Expatriates

All over the world there are a great many people who, whilst not stateless, are in a form of territorial limbo. They consider themselves émigrés from their own nation; yet have not been brought into the census of wherever it is they live. The legally resident majority does not even have resident status, and they fall into an undetermined group whose hosting authorities refer to them as “non-immigrants”.

They stay too long to be tourists, often work legally, or own businesses, but have not been accepted by the tax authorities of their home or adopted country as domiciled in the far-flung place last mentioned in a high school geography lesson; yet both countries will demand their tax revenues from an all too often pitiful “foreign worker’s salary”. To those in this group, such matters are mundane, above the comprehension of those not in the same position, and beneath the dignity of discussion in mixed company. Mixed company being “The Expatriates”, and, well, everyone else really.

To be an expatriate requires a special breed of person. Nowhere is this more true than in the non-western world. OK, I’ll admit it, it’s true anywhere outside the western, native-English speaking part of the world. Well, in absolute reality it’s true everywhere but in my home country.

A real expatriate is a person who accepts having legal status, and responsibility for maintaining it, whilst also accepting that they have no status and that such rights as may be waved tantalisingly before them, will be waived as soon as the wavering authorities decide the face on the legal status document is not acceptable.

Unless it’s a legal status note of monetary design of course.   Faces on legal status monetary notes are always acceptable. In fact, the legal status of monetary notes legitimises the expatriate’s legal status.

“My wife has been nagging me for a new portrait of the King/President,” could be an opening line, said to you, for opening your wallet as an expatriate attempting to get things done somewhere without a native “advisor”. “But I was thinking of buying her a new dress instead. There’s a nice purple / blue / green / red / brown / grey one (choose colour of monetary note required) in the shop near where we live”, pause with fingers on notes and glance up (how many fingers of the talker are not touching the desk?) Count that many notes of the desired colour.

The exchange of ownership of legal status monetary notes is a matter of extreme discretion and subterfuge. During the exchange the revered face of the portrait subject must never see what is happening and should always be folded to the middle of the note. The passage from expatriate to “caring spouse” has to be done such that no one else sees it happen, even if they are watching.

Several reasons spring to mind for that. Firstly, the observer may be honest and straight (makes life a pain for all parties), or they may be just as … ermm … flexible, yes, flexible … as the person opposite and your wallet will go on a crash diet. On the other hand, they may be senior to your conversation partner and require more because of that seniority, whereas if you’d been discrete; a portion of the first set of portraits would have filtered their way up and everyone would have been satisfied at that. Yes, discretion is a prerequisite of expatriation. Perhaps that’s why I’m always broke?

Prior to making a geographic and career move from the dizzy depths of overpaid computer network engineer and service centre owner, to underpaid expatriate government-employed teacher, and then to even more poorly paid Foreign Correspondent, I had the good fortune to read the relevant nation’s representation in the “Culture Shock” series of guides for wannabe wanderers. Their succinct explanation of the three phases of Culture Shock remain to this day one of the best pre-lessons I learned (don’t be a cheap-skate – go buy it as I’m not going to be a plagiarist and print extracts here, my students didn’t get away with it, so why should I?).

After many years as a guy abroad (just to be clear about my gender), I believe I’ve navigated safely through the first two stages, and yes, stage three does genuinely occur regularly, and without warning. The very differences that make expatriates (oh sod it spell checker – get used to the abbreviation – OK?) … sorry … the very differences that make expats choose to live in another culture are the very differences that fire up our angst and make us rail at all around us. But then, don’t we also do things like that in our own countries?

This blog is presented with several aims.

It’s a repository of my published and unpublished articles and features written as a Foreign Correspondent, and a collection of my own experiences, musings, and observations from day-to-day living in someone else’s country. I’ve also collected a number of “expat true tales”, some of which are not pleasant, many that are, and a number that are simply humorous or entertaining in their own right. Some are included simply because they are tales that need told, whatever the base emotions that they generate.

Some of the longer, more formal, features and articles have previously been published in either expatriate or tourist magazines, others are displayed here looking for a publisher. Where an article, news story, or a feature has previously been published in print, I have included the relevant internet link if available, as second serial rights are available on all of my writings, and editors may wish to check the previous publication. Editors can always contact me as stated below.

All of the writing in this blog is my own, unless I credit an original author, even if the story originated with someone else. Paraphrasing is not plagiarism, as I used to tell my students before I switched jobs. Also, unless credited, opinions (other than in reader’s comments) are my own and you may disagree with some of them – if you do, then I’m guessing you’re either a tourist, a western-employed (i.e. western-salaried) expat, or you have somehow insulated yourself from the realities that the rest of us experience daily while living here.

This blog is not specifically intended as a guide to expat living, nor as a guide to the South East Asian region. It is especially not intended as a guide to Thailand, despite most of the tales and anecdotes coming from that country, particularly in the languages section.

Every writer draws their material and inspiration from the things they experience around them, and in the case of this blog most of mine are due to living in Chiang Mai, Northern Thailand. It is the city I now call home, whilst attempting to collect enough “status notes” to one day be able to give the portraits on them to an art lover, who will then bestow upon me the grand status of “officially resident expat”, and I can then hang a beer mug, engraved with my name, behind the bar where those bestowed with such honour gather. Ermm … anyone know where it is?

Garry

Garry Harbottle-Johnson is a British expatriate and Foreign Correspondent registered with the Thai Ministry of Foreign Affairs Press Division and the Thai Ministry of Communications.

Subjects covered for the print media are reflected within the content of this weblog, which also contains many samples of my press-photography (especially in the pre-2005 articles).  I am available for freelance contract as a journalist, photographer, and researcher for publications inside or outside Thailand. I am also available to accompany visiting journalists as a “fixer”, and where needed, to recommend native Thais to assist where I cannot.

Editors can always contact me through the contact us form in the online store that forms part of this site.

My first years as a journalist were in 1983-87 working as a freelance photographer-reporter for the Campbeltown Courier (weekly broadsheet) in Scotland.  During that period I began freelance submissions to magazines and trade publications, which I continued until becoming a full-time freelance and sponsored foreign correspondent (for magazine house Pireme Publishing, UK) in 2004.  Between 1987 and 1999, I also owned a couple of UK businesses in the finance and IT sectors, before expatriating to Thailand “to avoid the IT Millennium Meltdown”.

In addition to Expat Eye, I also tech-manage and write for several other online weblogs specialising in ecommerce, technology, social and ecology issues, and “food travel”.  Editors wishing to inspect my work in these sectors can contact me as above for a list of recent articles with web links.

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