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Anyone else having trouble deciding if they like living in HK or not?

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  1. #1

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    Anyone else having trouble deciding if they like living in HK or not?

    I am a young maried female who is relatively new to HK (less than 6 months) . I can't decide if I like the lifestyle here in HK. Am I the only one who is having difficulty adjusting? I was told by some friends that I would settle in after a while but I still don't feel like I am content here. I have a wonderful priveledged life but my personality seems so distant from the shopping-obsessed women and the general crowd who push and shove like there won't be another mtr for the rest of the day, let alone some of them treating any foreigner in HK like they have a contagious disease! What is wrong with me for being indecisive about liking life in HK? Am I the only one? Some feedback would be great. Thanks!

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  2. #2

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    Not strange at all, I say it takes a year to get settled anywhere. I loathed Tokyo when I first went to live there in 1996 - after a year I started to feel settled and we stayed for nearly 14 years. Singapore, though I never fell in love with the place, it definitely felt better after a year. Hong Kong was bewildering but, once again, a year on and I was considering it as home....

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  3. #3

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    Edit: I say "was" as it appears we may be moving on in a month or two....


  4. #4

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    Quote Originally Posted by Satay Sue:
    Edit: I say "was" as it appears we may be moving on in a month or two....
    Such is the life of an expat family. Good luck where ever you land.
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  5. #5

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    OP you do not have to decide anything,

    Life is different is various places of the planet.

    HK has +ives and -ives - you only need to see if for you the +ives outweights the -ives.


  6. #6

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    kat, as other posters already know, i have been here for 17 years.

    when i'm here, i think of canada as home. but when i'm in canada, i think of hk as home. after all this time, there are months on end when i don't feel "settled". i find, though, that those times usually crop up when my plate isn't nearly full. when i have more on my plate, i feel much more settled and forget about my 'grass is greener' complex.

    perhaps a job, or volunteering, or joining some kind of group might help you settle more?


  7. #7

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    Kat, DeletedUser hit it on the nose. There's a lot of survivorship bias going on.

    I've been here for nearly a decade and am not in love with the place. When my wife and I don't need to be here anymore, we'll skedaddle.

    There are lots of shopping malls with near-identical rosters of "luxury" shops, taxes are low, it's close to [but, effectively, not in] a dictatorship with a lot of factories that don't need to adhere to developed-world labor and environmental standards, it's warm and usually not raining, indentured servants are cheap and have few rights (same goes for the sex workers), etc. and so on and so forth. For a lot of people, that sort of stuff is enough to counterbalance the negatives.

    Last edited by dear giant; 18-04-2012 at 04:12 PM. Reason: axes -> taxes

  8. #8

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    Hi Kat,
    Am in the same boat as you, newby here (under 1 year in HK). I don't hate HK, just neutral for now. I haven't decided if I want to leave in 1 year, 2 year, or 7 or more. My husband says it's because I have no girlfriends here to hang out with, but people I have met were were not in the same boat as me (i.e. education, income, age, etc). Example, a local acquaintance brought me to a wet market, said the stuff their is cheaper than the supermarket. I saw the pigs hanging there and wonder how much cheaper can it be to tolerate walking through a dirty wet market. Then there's the hole-in-wall places which has really good and cheap food and they never have an English menu. It's like I have to point at what someone else is eating to order my food. Sometimes I'd like to read the menu for a change. Then I have the western friends who only goes to the super posh places that serve Caesar Salads and I am thinking, you're in HK, are you ever going to eat the local food, maybe some dim sum? Maybe I just need to get a balanced lifestyle and move out of the service apt.

    How do you like Tung Chung?

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  9. #9

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    Just to counterbalance a little though. Plenty of folks also love HK and for them it changed thsir life +ively.

    It usually comes down to where you originally come from and under which circumstances (family, no family, local package, expat package, familye ties in HK...) you landed in HK. I also noticed that depending on your background and nationality some ppl tend to adjust more rapidely. (no hard data, just observation).

    I personally wasn't much impressed at first but can't say many more cities (of this size...) in the world do much better either. Every places have + ives and -ives.

    To me HK has two big issues: Pollution and a lack of nice architecture.

    The fact for example that it has many shopping malls...is for me, irrelevant but pollution and lack of decent architecture are 2 major issues.

    Was in Vienna and NYC recently (and I'm from Paris) and archictecture wise....no comment

    Last edited by Mat; 18-04-2012 at 04:27 PM.
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  10. #10

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    Quote Originally Posted by Satay Sue:
    Edit: I say "was" as it appears we may be moving on in a month or two....
    Thanks… Goodluck with your new venture!

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