7 Habits of Highly Ineffective Expats

This will probably be more interesting to those of you who have lived in China (or anywhere overseas), but I ran across a good post the other day on one of the China blogs that I occasionally read which I wanted to share and comment about.

The article is called 7 Habits of Highly Ineffective Expats

Here's a condensed list of the 7 things listed in the article (the article explains more)
1.) Comparisons - "It's not like this back home"
2.) Counting down - "What's the point of learning the language if I'm only here two years."
3.) Getting stuck in a rut - "Let's meet at the usual Starbucks."
4.) Obsessive traveling - "I have three days off, I think I'll head to Thailand."
5.) Increased alcohol consumption - "Beer is cheaper than water."
6.) Decadence - "I bought 300 DVDs since coming to China."
7.) Know it all - "That's so Chinese. I understand China."

From what I've observed this is a pretty good list of common downfalls for foreigners living in China. I will admit, I definitely did the obsessive traveling part; however, I'm not so convinced that one is a bad thing. First, since it's not as economical to try to save yuan and convert them into dollars and since traveling in Asia is affordable, I feel like you should take the chance to see new places. I don't regret any of the trips I took and learned a lot from them. And, sometimes you just really, really need a break from China.

The thing that irritates me the most when dealing with other Westerners in China are the foreigners I meet who make no effort to learn the language. I once heard a American guy say in exasperation to a Chinese friend who was struggling to express something , "I'm American! Speak English!" That same guy would probably get irritated here in the States at immigrants who didn't speak English! I figure, if you live in their country, you should speak (or at least be making a valiant attempt to speak) their language as a sign of cultural respect.

One other note on foreigners in China. After several years in China and after running into lots of other foreigners there, I decided that foreigners in China generally fit one of three categories:
1) People who are there for some kind of higher purpose such as missions or humanitarian efforts or who want to make a difference by either teaching or doing business. These people generally get along with each other despite differing purposes and they tend to make efforts to fit in with the Chinese and learn the language.
2) Travelers and wanderers who aren't quite sure where they're going in their lives and are seeking some kind of romanticized adventure, are running away from something back home, or who have ill-fated ambitions of writing a travelogue, book, or becoming a journalist. These people generally get caught up in cheap alcohol consumption and (if they're male) pick up a Chinese girlfriend who doubles as a translator. They usually don't care about learning the language. They may teach for a time, but are not teachers and schools regret hiring them.
3) Oddities who obviously didn't fit in their home country so they moved abroad. Yet, not surprisingly, their oddness followed them and they're still strange in China (or wherever). The upside is that Chinese people regard all foreigners as slightly odd or at least different, so odd is the norm and the Chinese don't really differentiate between degrees of oddness among foreigners. So their oddness might go unnoticed by the Chinese, but other foreigners will still pick up on it. These people usually make a slight attempt to learn the language, but end up butchering it so badly that their efforts are futile. I always wish these people had to wear signs written in Chinese that say, "Not everyone in my country is like me. Please don't make any generalizations based on what you've just witnessed."

So I suppose the point of this post is that if you ever go overseas, be conscientious of not only how the local people perceive you, but also of how your fellow expat friends perceive you too.