Keeping in touch back home
Despite the speed and density of links across the globe, I’ve found that isolation is one of the most difficult issues to deal with as an expatriate. The 9-hour time difference between Maastricht and the West Coast makes telephone conversations difficult: it’s always the crack of dawn or late evening for one or the other of us. E-mail is good, but only loosely couples people and can be time-intensive. Postal letters and packages are important but expensive. Personal visits are vital but infrequent.
Here are a few suggestions that have worked for me:
Personal conversations and narrative:
Skype is invaluable: it’s a free messaging client that includes instant messaging, voice, and video. A small webcam is a worthwhile addition that personalizes the feed and lets me share views from the window during conversations. Find me as drhamptn.
Flickr is a solid photo-sharing site: I get a dedicated web address and unlimited storage for a small yearly fee. There is no editing feature (I use Windows Live Photo Gallery for that), and organizing photos is a bit ticklish since everything is done from a sequential photostream. But friends do like being able to thumb through my galleries.
Facebook is the most developed of the social networking clients. It is easy to share messages, photos, and status, and the depth of people on the service is amazing. I pass messages to friends more often by Facebook than by e-mail now, although IM and photosharing capability is rudimentary. Find me as drhamptn.
FriendFeed helps me to keep everything in one stream and saves a lot of cross-site management. More and more, lately, people have been tapping into that instead of Twitter or Plaxo. Find me here.
News and commentary:
I keep up with Dutch news through the English-language feed Expatica, with business news through the Financial Times, and with US news through MSNBC. I was a dedicated newspaper reader over coffee before leaving the US and have a resolution to become a regular reader of a Dutch newspaper this year. It’s important to get a good 10-minute news summary each morning.
For weekly news summaries digests, there is nothing to compare to the Economist. Their world news coverage is comprehensive and their special features are always interesting. The US weeklies have degraded to light tabloids, but I read this cover to cover. It veers towards cheerleading globalism and debunking climate change, but I forgive it the eccentricities.
Walter Cronkite said that everyone should subscribe to a couple of monthly magazines of commentary. I used to follow The Atlantic, dabbled with the New Yorker, but am looking for a good source. In the meantime, I follow the weekly Slate Political Gabfest and Slate Culture Gabfest podcasts, which give me some literate discussion of US events that keep me in the stream of conversation back home. I’ve put a selection of the news and views podcasts that I listen to up on my NetVibes audio links page, but I’m open to better print suggestions.
For further commentary and perspective, I follow a number of blogs. Some are general technology, business, and medicine sources, others are the personal thoughts of fellow expats. It’s always a pleasure to catch up with it over coffee and to share in the conversations through essays here: I’ve put a good selection up on my NetVibes blogs links page.
posted by Dave Hampton at
6:21 PM
3 Comments:
Isolation is a huge issue and as ex pat it can become all-consuming. I've realised that I don't break through it by reading the economist, listening to the BBC or by blogging-it's about building friendships with people you can talk to (and who can talk to you) in times of need, insecurity and to share good times with. It's a slow process and I am slowly getting there. Recently I have come to realise that spending a little bit of time each day getting to know and understand someone around me, a client,a neighbour or whatever is more rewarding than blogging (which is why I am not in this space very much anymore) . Good luck bridging that gap.
Hi, Nick: 'excellent point.
I have just returned from the US, so I was thinking about friends and family back there. These online tools, and an hour a day spent using them, enable me to have a dialog with them and keep me up to date on events that they know about. When I talked to my parents last night, they had seen pictures that I posted, and I'm up to date on their weather and politics. So, we have a good active conversation, rather than simply catching up by exchanging news. Conversationally interacting and keeping abreast of friend's US context isn't something that otherwise happens in the course of a Dutch day: I have to make the effort. If I didn't do it, I'd drift apart from everyone I knew in the US within months.
Your point, I think, is the mirror image: isolation within the local social environment. I absolutely agree that living a life online amplifies this isolation. I do meet live people by joining groups for quiz night, attending meetings of local interest groups, extending friendships from work. This will get much harder (and more important) when I leave work at the end of this month.
The balance between bridging the gap with friends in the US and creating new human friendships here has lately, I admit, skewed towards the former. Moving from Arnhem to Maastricht reset the local process, and, since this was a temporary home, I didn't make the same effort to connect here. Now that I know I'll be living here longer, you're reminder is timely: I do need to bridge that gap. Thanks.
One follow-up thought after coffee :)
A larger point, too, is what the balance should be.
I want to always remain close to my family. But if I never will return to live in Seattle, is there a purpose to actively keeping up with / for old friends? Maybe I think of myself too much as an expat, here temporarily, and not enough as a resident.
But unless I become rooted in one place for more than a year, and present daily for more than half the time, the balance can't swing to integrating into the local community either.
Somber thoughts on a rainy morning, but good ones...
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