India is orders of magnitude better than most African countries. At the very least it’s safe and you can make a living. Indians actually move back to India after living in the west which doesn’t happen with Africans all that often.
The average GDP per capita in Africa as of 2024 is around $2400 ( https://www.statista.com/statistics/1300864/gdp-value-per-ca... ), in India it's around $2700 ( https://www.statista.com/statistics/263776/gross-domestic-pr... ). A difference but certainly not orders of magnitude. Africa has some really dirt-poor places but so does India. The homocide rate in Africa is higher, around 13/100k vs 3/100k in India, but th…
Africa is too big to describe at once. Though in the context of africa, you can paint trends.
e.g in Nigeria most professionals hardly earn $500. Now compare to zimbabwe - the same professional earns 2x-4x the nigerian wage. Yet Nigeria has higher gdp per capita.
so yeah gdp per capita or gdp per capita ppp - might really reflect the african dynamic.
The tomorrows you is a different one than the todays you. Going abroad for a few years changes your personality in a good way. The mission is complete. You can go home now.
> The mission is complete. You can go home now My wife and children are foreigners; "moving back" would mean uprooting them. Also, I have lived abroad for so long that my country of origin feels foreign at this point, in what is called reverse culture shock. You reach a point where you are a foreigner wherever you are. I'm not saying that it's all been negative; far from it. But I can't universally recommend people t…
I think you're giving invaluable info here and doing a public service :) Having lived abroad a few years myself, its exciting, wonderful, broadens the mind etc, for a certain amount of time. But trade-offs emerge. Loneliness is a thing. Its difficult to make "new old friends". Well, at least, takes time! Living abroad contributed to my getting married later (back home) and being an older Dad. Marrying someone from a different country has all the issues you allude to. When I returned home I got reverse culture shock, it was tough, things had changed. Thankfully I kept in touch which some great friends, who are still there now. So grateful to them for not forgetting our friendship. I think these issues BTW, apply within one's own country too. In the UK its traditional for middle-class kids to go to another city for university. They often meet a partner there. Then bingo, one or both settle far from where they grew up. So friends and family are hours away. Now with increased costs , more people are studying nearer home cos they can't afford that. This is often reported as a bad thing but I wonder if being forced to study nearer home therefore meet a partner from nearer, may lead to higher ultimate happiness. When our kids grow up, I 100% wouldn't wanna "clip their wings" or be selfish. But, also kind of hope they don't permanently move far away. But if their true loves come from other countries, well, that's destiny I guess....
For some, home is where the heart is. I've lived in 11 major cities around the world for the past 25 years, but in the end I moved back home to my rural hometown, in my home country. Remote work made that possible. I make probably 20% of what I could have done in high-COL areas like the Bay Area. But I have a fantastic work-life balance. Make good money, relative to my peers. Clock in 9, clock out 4. Get to spend lot…
In the bay area, most people I know only work in the office three days a week (working sparingly on the other two days) and they come in at 10am and leave at 3pm. Never work weekends etc. Crime is low in South Bay. Most amazing trails and mountains right near home for hiking, riding, and driving. All of this while making enough to buy a house and go vacationing. COL is completely dwarfed by the pay. West coast work ethic is very chill compared to midwest or east coast -- part of the reason I avoid those places.
Handful of thoughts. :) The best of the 3 above is having a specific skill set. Anything medical - e:g nursing (good one 'cos less time to retrain) is in short supply worldwide and you can get a local job with visa sponsorship many places. As for experimenting with fascism, USA is sadly by no means the only country going that direction, and the USA's political system may be more resilient to such take-overs, guess we…
The US requires 0 days off nationally, not sure where you got 2 weeks. I had a job once where we only got 5 days off but had to be there a year first. It was the best IT job I could get at the time.
Wow that's even worse :( I got the impression at the time I worked there that 2 weeks was standard, at least in tech. Which didn't seem at all generous...
For some, home is where the heart is. I've lived in 11 major cities around the world for the past 25 years, but in the end I moved back home to my rural hometown, in my home country. Remote work made that possible. I make probably 20% of what I could have done in high-COL areas like the Bay Area. But I have a fantastic work-life balance. Make good money, relative to my peers. Clock in 9, clock out 4. Get to spend lot…
"I've never met anyone that regretted on 'traveling too much'." I have traveled as lifestyle since my late teens and am now in my forties. (I went to uni in a country where lecture attendance isn't compulsory, so many students only come in for the exams, and then I began remote work already in the early millennium.) It is just who I am, and I wouldn't necessarily say I regret it. However, I and loads of people I know…
> You don't see this discussed much on travel media, because the modern ad-supported internet wants positivity and rainbows. However, this is absolutely a frequent conversation topic whenever I meet up with other nomadic travelers.0
I don't know it always seemed an obvious drawback of digital nomading. You can do this 2 years and then you need some stability. However the positivs of a 2 year DN stunt are great
I am Brazilian and people from US and Europe are completely clueless about the level of competition at the end of high school in those kind of countries (Brazil, China, India). He is talking about college entrance exams. "vestibular" in Brazil, "gaokao" in China, the JEE (Joint Entrance Examination) in India. Those are the keys to upper middle class and they are guarded jealously. In my case to get in CS at a top uni…
sounds similar to how top universities work globally? many places have tens of people applying for a single 'spot' that gets in. https://www.gotouniversity.com/universities-acceptance-rate
Second one is a Brazilian uni and there are more in it.
The thing is, in those countries your uni name is everything. Imagine that if you want to have a career you need to go to harvard, otherwise good luck.
well, below points are not matching somehow : -------------------------------------- Just like many Indians of my generation, I spent my childhood in a single bedroom rented house. Every evening, my brother and I would sit in front of an oil lamp and study, mostly maths and science. ----------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------ My father has been a software engineer since…
This is what I think, the story in general matched anyone who studies or works abroad. There is lot of inconsistencies in the writeup as pointed out in the comments. Even though OP says he is not an introvert, it feels like he is.
> But I was told on day one Twitter orientation to “Walk fast”. Drugged homeless people approached me, one guy tried to hit me while waiting to cross the street. WTF, is this really the reality of living in San Francisco?
I was there a few months last year and this seems like nonsense. To me it seemed like all the homelessness was restricted to a few streets like in skid row.
> a few streets like in skid row.
like the area immediately around city hall, and enclosing half the BART stations & good chunks of MUNI?
“Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.” ― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky
That assumes that you come back. What happens most commonly is that after some time abroad you marry (usually a foreigner) and have children who belong where they were born. What now? I speak from experience. I wish people would pause for a moment before universally recommending something that they either have not experienced, or they have gotten away from. Such as Terry Pratchett, who never even lived abroad!
Not a very charitable reading of the grandparent post. They were very upfront about not traveling anymore. They are, if anything by their own explicit example, vouching for the holistic experience of traveling a lot at one point in life and then settling down. This idea that someone should not recommend something if they are not actively doing the thing at this very moment in time is ridiculous, especially when they specified the context.
ps. there's no reason for the pratchett quote to not apply to regular travelling, as pratchett must have done a little of since he apparently shot a documentary with a bunch of orangutans in borneo.