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Expatriate Consultancy Cultural Shock

A Simple but Life-Changing Advice for Expatriates

Vinagrete para churrasco. Imagem de misskursovie2013 por Pixabay .
This is called Vinagrete and in a few paragraphs you will understand why this picture is here.

A Bit of Nostalgia First

Before jumping to the promised advice for expatriates, a small personal anecdote. It will be useful to understand the reason for this post.

Almost everyone has a few family practices perpetuated from infancy to adulthood, which are eventually called house traditions. Mine was the family barbecue. One or two times per month my father turned on the churrasqueira (an intimidating word basically meaning “grill”) around noon, my mom prepared vinagrete, and one or two hours later all of us served ourselves from thin stripes of picanha, alcatra and all sorts of typical Brazilian cuts, together with bread rolls filled with vinagrete. Just by writing this paragraph, I feel the craving for it, something difficult to anyone foreign to my region to understand. 

​            Outside my country is nearly impossible to find the same kind of cuisine, except in places where you have a big Brazilian community or demand for different types of meat. Qatar was in the second case. Two restaurants served those cuts there for rich sheiks willing to taste it. I was not a frequent client of those since I was not willing to pay multiple times more than what I was used to. Thus, there was me, in the middle of the desert, deeply craving the meat and the moments I had during my whole life. That is when I realized I lived with two Argentinians. They knew some restaurants where the price tag was not high, and the best: we had company discounts!

​            Although Argentinian cuts differ greatly from the Brazilians, the environment and the taste was still fine. Albeit there was no vinagrete, there was another remarkably tasty sauce: chimichurri. Then I saw it was possible to satiate my appetite without emptying my pockets. I also found in supermarket cuts similar to alcatra and prepared it at home. To complete my weekend replicas of childhood rituals, I used to call my parents during those times and have long talks where we updated each other about our lives.

​            Though I didn’t have my parents present there (as well our typical bread rolls called pão francês, which were impossible to find), the weekends with churrasco-imitation were enough to catapult my mood and make me filled with satisfaction, happiness, and protein.

​I told you this story because, if you are already living abroad, probably you met other foreigners constantly complaining about how much they miss what they had back home. Maybe you even are one of them (no offense intended). Food and culinary ingredients are the most common reason for ranting. Looking for an expat products store is valuable when adapting to life in a new country. Usually, those stores will have the most famous food items from selected countries, like condiments, beverages, sweets or ingredients. It is especially convenient for anyone with kids going through adaptation.

​            Besides food, this dissatisfaction can build up from many other items that are inaccessible abroad. Things like hobbies, sports, climate, your favorite place, drinks and routines. The affliction takes many forms. For example, an article of Worklife described the case of Joe Watson. He relocated to Hong Kong from Atlanta for six years and not being able to watch his sports teams on TV made him yearn for life back home. The consultancy firm Expatica exemplified this problem, and the opportunities derived from it:

​            When you’re not in your hometown, you need to adapt to what’s available in your new environment. For instance, you may have only ordered coffee from a particular company, but you may have to adjust to whatever type of coffee you can get in your locality. Weird smells? You must just get used to it. Constantly complaining about how you can’t find the same brands as in your country or that you prefer the public transportation network back home doesn’t build a healthy relationship with your new place of residence. Try to focus on the positives and venture outside your comfort zone. Maybe you’ll find an even better brand of coffee in the process.

​   The Expat ANS Syndrome

     The paragraph above describes a pattern I saw among many expats all over the world. A common behavior which I will call here the analogous to nothing syndrome (ANS). It happens when, longing for something they had before and now it inaccessible in a foreign country, the person completely loses the capacity to substitute his previous desire for something similar. As if that dish, hobby, or Wednesday night event was analogous to nothing, an exclusivity only his beloved country had and there is nothing in the universe to substitute it.

​            Sometimes the analogous to nothing syndrome comes from the pride of what we judge as typical, traditional, or just very cool in our country. Like a Chilean expatriate in France misses drinking Piscolas because of the impossibility to find Pisco (a Chilean-Peruvian national drink) and don’t realize he can instead use Grappa with a similar result. Or a Californian casual-surfer living in Austria, frustrated with the lack of waves (and sea at all) but not realizing how satisfying could be to snowboard in the challenging slopes of Tyrol.

​          On other occasions, the ANS results from a lack of creativity or knowledge. To exemplify it, I ask your permission to tell another personal story, which will sum in our final advice for expatriates.

Latin-American Expats and the D problem.

During my first winter in Europe, more or less around January, I was feeling tired and demotivated, since it was dark almost all the time. I was also getting sick frequently, and then I realized this was a message from my body. It was almost shouting to me “Hey, there is something wrong! I need sunlight!”. My skin color changed from the usual olive tone to a pale shade. I went to the doctor, and he asked for some exams. When the results came, we understood everything:

​            Severe lack of vitamin D.

​            There’s a good reason vitamin D is also known as “the sunshine vitamin”. The nutritionist Ryan Raman explained that When your skin is exposed to sunlight, it makes vitamin D from cholesterol. The sun’s ultraviolet B (UVB) rays hit cholesterol in the skin cells, providing the energy for vitamin D synthesis to occur. Since my genetics provided me with a darker color, ideal for places with strong sunshine like Brazil, it was over filtering the scarce sunlight of the central European winter.

​            Here we had a problem. I couldn’t bring the Brazilian sunshine to here, and at this point holidays were out of the question. So I needed a bit of creativity and some technology to solve the issue. The solution after all is to take vitamin tablets every morning, and an artificial light imitating the sun. The physiological problems faded and my humor, mood and productivity had a boost.

​            What this proved is that even the tropical sunshine is not analogous to nothing and can be substituted by something similar if you need it. Eventually, the search for a similar thing can even unveil other opportunities. Mark Callaghan, a British that moved to the USA and was badly craving for his typical “Sunday lunch swimming with gravy”, had his story told by Worklife:

“He did something most homesick expats don’t do — he turned his longing for home into a successful livelihood, later launching British Corner Shop, an online supermarket delivering British groceries worldwide, primarily to expats wanting a taste of home.”

It is likely that, freeing yourself from the inertia and frustration caused by not finding the same you had before, you will find something similar. If you are a Russian in the USA, maybe you miss celebrating Orthodox Easter. In the case your city doesn’t have many of your countrymen, use your creativity and you might find Serbians, Romanians and many other nationalities that share traditions and prepare a delicious kulich.

​            The same is valid for routines. I remember that during my time in the Middle East, there was a group of jogging expats. A lot of them were Australians, North Americans and Europeans. People from places where jogging is a good way to exercise outdoors and socialize. But outdoor exercising in Doha, where summer temperatures could reach 50 degrees Celsius, could be a health risk to those daring to do a physical activity outside.

​            So how those people were jogging?

​            I read more about this group and realized that they were not jogging indoors, but rather in shopping malls, multi-purpose centers, and other acclimatized environments. The association became so popular that the hotel Hyatt Plaza sponsored a similar initiative in the city.

​            Jogging in a shopping mall. This is what I call creativity! It is certainly not the same as what they had in their countries, but it is similar and as the success of the group showed, it was also fun.

Conclusion – Don’t look for the same things, Stick to what is similar

This similar you will find may become your new standard, who knows? I would never expect that one day I would be more interested in watching winter sports than a carnival parade. As those examples prove, the sunshine of the tropics, the mild weather of the Mediterranean, the exotic cuisines, the pacific waves or the biggest party on the planet are not unreplaceable by something analogous. So why would you think the thing you are missing is analogous to nothing?

Here is the advice for expatriates reading this post: just look, in your new country, for something comparable to what you had before and embrace it. Instead of look for the same, stick to what is similar, and enjoy it. 


Levi Borba is the CEO of expatriateconsultancy.com and a best-selling author. You can check his books here. This article was inspired by the content of his book, Moving Out, Working Abroad and Keeping Your Sanity: 11 secrets to make your expat life better than you imagine

Receive for FREE! Digital Book – 20 Essential Hacks for Saving Money While Travelling. Click here

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Receive for FREE! Digital Book - 20 Essential Hacks for Saving Money While TravellingLearn the one single trick to pay almost 60% less in your airline tickets!

Subscribe to our blog and receive for FREE in your e-mail the digital book that will teach you the way to cheaper flight tickets and even an upgrade to Business Class! Written by an author that worked during years in some of the best airlines of the planet.

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Smith
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Palace of Culture and Science, Warsaw Poland

Living in Poland & Cost of Living in Warsaw

Good News! You just received a work invitation from Poland. Now the possibility of living in Poland is real. They offer you a health insurance, benefit card and few other perks that are attractive at first glance.

But just between us: We know this is not what you want to know.

So, you run your eyes through the email and find it: the proposed salary. 

Great! They will offer me X thousand zlotys! But… what that does really mean?

In this article I am going to tell you:

✔ How much is enough to live in Warsaw as a bachelor, a young couple and a family.

✔ What is the difference between “just enough”, “comfortably” and “very-comfortably”

✔ Why the cost of living in Warsaw should never be compared to any other city in Poland. I will repeat: NEVER. EVER.

“Just Enough” X “Comfortably” X “Very Comfortably”

During my first year in Warsaw, I was spending just the necessary. Food, a roof over my head (shared with another person) in a district in the city outskirts, transport pass and once or twice per a month a night out to drink in a local pub. Rarely eating out, no shopping sprees, and a gym pass that cost less than 70zl per month. This is what I call just enough. 

Some people would say that a gym is superfluous. I give them some reason. But it was cheap. Differently than living alone in a premium location, which is superfluous and expensive.

On the other hand, what I mean by comfortably is a small place to live by yourself. A place not far from the city, but also not in Aleje Ujazdowskie or other fancy addresses. This definition includes occasional dinners in middle-range restaurants, annual trips and a healthy amount of entertainment. But no private schools if you have kids (they can be expensive, at least for polish standards).

Very-Comfortably is the definition that requires the least explanation. It is the complete package, with weekends spent at rooftop bars and fancy bistros, plenty of international trips and a nice apartment near some embassy. Plus education for your children in international, private schools.

How much is Just Enough to live in Warsaw?

Tram Line number 9, in Warsaw
The tram line 9 goes to affordable districts in the suburbs of Warsaw. Photo by Valik Chernetskyi on Unsplash

Probably this is the section tending to polemics. Students that survive in semi-expired food – it is not a shame, I was one of them not long ago – will say that you can survive on much less than that. Young couples which consider a must on international travel per semester may say that it is not enough.

Be aware that any value written below and in this entire article is netto. That means money on hand. Depending on your contract, the discounts over your total salary can be very significant, so to use gross numbers can be misleading.

All disclaimers made, here goes the incomes that I consider just enough to live in Warsaw.

Single person: 1700 zlotys per month. In fact, I was living with a bit less than that when I came to Warsaw. Cost of sharing a 35 sqm mieszkania in the district of Praga: 800zl per person. 

Young Couple: 3000 zlotys per month. Cost of a 35 sqm mieszkania in Praga district: 1600zl per couple.

Family with 2 kids: 4000 zlotys per month. Cost of a 55 sqm miezkania in Bielany: 2300 zl per month. Important to stress is that I am considering public education in this point, which is regularly offered in the polish language.

How much is to live comfortably in Warsaw?

(If your idea of comfort is a life similar to the characters of a Warner Channel sitcom, just jump to the next section). The values below includes provisions to build, slowly, a savings account or a private retirement fund.

Single person: 4000 zlotys per month. Cost of living alone in a 36 sqm mieszkania in the district of Ochota: 2000zl. 

Young Couple: 7000 zlotys per month. Cost of a 45 sqm mieszkania in Ochota: 2300zl per couple.

Family with 2 kids: 10.000 zlotys per month. Cost of a 70 sqm apartment in Ochota: 3500 zl per month. Here I am still considering public education, or at maximum a private żłobek (nursery school).

How much is to live very-comfortably in Warsaw?

Wilanow Palace in Warsaw
The palace of Wilanow gives name to the surrounding affluent district. Photo by Lāsma Artmane on Unsplash

Single person: 11000 zlotys per month. Cost of living alone in a 70 sqm apartment near Rondo ONZ (the financial district of Warsaw): 5000zl. 

Young Couple: 17000 zlotys per month. Cost of a 70 sqm apartment near Rondo ONZ: 5000zl per couple.

Family with 2 kids: 28000 zlotys per month. Cost of a 200 sqm apartment in Wilanow: 12000 zl per month. Here I am including private education.

The rent prices are based on searches made in july 2020 at the website Otodom.

Why the cost of living in Warsaw should never be compared to any other city in Poland.

The Answer to this subtitle is simple: Because Warsaw is much more expensive than any other Polish city. (Not considering resort-cities like Sopot or Zakopane though). The question “How expensive is living in Poland” totally depends if we are talking about Warsaw or, let’s say, Rzeszów.

Cities on the eastern part of Poland (often called, impolitely, Poland B) are famous for having very attractive prices and is not uncommon to find living costs that are half of a similar standard in Warsaw. If you are curious to know about other polish cities where you can have a good quality of life, feel free to schedule a free 15 minute consultation with us.

In fact, nowadays the Polish capital has prices comparable to Berlin.

If you read until this point, there is a good chance that you are holding yourself to criticize me because either you consider I overstated or understated some numbers. 

Feel free to tell me your thoughts about living in Poland and make any suggestion in the comment section! 

Author: Levi Borba, founder of Colligere Expat Consultancy, former RM specialist for the world´s greatest airline,  co-founder of Nearby Airport Hostel Warsaw and author of the book Moving Out, Living Abroad and Keeping Your Sanity. You can check some of his articles here.

Book cover
Receive for FREE! Digital Book - 20 Essential Hacks for Saving Money While TravellingLearn the one single trick to pay almost 60% less in your airline tickets!

Subscribe to our blog and receive for FREE in your e-mail the digital book that will teach you the way to cheaper flight tickets and even an upgrade to Business Class! Written by an author that worked during years in some of the best airlines of the planet.

John
Smith
johnsmith@example.com
Social Distancing banner Skills

5 ways to develop life-changing skills during your quarantine

At this point, I bet you know most of the things about the virus, like how to protect yourself with FFP2 or N95 masks, wash your hands or keep a safe distance. You are also aware of every kind of discovery about how the Coronavirus can be treated or how important is to ask the local immigration to extend your Visa if you got stranded. So I will not spend time with that. Rather, I want to list here 5 ways to develop life-changing skills during your quarantine.

FFP 2 mask
FFP2 Mask, similar to the N95 mask, used for protection against particles and harmful agents.

However, if there is one thing I have some experience, is to be in the middle of a crisis.

                I have this strange ability to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

                I got stranded in Qatar once. Likewise, my wife and me found ourselves in Yerevan during the 2018 Armenian Revolution. And then there are all the civil unrests I witnessed in Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Lebanon.

Still, all those finished in few days or weeks. As much as I saw the revolution explode in Armenia, I also saw them celebrate with fireworks when it finished. Meanwhile, the pandemic crisis we are experiencing now is already completing one month.

We do our part by staying at home and flattening the curve to avoid hospitals to get overloaded.  In other words: Quarantine.

Social Distancing banner
It is about protecting the most fragile!

Here is for you the list of 5 ways to develop life-changing skills during your quarantine:

  1. Practice Deep Work.

As Much as we are tempted to compulsively watch the news and scroll our newsfeed, this is a trap. Avoid living in the shallows of the Internet (grabbing the term coined by the author Nicholas Carr in his book with the same name). The time we spend at home is a great opportunity to train the capacity of reaching the maximum cognitive ability of our brains.

Great creators and entrepreneurs voluntarily “quarantine” themselves every year to achieve that. Bill Gates, for example, two times per year, isolate himself just to read and think. We call it Deep Work (another author-coined expression, this time by Cal Newport). In short, it consists of long hours disconnected, concentrating in a single task that demands a lot of our brain-power. It will boost your cognitive capacity to whole new levels.

Cover of the book - Deep Work Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World
Book: Deep Work Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

  1. Learn Speed Reading

This is one of those meta skills: Abilities that help you acquire another abilities. With time, they exponentially increase your value. Since I learned speed reading, the number of books I read increased from 12 in 2018, to 36 in 2019. Even that being the year I started my new business and got married, two very time-consuming things.

With the correct methods, not only your reading speed will increase but also your content retention. It is not something that will take you a lot of time to learn, but you will need to practice it.  The book from Justin Hammond, Speed Reading: How to Double (or Triple) Your Reading Speed in Just 1 Hour!, is a good start.

Book Speed Reading from Justin Hammon
Written by Justin Hammond

  1. Engage in Dynamic Language Learning

If you ever went to a language school, you probably remember those endless classes of grammar that you forgot everything after 2 hours.  This is why I am an enthusiast of dynamic language learning. This means acquiring a new idiom by practice, without spending time with grammar and rules. Just think about you and your native idiom: How did you learn to speak it? With your parents and little friends talking to you or having grammar lessons when you were 3 years old?

I achieved conversational level in one of the most difficult languages of Europe (Polish) entirely by this method, using a website called Lingq. Now I am learning Russian there. Give it a try!

Lingq
Lingq – Great resource for language learning

4 – Binge in Coursera (or similar websites).

Imagine you went on a machine, back to the century XV, when universities and knowledge were accessible only to very few people. There, you told to one of those students from the Middle Ages that nowadays, the best universities of the planet give access to some of their best content for free, to anyone, anywhere. He would find you absolutely insane to not grab this opportunity.

Coursera give access to an entire range of courses in different fields, so there will be plenty of useful material for you there. I completed the Game Theory course provided by the University of Stanford and was a ton of mind-sharpening material.

Coursera Logo
Free courses from the best universities of the planet.

5 – Read, wait and look to the sky.

If you paid attention to the points 1 and 2, you saw I recommended some books. There are plenty of good reads waiting for you (actually, there is a social network called Goodreads where people can share their reading lists and reviews. You can find me there). There you can find many other books with additional ways to develop life-changing skills during your quarantine

Last, but not least:

Wait.

Everyone I know is struggling, be it economically, physically, or both. But it is going to pass.

And just like when the revolution in Armenia finished, there will be fireworks.

When it happens, do not forget to look to the sky and remind the experience you just went through.

Fireworks in the night
It is all going to pass.

Author: Levi Borba, founder of Colligere Expat Consultancy, former RM specialist for the world´s greatest airline,  co-founder of Nearby Airport Hostel Warsaw and author of the book Moving Out, Living Abroad and Keeping Your Sanity.

Book cover
Receive for FREE! Digital Book - 20 Essential Hacks for Saving Money While TravellingLearn the one single trick to pay almost 60% less in your airline tickets!

Subscribe to our blog and receive for FREE in your e-mail the digital book that will teach you the way to cheaper flight tickets and even an upgrade to Business Class! Written by an author that worked during years in some of the best airlines of the planet.

John
Smith
johnsmith@example.com

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