I’m usually proud to be a Canadian. We ride polar bears to work, introduced the world to classy cuisine like poutine, eat cereal with maple syrup instead of milk (which you can buy in a bag, just the way God intended), drink reindeer flavoured slurpies, and play hockey, not soccer. Everything I just mentioned is totally true. Don’t look it up. But after living in South Africa for almost 22 months, I’ve discovered that we have one major shortcoming: the […]
Expat
Canada vs South Africa (In a Handy 11-Point list)
I’m sorry if the title brought you here in hopes I’d be talking about who would win in a fist fight between Canada and South Africa. That would be ridiculous because there couldn’t be any possible way of knowing (but for the record, it would totally be Canada. We’re able to harness the power of poutine). When I say Canada vs South Africa, what I MEAN to say is I’m going to look at the differences I’ve noticed between the two […]
Why You Should Become an Expat (And Why You Shouldn’t), Part 2
Last week, I started to explain why you should (or shouldn’t) consider taking an expat contract. But, like always, I broke the rules of blogging by not keeping it short and sweet, so I only got through three points. Here are some more thoughts to consider before becoming an expat: 4) You Can Totally Show How Valuable You Are To Your Company Your bosses wouldn’t have asked you to relocate if they didn’t think you had great value- or potential value- […]
The Person Who Does That…
I’m going to throw a quite common scenario at you. You’re at your office in North America, and you’re about to go on your yearly vacation to see all the severed whale wieners you can imagine. You set your “out of office” notification on your email, informing anybody who may try to contact you that you’ll be away, but there’s an alternate person who can help them out. Same with your voicemail. Now, your customers can still get what they […]
Things I Love About South Africa (Part 1 of Many)
All right, South Africa. I’ve ripped on you pretty heavily in a few previous posts. But I mean, come on- you can’t possibly expect to wear tight short shorts as a guy and NOT have people make fun of you. Anyway, I didn’t move here because South Africa sucks. It doesn’t. This country is one of the most amazing places on earth, and I fell in love with it when I visited years and years ago. I was going to write […]