[kabes]

Article resonates with me. I'm Belgian and moved to work in SF in 2016.

I really hated it and it took me a long time to admit this, because it felt like failure.

I moved back 2 years later and the upside is that I now appreciate Belgium, my friends and family here way more. Before I was just focused on moving away to what I thought was a better place.

[ponector]

Belgium is a nice rich country. Almost no-one there is asking question "Why you don't move abroad?". That is the question to the people in poor countries, where one can move to the rich country and feel massive improvement in quality of life.

[anal_reactor]

I live in the Netherlands, so I'm really holding myself back not to make a joke about Belgium being bad.

I recognize the text author's struggles. I live in the shit area, and when my parents were visiting, they saw drug addicts. I personally witnessed a shooting once. I have almost no friends. Despite having learnt the language to B2 level, I have zero connection with local culture. But you know what? In my home country nobody's waiting for me either. I know this sounds cheesy, but I think that in some way I'm just different from most other people, and no matter where I go, I'll always feel lonely and disconnected. This sucks, but the flipside is that I can follow the money and comfort of life without feeling like I'm sacrificing anything.

I'd love to temporarily move to the US, but definitely not permanently. I have noticed that almost all people I am on friendly terms with have a story "I grew up poor but now I'm rich", and obviously, citizens of the world's richest country won't be a good match here.

[Aeolun]

There’s a running joke amongst foreigners in Japan that if you have issues in your home country, coming to Japan isn’t magically going to fix them for you. They’ll just come along for the ride, and now you get to deal with those on top of having to deal with living in a foreign country.

[2-3-7-43-1807]

That is certainly not specific to Japan. I'd say countries in SEA with their promise of cheap and available sexual adventures attracts the least pleasant kind of migrants ("expats") from the West.

[anal_reactor]

I was listening to music when I encountered a song which lyrics went something like "More or less where he was staring, he found a new home. Now he's sitting by the new window and more and more often old thoughts are coming to him." and this is really really true. The good thing is that being aware of this makes it much easier to deal with your issues.

[guenthert]

I get the sense that you might like the S.F. Bay Area.