Making friends whilst living abroad
A few weeks ago, I wrote about moving abroad with work. I feel that this is an area where I have experience and information that may not be freely available elsewhere. I love working overseas and I am always happy to share this passion with others. A former colleague messaged me via LinkedIn to tell me they were about to move abroad and asked if I had more advice on making friends and building a network. I spent a few days composing my thoughts and then gave them everything I could think of. In return they mentioned that this would make a good blog post. I agreed and this is the topic for today.
My first piece of advice is to say yes to everything (within reason). Even if you think an event isn't for you, you really don't know for sure and you may end up meeting people who also hate the event or activity you are attending, and you will have something in common. If you are anything like me, you will frequently see events happening around you that look fun and then wonder how people came to know about them or got involved. These can include soft openings to restaurants and bars, special invite-only receptions, pop-up promotions or surprise concerts. As with many aspects of life it usually comes down to knowing the right people who will invite you along. These events aren’t necessarily free of charge, but even buying tickets is impossible if you don’t know the event exists. The “say yes to everything” rule helps you in two ways. Firstly, it will expand your network and give you more chance to meet the people who know-about and participate in these weird and wonderful events. Secondly, it will stop you from turning down an event that turns into an unexpectedly fun occasion.
Give your number out freely. Before you moved overseas, you may have opted to restrict access to your phone number. That makes sense and perhaps as we get older the thought of heading out spontaneously with someone you just met fills you with dread. When you move abroad and want to expand your network, your priorities and thinking will probably change. You can’t easily expand your network without giving out your number. Another pro tip, if you are bad with names, is to hand your phone to them and ask them to enter their details. Then text them to confirm and give them your name in return. I am old (and this is 3 to 4 years before mobile phones became ubiquitous), but in nightclubs when I was 18 to get the home phone number of someone I had made a connection with I would walk over to the DJ stand and grab a pen and ask them to write their number down on the back of a receipt. Nine times out of ten they would give me their name which was great because I had usually forgotten it the moment they told me. It’s hard to be friends with people when you have forgotten their name, I've done it but it’s hard. Pro-tip number 2 is to write down significant others and dependents in the notes field of the contact in your phone. Since I moved abroad my UK friends have all started families. I may meet the kids once every three or four years and it’s a struggle to stay a connected part of their lives. By making notes I can quickly remind myself of their names and it goes someway to demonstrate that I care about them even though I live thousands of miles away.
Set firm plans to meet up with people because if you leave the plans vague, they usually won’t happen. When meeting up with someone I would start with coffee first, particularly if you know nothing about them. If you set the plans using text and confirm the morning of the meet-up, then the likelihood of the meet-up going ahead increases. If the person still doesn’t show then you probably don’t want them in your life. My wife had a difficult time in Miami because it tends to be the sort of city where people make vague plans almost as a way of saying goodbye and with no expectation that they will happen. She learnt the lesson the hard way after meeting a potential friend at SoulCycle and then arranging to meet later in the week for coffee. Predictably the other person didn’t show up and if you had asked them, they would probably have no recollection of the arrangement. Different places have different cultural norms. Miami’s other quirk is that few people are ever on time, so if you do turn up at a venue expecting to meet someone who doesn’t show up, how long do you wait? At least if you have their number and have confirmed prior to the meet-up you will know if it is worth hanging around.
You will often meet people in unexpected places. My wife met the wife of a couple with whom we would become good friends in Miami by taking the same Uber Pool. They swapped numbers and neither of them followed up. A month later they took the same Uber Pool again and decided that fate was telling them to be friends and they arranged to meet. We made a great friend in Hong Kong a few months before we left. The Dragon Boat season had finished, and we were trying our hands at Outrigger Canoeing. A new arrival turned up because they had been told by their realtor that it was a fun activity, and they would meet new people. We became great friends despite the fact they hated Outrigger Canoeing and only ever tried it that one time. This is another example of my first suggestion of saying yes to everything, we only needed one chance to make a good friend who later became my wife’s maid of honor.
Overseas travel is a chance to reinvent yourself if you want. We were introduced to a newly arrived couple in Singapore by a mutual friend in Hong Kong. They in turn introduced us to another person who they knew vaguely from UK. This person had just exited a relationship in the UK and had arrived in Singapore expecting a life as couple and instead was confronted with the very different life as a solo traveler. Without the baggage and judgement from past lives, people can choose who they want to be and create a new friendship group to support their decisions. As I was writing this paragraph, removing any information that could identify the person and focusing on the key point, I realized that this situation happened twice in the four years we were there. Both individuals built large supportive communities of friends, of which my wife and I were very happy to be part.
Given that in your home city your friends are likely to be people you met at school, college, work or another mutual interest group, you naturally gravitate towards people that are like you or have the same background as you. At some level we can also take on the characteristics of the organizations that we belong too. As an expat, the biggest similarity across friendship groups is usually that you happen to be living in the same foreign city. Without the homogeneity of a shared past, interest or common membership, there is a diversity of personality types and people can appear far more eccentric than perhaps you are used to. There is a balance to be made as not everyone’s’ idiosyncrasies will appeal to you. You will know where to draw the line, but because of the strangeness of expat life you will likely draw it in a more tolerant place than if you had been at home. In some ways it is similar to the start of school or college, where the first people you meet may not be lifelong friends and you eventually find the people you want to spend time with. Just as expat life is a chance to reinvent yourself or who you want to be, creating a wider variety of friendships is an opportunity to reinvent this aspect of your life.
There is no one single playbook for making friends that applies in every city. Some places are easier than others. In the places that are more difficult, the one silver lining is that the friendships you do make can be some of the strongest you will ever make. If you are reading this and have any other advice, please feel free to share in the comments below. Next week marks the halfway point for this blog and it will be my 26th entry. I worry a little about keeping this going for another 26 weeks and I am questioning some of the topic ideas I generated back in December. My 26th post is a review of the experience of writing every week and a look at how the blog is performing. Have a great week!