In my travels with the US Navy, I once met a woman working in a souvenir shop on the slopes of Kilimanjaro in Kenya whom I overheard speaking German, French, English, Italian, Japanese and Chinese apparently fluently. In my opinion she was an ideal candidate for working at the United Nations, yet here she was working in a souvenir shop. And I’m sure many people thought of her as simply a lowly clerk. We must always strive to not underestimate people. Circumstances beyond our control often place us not where we belong or would be best suited.
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did you chug the ship down the street? 
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It wasn’t easy, but I did it. It was an aircraft carrier too! 
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Hmmm, Carrier, i like!
Never seen in live… 
wow this thread is filled with thirsty men.
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It’s an amazing thing. It’s funny how such a huge machine can look so tiny and insignificant from the sky when out on the vast ocean.
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It certainly seems so. 
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Hmm, now i am hot… think i will make some start and landing procedures on the supercarrier the next 2 hours 
Not a bad place for a rest stop. The availability of information especially through the internet in recent times has given people with motivation the means to teach themselves. One of the best programmers I have ever met did not go to university, he is self taught and highly motivated.
The jobs market is pretty international right now, it does not seem to matter too much where you are born. If you have the skills there are plenty of companies willing to hire foreign workers. The software studio I work for is about 40% foreign workers, we have a few chinese staff and they tend to work longer hours (voluntarily) than the EU staff.
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For me, exploring those culture differences has always been quite intriguing.
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Instead, Europeans complain more in their free time.
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I think we have generally gotten a bit too complacent in an ever more competitive world. Europe and the US fail to recognise that the rest of the world is catching up, the next 15 years will shake things up a fair bit.
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Sometimes things need to be shaken a bit. It usually helps to keep things progressing. On a side note, when I was a young child, I lived in Scotland, England and France in the Black Forest, Phalsbourg only a few kilometers from Germany where we sometimes visited. Getting way off topic. I’ll be offline for a while.
Hey, Soarin. thank you so much for your kind words. But I have to be honest with you. As much as I want to speak Korean, I can’t right now. I’ve only been studying it for a month. I think Korean has similar grammar system and there are a lot of Chinese words in Korean, so it won’t be too hard, I guess? I will work hard to learn Korean and French 
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This is certainly a social problem. Nowadays in China, many people are working overtime voluntarily even if deep down they don’t want to. It’s just everyone around you is doing that, and you definitely don’t want to stand out for getting off work early. I don’t think this is healthy.
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Same here! I know that kind of feeling! And it is so fun to see my world view being enriched. 
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That’s the best attitude, hammerhead! 
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This indeed is not healthy. But it can be found in different countries/cultures with varying excess. I was in Japan for negotiations once and it went long hours anyhow, but the last day, a Friday, was nuts. So we met our local agent from the trading house at 7 a.m. at a nearby Starbucks, discussed the strategy for the day, went to meet them at 8 a.m. and negotiated until 2 p.m… At that point in time, we had reached agreement on virtually all points, major & minor. But we had been prepared by the agent that they would keep us there anyhow.
End of story - they invented small questions & “issues” until 4 a.m. next morning, knowing that our flight was scheduled to leave at 7.45 a.m. and we needed to collect our suitcases at the hotel (as we had planned to stay that night at the hotel of course). They didn’t even really try to get some kind of extra bargain or anything - it was just a kind of ceremony intended to show their superiors that they really tried everything, gave it their all, but it surely wasn’t required for that particular negotiation, but it was sort of autopilot behaviour they’d apply anyhow.
And our agent ? During that week, when he essentially spent time with us from 7 a.m. through 23 p.m. (incl. after nego dinner with us), he actually would go to his office after parting ways with us and work till 2 or 3 a.m… And this wasn’t a particularly weird week for him, his weekend was mostly sleeping plus a Sunday afternoon meeting with some friends to play football. That’s it, that was his life. His wife had left him a couple of years ago, obviously. He said he wanted to work this way another 3-5 years and then get out - but I doubt he will manage to. If you have given up your non-work related life almost completely for such a lengthy period, there is nothing to go to afterwards.
//OT end.
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Thank you for telling me the story. And I am very sorry for what you’ve been through in Japan. To be honest, I am not surprised about the whole thing at all. I think in Japanese culture, sometimes they value the process even more than the outcome. No matter how things end up, as long as there are no irretrievable mistakes been made, no great loss been done, they are more likely to think of how hard the relevant people have been trying, and they will even feel sorry for those people.
I have a Japanese friend who works in a big company as a manager. One of his young colleagues who works for him always messes things up and put troubles to the entire team. Even if sometimes my friend also gets irritated about it, he will always say, “Oh, He tried so hard…，let’s forgive him for this time.”(そんなに一生懸命に頑張ってたから、今のところを勘弁してあげろう)
I am not saying that all of them are like that. Japanese people are very good at borrowing good parts from other cultures and integrate them into their own yet in the end they can even do better.
But I am not Japanese, what do I know? It’s just one of my very personal observations. There is no offence for anyone.
When I read your story it kind of hit me that how I feel normal and typical about your agent’s lifestyle and this makes me very sad. I think one’s life should not be all about work even if many of us are being taught that the only way to achieve our self-worth is to work hard and create our values by that. We need to ignore those voices and enjoy our life in many different ways. After all, we are the ones who actually experience it. Let’s not become only a working machine, life is just so beautiful.
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A strong work ethic can transcend cultures. I’m on a salary, but I often work long hours.
I’m a software engineer and I want my product and company to do well. They take very good care of us (much better than most companies do) and I’m glad to contribute. Plus, there are rewards: The company shares its profits with the employees twice a year as bonuses. The management is smart, so we are still profitable, even with the pandemic.
It does take a personal toll, but I take great pride in my work and it provides real satisfaction (although my wife says I work too hard and I need more balance in my life).
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