? Actually, why is all this time and effort being expended on getting these people to acclimate to the 21st century in the first place? The novel doesn't really seem to want to engage with this either, and the answers, to the extent we get them, are always pretty vague. Uncharitably, the bulk of the novel is just an excuse plot to get this woman with this man and have them fall in love.

It's not until the last fourth of the novel that it really starts to pick up steam, at least from a plot perspective. There's a mole in the ministry, there are mystery people from the future, there are plots and plans firing off, people are revealed to not be quite who they said they were ... and I enjoyed this part a lot less, in spite of it being ostensibly more toward the type of thinky time travel fiction I'm a fan of. There are two major reveals, and I didn't think that either of them landed, in part because of how weakly they tied into the thing that the novel had mostly been about, which is this central romantic conflict. It's also in this last fourth of the novel that it becomes a type one time travel story instead of a type two one, but the time travel mechanics are never explained, it never matters, and the whole story is worse for it. There's something that a lot of time travel stories sometimes do where they say "well it's time travel, it's confusing, no one really knows" and I fucking despise it because it's lazy shitty writing. Even if you don't have perfectly consistent rules that make sense on a physics level, you need to have rules that make sense on a narrative level, and usually the kinds of authors who write passages like that don't have either.

Prose aside, I think I didn't like this book. I like some of the stock time travel stuff, like a man from the past discovering Spotify, and a woman from the present reveling in a man from the past. I thought the sentence level stuff was great. I thought that some of the recurrent themes of identity and running from the past were interesting, especially the stuff about power dynamics and fitting in with the governmental overstructure ... but I didn't feel like the novel hit all that hard, aside from a single passage midway through the book. The author has some thoughts on growing up with this Cambodian heritage, but I don't think I necessarily got all that much understanding on top of what I could have gotten from trying to write a character like that myself. I got the sense that the author was putting a lot of herself into the novel, sometimes to a degree that felt embarrassing to read, in a way that the novel is explicit about. Sometimes that was embarrassing in a good way, raw and real, and other times it was just confusing, elements of her life put onto the page without enough introspection or background to understand it.

The romance is good and compelling though, I'll give it that. If you like romances, and don't really care about time travel, you might like it.

[linguajunkie]

If you’re learning Japanese…

Particularly at an absolute beginner/ beginner level, meaning you can’t handle much…

The new show, Sunny サニー, out now on Apple TV+ is worth checking out — mostly English but with occasional Japanese here and there, as the story is about Suzie (Rashida Jones), an American expat in a not-too-distant-future Japan that loses her family in a mysterious accident. Also stars Hidetoshi Nishijima, Annie the Clumsy, YOU (from Terrace House), and more

[haerdoepfu]

Once again (and hopefully for the last time in the near future), a reminder to all french people to vote.

For french expats, the online portal is open from now until tomorrow (thursday) 18:00 (Paris time).

For the french living in france, as well as the expats who missed the online portal, you can go vote in person this weekend, or have someone vote for you.

Please, please, please don't let yourself be discouraged by the horrible results of the first round to the point of not voting! Any blanc/not cast vote is a vote for the far right. By getting as many left(-leaning) people to vote as possible, we stand a chance of reducing the harm this election promises to cause.

[chargoeson]

My First Writeblr- An Introduction

I’ve used tumblr on and off for over ten years but wanted a blank slate now in time for NaNoWriMo 2023 and all the future writing projects I’m devoting myself to. Also highly inspired by all the cool writing blogs I’ve discovered so far since restarting this account <3

About Me:

My name is Char or Charlotte (she/her), I’m 24 and live in the Pacific Northwest in the US

I write literary fiction now, but have kept up various personal essay projects and poetry over the years primarily through my private newsletter!

I have a Bachelor’s degree in English Language and Lit with a soft spot for the Gothic and Romantic eras.

Nothing published yet, but since I am finally out of school I am entering a new phase of creative freedom that feels very encouraging.

Fun extras: I’m a virgo sun, pisces moon (yes, it does hurt), my cat’s name is Brad, I am also a fiber artist, musician, home renovator, perfume enthusiast, and chronic illness advocate.

My WIPs:

Project Amgydala (tentative title: Ballad of a Blue Whale) Novella- Literary Fiction/Surrealism Status- Draft 1 complete at around 33,000 words 2024 Goal- First revision/draft 2 Synopsis- Maren Hara, a recent graduate, moves back in with her father and turns completely inward. She removes herself from the life she created throughout university and begins walking from sunset to sunrise, looking for something she cannot put her finger on. This leads her to Devereaux's Salvation, a jazz bar seemingly from another era, whose eager manager and illusive owner begin to crack through Maren's walls and bring her back into humanity.

Project Corvidae (tentative title: I Want to Build a Home with You) Undetermined- Literary Fiction/Light Mystery/Horror Status- Plotting and beginning first draft 2024 Goal- Complete outlines and give draft 1 my best shot Synopsis- In the wake of the death of her family matriarch, portrait painter and former performance art prodigy Leonie Richards finds herself on the receiving end of her grandmothers vast literary legacy and her eclectic, spirit filled home. Alongside her uncle, the art store clerk, and a host of portrait clients she begins to unlock the secrets of the final years of her grandmother's life.

Mind Over Matter- this is actually backstory for Leonie from Project Corvidae and seeks to shed light on her past performance art pieces and the relationship between her and her grandmother. Light body horror, unsettling women, the works. One of These Nights- a slice of life, Murakami-inspired piece of an American expat living in Tokyo trying to ground herself within a new language. Digs into themes of friendship and social anxiety. Lots of fun music cameos. a green pea moon- my FAVORITE. My little baby. A surrealist romp through the dream world and how it relates to the joy and fear of being queer and letting yourself be loved. Near and dear to my heart.

taglist: @annlillyjose @coffeeandcalligraphy @subtlefires @belovedviolence @onomatopiya

[palacholic]

Storytime

So...it's time to introduce you to the wicked ways of my weirdness, to show you what it's like to be me, starting from the beginning...

Right now I'm in my first semester at Charles university, Prague. I've been living in the Czech republic for a few months now, I chose to move there right after finishing high school in my home country. I spent years preparing for my life abroad, studying the Czech language, taking care of all the formalities that are necessary to move to a new country, most of it by myself, getting to know the country that I consider my home and I wish to live in for the rest of my life.

Why all this? What made me take such an unexpected choice, leaving behind everything I knew, saying goodbye to my friends and family and to the life I could have had in my home country?

As you could probably guess from my username and the content on my blog, the answer is simple:

Jan Palach

Yes. That Jan Palach. The student who on 16th January 1969 set himself on fire in protest of the apathy and resignation of the Czechoslovak people following the soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia. A guy who's been dead for over half a century.

I first heard about him during a time when I was struggling a lot with my mental health. His story gave me strength and hope, what he did reminded me that there are things worth fighting for, things worth living for. I know this sounds kinda paradoxical given that he died because of what he did but that's the point - he was willing to sacrifice his life because he wanted others to live in a better world. He didn't kill himself because he hated life, on the contrary he loved it.

I found something that gave me joy, something I liked doing - reading and watching everything I could find about him. I spent a lot of time researching him and loved every new detail I found out. I started researching him out of admiration for his act and became more and more intrigued by his personality, his interests, the things he believed in...I look up to him a lot. It's incredible how much this helped me getting better mentally and eventually healing from the worst of my mental issues. I started looking forward to the future again, especially after visiting the Czech Republic for the first time.

I came to Prague to pay my respects to Jan Palach, to visit the places where he lived, to say thank you...and fell in love with the city and Czech culture overall more than I expected. I met amazing people and had some of the best experiences of my life, and soon after I realised that moving to Czechia was the right thing to do. That I would regret it for the rest of my life if I didn't go through with it, that if I stayed in my home country I would never be as happy as I am now.

Two years later I finally packed my things and went on my way...as soon as I left the airport on my arrival I felt that I'd made the right choice and everything that happened since then only confirmed that feeling. Even the bad things. It's not always easy but it feels right, in a way that's hard to convey by words. I sometimes think about how crazy this all is but I'm so glad it happened. I'm thankful for everything I have now, my friends, my hobbies, my new home. I love it every day more. And I don't care how weird it is that all this started because of a guy who died more than half a century ago. Was it only a coincidence that I watched the news that day when they talked about him? Is there more to it? Who knows? Is it relevant? I don't think so.

I hope he'd be happy to know that he saved me and how much he means to me. If I could, I'd thank him for everything.

I started this blog to share my feelings and my journey as an expat in Czechia. You'll find memes, stories of a foreigner's life in Prague and of course a lot of history-related things. I'm happy to answer all your questions and tell you more. I hope to make new friends and find people with whom I can talk about my interests. I'm glad to be here and I love you all, I'm proud of y'all for being here too <3

this post took me waaayyyy too long to write and maybe I'll edit it again sometime in the future, if you read all of this I'm genuinely impressed, please tell me your thoughts in the comments or send an ask if you want to :)