If you don’t read the newspaper, you are uninformed; if you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed. – Mark Twain (attributed)
I don't have to deal with them either, luckily... they rarely come up to where I am, and if any stray in they generally leave quickly. Lived in the Subic area for a while, and that was strange. That place has more than its share of the moldy expat community.
Stop by if you're in this hemisphere. That would be a lot of stories, I suspect!
Cliff burials are actually unique to our town, never heard of them elsewhere in the area. You have to be a respected elder to get one, though, and falling down a hole doesn't earn one much respect here. Another odd part of that story is that the relatives who came over said the guy's father had died in a fall on a construction site. Apparently the family had some issues with gravity.
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary”
H.L. Mencken
A short article by a British Yemeni student, which opens with:Link:http://muftah.org/the-yemeni-revolut...SGAmCE.twitterThe Yemeni diaspora in the UK, which has taken an active role in co-ordinating international action, encapsulates this phenomenon. The Yemeni diaspora has historically reflected divisions and phenomena present in Yemen, including the tension between North and South Yemen and the lack of women in community leadership roles. The Yemeni revolution challenged many of these deeply engrained norms and customs, and has, in turn, impacted the diaspora. All in all, the Yemeni revolution has been a positive force in the Yemeni diaspora, uniting, empowering and mobilizing the community to engage with policy makers and high-level UK government officials to voice its concerns and opinions about UK-Yemen relations.
The author contends that the Yemeni community is uniting, as an observer this was sometimes hard to discern, even when meeting with the UK Ambassador to Yemen - who was on a tour of the communities in the UK.
davidbfpo
WoTR has an article on India's growing presence in the Middle East, notably the Persian Gulf region, which has some fascinating snippets, but I will cite the first passage which is relevant here, with my emphasis:Link:http://warontherocks.com/2014/04/ind...-persian-gulf/There are over 6 million Indian citizens working in the Middle East. That is more than the population of Finland. This provides some context as to why India has now actively started to build its relations further with the region. It also raises the question as to why it has waited for so long to do so.
Elsewhere I have seen articles on the deaths amongst construction workers from the sub-continent on building for the World Cup in Qatar 2022; concern being expressed, not as I recall by their home governments. Here is one BBC report:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-26482775
davidbfpo
Recently I read an article on traders from the Congo (DRC) in China (PRC), which came as a surprise, as it referred to a few thousand.
According to a Wiki piece there are:Link:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Africans_in_GuangzhouAccording to a local newspaper report in 2008, the number of Africans in Guangzhou had been increasing by 30-40% each year, and formed the largest black community in Asia....from Nigeria, Mali, Guinea, Cameroon, Liberia nd the DRC....
Academics have attempted to estimate the size of the population. Huang Shiding of the Guangzhou Institute of Social Sciences in 2007 estimated the number of permanent residents of foreign nationality (six months and above) to be around 50,000, of which some 20,000 are of African origin. Roberto Castillo, a graduate student researching Africans in Guangzhou, estimated in 2013 fewer than 10,000 Africans residing in Guangzhou and 20-30,000 Africans travelling through Guangzhou at any one time. Castillo cautions that firm numbers are difficult as many Africans in Guangzhou are in constant transit so the concept of residence in this context is different from the usual understanding
Apparently there are 300-500k expats in Shanghai, mainly from Taiwan and Asia. Plus a large number of students, many from the USA. They mainly live in one side of the city, alongside their Starbucks and the like.
davidbfpo
An Indian columnist on India's dependence on remittances:I note he cites the Phillipines too:Between 2001 and 2012, they remitted $339.3 billion. This was more than the total foreign direct investment flow into India during 2000-2014 which was only $326,509 million according to our commerce ministry.Link:http://www.asianage.com/columnists/o...t-out-mind-047Their 10.5 million overseas workers, including 1.074 million “irregular” workers, remitted $20 billion during 2011. This is 11.17 per cent of the country’s gross national product (GNP).
davidbfpo
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