Student expat experiences

Hi IHRMers Below are two experiences from our students about their expat experiences - if you have any experiences, please let us know. Cheers Stephen ============================================= Usually interest in the Forums peak about the same time as Assignment 1 gets its marks back. In my case I am idling away lunch time at my desk in Taiwan. This is my 3rd overseas assignment for Swiss Marine Engineering Company, 2 years in Korea, 6 in Japan, 2 in Taiwan. I am NZ/Australian.... so i am real TCN third country national. I am National Manager for our product group BU, only expat, my staff are all locals. My background is engineering but I basically get to run total business, financial, staff issues, engineering etc for 10 people. Whats it like.... pretty extreme, every day is a new adventure in highs and lows, from being stuck cold and miserable in a Chinese shipyard to doing your own "Lost in Translation" movie role in Mori Towers. It pays well, you get to do a lot of cool things but you have to give up a lot and you can probably never go back. Would I recomend it, its not for everybody..... =============================================== Selmer et al have it pretty much worked out, I should have read that 10 years ago when I became and expat. There is definitely this process of coming starry eyed off the plane, setting out on your mission, finding everything seems to work against you, conflicts with the natives and finally shrugging your shoulders and going with the flow. I just realised that I am not the only one who has had similar problems, phew thats a relief. Happily my current assignment has settled into a good old daily grind that will take me easily to contract distance.