Other cultures do things differently; they have their own unique hypocricies. Stupid foreigner syndrome happens when you believe a foreign country is inherently more dishonest or stupid than another.
Another pet expat moan is that the Taiwanese are unprofessional.
After several years in Taiwan you begin to get over your alienation and spot the bullshit. It is then that you start to worry about striking up new conversations in the bar.
This particular new guy had seen the guys in the motorbike repair shops watching the stock channel - and had flipped through the cable and worked out there were about thirty channels with stock advice.
“Man it is crazy here, absolutely anyone is allowed to give stock information. Back home you have to have the training and the education, and people only trust the big banks, reputable companies,” he said on hearing Chris was a broker for a large western financial institution.
Chris was great. He was young but had a healthy cynicism to his occupation: “Man, that is bullshit, we are all con-artist in suits whose greatest achievement was to convince the people that there was some skill to what we are doing. We are mostly wrong; we talk up stocks when we shouldn’t; we ignore all the financial basics in favor of hype - Look at the dot.com bubble...Look at the employment situation: we get fired for performing badly all the time, but rehired by other firms.”
Said new guy stared at Chris lost for words because his 'you have been here too long' defence wasn't going to work: Chris had only been here a couple of years.
Chris disproved our theory that all new foreigners were stupid; gave us confidence to speak to new people. He excelled himself that evening:v“What is it you always say John? – Ah, yes...Now fuck off!”
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