Bizcuits | So long, our friends

Leanda Lee

They are leaving again: expatriate friends that have been part of our lives are moving back home or moving on. It seems to happen in waves, and summer is the popular time for it. We come back from holidays and they’ve already up and left.
Motivations for an expatriate to relocate – either to or from – come in many forms but are driven by the perceived value of the international experience. The reasons are different for each of us. The conventional company expatriate has organisational drivers in addition to more personal values behind the decision to move. The latter are more salient to the self-initiated expatriate. Indeed, career opportunity and the likelihood of future promotion may trump personal reasons against taking the big step. Professional and personal trade-offs make these decisions inherently complex.
Willingness to move is influenced by both push and pull factors. The push is about getting away from problems and disadvantages at home or in previous locations. There are the home country’s or region’s economic problems, unemployment rates, and individual hardship from social or political imbroglios and stalemates, and other personal predicaments.
Macau offers, especially for gaming professionals, benefits of better pay (and almost negligible tax rates), career progression, new professional experiences and networking opportunities and the attraction of working and living in the global centre of gaming. Broadening children’s perspectives, the personal challenges of being in a culturally distant place with different languages, and the attraction of Macau’s unique history and social milieu draw many. These pull factors are tempered by moving away from family, friends, the familiar and (the big one) potential loss of career or a lesser job for the trailing spouse.
In this context of the motivation to move, little seems to be mentioned about a mediocrity that can creep into our personal and professional lives by osmosis. Granted, pockets of excellence exist in Macau but outside the jobs with the big players, roles in industries such as education, media, art and medicine do not encourage an ongoing pursuit of personal development unless we are extraordinarily internally driven. Often what expatriates bring into the place is already more than good enough. Staying too long risks stagnation, loss of fastidiousness, precision and awareness of what is great in the world. It is so easy to become complacent, even lazy here – where satisficing (that’s a real word) is fine. We all need to take leave from Macau now and again, and sometimes, for our own good or for our families, that move needs to be permanent.
To leave is never easy. Where else can one live a village life in a city where not five minutes from one’s front door come frequent serendipitous opportunities to have a coffee or beer with friends? To get any errand done can mean having to avert eyes to pavement and deafen ears to friendly calls from across the street.
Friendships are precious and Macau is a special place in which to meet many and to saviour close connections with a trusted one or fifty. I have never been anywhere quite like this place: it’s socially warm and open, sometimes dangerously charged, but always meaningful. So many of our expatriate friends who have left still remain connected through social media and not infrequent visits, for not to do so is to lose a big part of themselves.
Coming to Macau for expatriates, families and the trailing spouse can be difficult but leaving is clearly more so for lots of sojourners who have dedicated some of their heart and soul, sometimes forsaken better careers and jobs, and even lost loved ones to this place.