Overseas Pakistani Syndrome

[Scherbatsky]

Re: Overseas Pakistani Syndrome

@09

^ He’s yapping away himself a lot.

I get your point but his drivel about people missing parents’ funerals because they preferred $$$ abroad instead? I want to know what he’s been smoking.

You’re a very lucky man if you don’t know anyone who’s missed a parental funeral back home because of their obligations here.

[Shak]

Re: Overseas Pakistani Syndrome

@Scherbatsky

You’re a very lucky man if nobody you know missed a parental funeral back home because of their obligations here.

I struggle to remember anyone who’s missed parents’ funerals due to ‘obligations’. I really do. And if people do indeed do that do you not think some of us would also find it disgusting?

I forgot. We’re pathetic ABCD’s with no morals, which was what his waffle was all about, mostly. No company here would not allow you to go back if your parents had passed away. Its as true as pigs that flew by my window.

[Scherbatsky]

Re: Overseas Pakistani Syndrome

Who is ‘some of us’? Whose spokesperson are you right now? What’s this ABCD talk you keep bringing up?

[Shak]

Re: Overseas Pakistani Syndrome

@Scherbatsky

Who is ‘some of us’? Whose spokesperson are you right now? What’s this ABCD talk you keep bringing up?

ABCD, NRP, bla bla to the writer we’re all the same. You seem to think some of his nonsense ‘made sense’, hence I was providing my two cents.

As for me, I am noone’s spokesman, just trying to show that the article is probably the worst thing I’ve read in a long time. Hope this answer satisfies you.

[Ghost14]

Re: Overseas Pakistani Syndrome

@Scherbatsky

**
Nope, he isn’t saying you can talk all the crap you want because you’re in Islamabad, etc. He isn’t even criticizing expats that are involved in some way or another - whether financially or politically. He’s just talking about those who do nothing except yap away. Makes perfect sense, if you’re going to be a hypocrite, let’s call you out on that at least, fair game.

Except his whole article is aimed at expats. He specifically calls out those who live abroad, ignoring the Pakistanis who live at home, are not rich or poor, just average, who also yap away without contributing anything. Why does an expat have to be one of the few who contributes in order to have an opinion without being called out, while those living in Pakistan get to do so without doing squat?

edit: I agree with his general point, but disagree with how he selectively applies it only to those living abroad.

[Reha]

Re: Overseas Pakistani Syndrome

I think this article forgets to mention the lectures we have to hear on how “goron ke mulk mein jakay un ke rang mein rang gaye”. *The severe stereotypes we’re subjected being born and raised in the West…that all girls raised in the US, Canada, AUS, UK, etc are awara. *No one spares us over here when it comes to tanay baziyan.

To jab dosron pe ungli uthatay ho…which this article blatantly does…he claims he does not judge but in the entire essay…he’s doing NOTHING but judging…phir kya masla hai jab koi aur tum pe uthaye? *

He assumes openly about the emotions, realities, financial situations, etc about the people here…as if yahan atay hi koi airport pe million dollar ka check leke ajata hai. *Hello…we work our asses off too…AND get criticized for raising our kids too white. *

Of course, we should not judge…but that goes BOTH ways! *

[CoughCough]

@09:9959238

^ He’s yapping away himself a lot.

I get your point but his drivel about people missing parents’ funerals because they preferred $$$ abroad instead? I want to know what he’s been smoking.

You are nothing more than an ignorant privileged brat. Privileged because you never went through the stuff. A brat because of your attitude. Ignorant because IT HASNT HAPPENED TO ME OR ANYONE I KNOE SO IT MUST BE DRIVEL.

My dad drives a taxi and me and my brother help him make ends meet with our jobs. His father passed 7 years ago. Mother passed away three months ago. Because of our financial situation he hasnt been able to leave his responsibilities here and even go see his parents’ final resting places.

You make me fukn sick.

[Ethan_Hunt]

Re: Overseas Pakistani Syndrome

Burgers flying everywhere. Panties getting mixed up. This thread is delivering.

[Scherbatsky]

Re: Overseas Pakistani Syndrome

09 would like to know what you’re smoking, CoughCough. All employers not letting you go back is as true as the pigs that fly by his window!

[shopoholic]

Re: Overseas Pakistani Syndrome

we r oh so perfect ABCD’s. we can judge anyone to everyone.offcourse we know better then them. what those jahil people know about how to run country.
we are so mazloom we get to hear batein from back home.

[sadzzz]

Re: Overseas Pakistani Syndrome

@Ghost14

Idiotic article.

He make the assumption that everyone with a job, with commitments, with a life they were most likely forced to pursue in another country, holds Pakistan in disdain. The fact is that the vast majority of people have little to contribute towards shaping the national discourse, besides nonsensical opinions, and the same majority do not participate in such endeavors in their adopted countries either. The man he mentions, the one who built his fortune abroad and then gives back to Pakistan, is an exception.

Most people are just trying to get by, be it in Pakistan or abroad. The only difference between most Pakistanis and expats, is that the Pakistanis may actually get out to vote once in a while. The rest of the time, everyone is playing armchair quarterback so the colour of your passport means little. “Oh but I deal with the heat everyday”. I feel for you, but are you an electrical engineer? A PhD in Economics? An expert in public policy? Then stfu and listen to the guy who is, who may or may not be from abroad. People in Pakistan are also busy dealing with their day to day lives. They worry about their bills. They worry about their kids. They worry about where the food is going to come from. Just like people abroad. Please don’t insinuate that they are engaged in academic discourse about fixing the country. Most don’t have the means, or the education, to do so. And that’s not their fault, but geographical proximity does not make someone’s opinions any more valid.

Lastly, many expats do send a great deal of money to Pakistan. You’d be surprised at how much. But forget money, why would anyone want to discourage thought? What do most expats have that a great deal of Pakistanis don’t? Education. This jackass wants to have people who are educated, who have seen the world, who live in countries that are relatively more advanced in terms of human rights and social and civic institutions, even if their foreign policies are draconian, be discouraged from offering insights? Right, sign him up for a political career in Pakistan. He’ll go far.

If he made a distinction about *what *people criticize, I’d say he has a point. If he applied his criticism to people who live in Pakistan, I’d say he has a point. But he doesn’t. It’s okay to sit back and spew noise if you’re in Islamabad, but God forbid you do so from New York, or London.

He has apparently never heard of constructive criticism. What a clown.

excellently put

[diwana]

Re: Overseas Pakistani Syndrome

@Shamraz_Khan

Do you disagree with what he is saying? If so why?

Overseas Pakistani Syndrome | Fahim’s Irrational Thoughts

If every Pakistani was given the chance to live in any country, Pakistan would most probably be an uninhibited desolate paradise. Most of us living in Pakistan would bail, given the chance. Let’s face it; we would give up our white collar jobs to jump into the “chalo chalo waliyat chalo band wagon”. We would live happily ever after, shelving products, mopping the floors and finally owning the crown jewel kebab shop that every Pakistani child dreams of since the day he can say the word “kebab”. There are some amongst us that are more fortunate than others, and we go for ‘alaa taleem’ which essentially still means “I ain’t coming back” given the slightest chance. We would prove ourselves to be the pinnacle of what academia has to offer; the summa cam lauds, nay the creme da la creme of graduates, with the finest of grades. the same us which had to go to the HOD’s office a couple of times to get the two marks so we could pass the course, it’s the same us. It’s just that was our parents money and this is well our hard earned cash from the part time job I got which would be beneath me if I was back home. We then graduate and find a job, we serve to the best of our abilities and more, something we’re incapable of doing back home because back there it’s our birthright to litter, to not pay taxes and to try our best to get away with as little work as possible. (And then whine about how the system is at fault)

US-PassportAs days turn to months and months to years, we settled down, get married (but only after we’ve broken up with my girlfriend in walayat and my fiancé’ back home whose nose I find faulty now) to that good looking woman who’d never marry me because, well, I was just a guy, now I’m a guy with a passport that’s not green. Before leaving you promise yourself that you’ll make all that cash and settle down back home with a comfortable life style you could never have if you worked here, but that never really happens. Time goes by, you stop converting everything into rupees and how much it would cost back home, whenever you go shopping. All the while your father’s hair turn white, his beard grows long, and his face gives in and shows the weakness that now consumes his body. Slow and shaky, he reluctantly gets used to carrying that big grocery bag home week after week. Whenever you ask your mother how her bad knee is now over skype she keeps repeating ‘khud hi theek ho jaye ga’ you tell her if you were there you’d drag her to the doctor to have it checked, but you’re not. You’re not a bad son, you always make it a point to show your parents their growing grandchildren, albeit on Skype at least every other week, you try, you really do, but things keep piling up. You have bills to pay and deadlines to meet. Then the inevitable happens you parent(s) ends up in a hospital bed. You want to go, more than anything, that’s the only thing you want to do, but then there is the school that doesn’t consider it an emergency and isn’t letting your kids go to another country without the shots, and the high paying job you just switched to have a different time off policy. You really want to go…. But you don’t.

Hey, I’m not judging you or anyone else, how could I judge anyone when, if given a chance like every other Patriot Pakistani, I would jump through hoops to get into the “Gora band wagon”. How can I or anyone else for that matter judge you, no one has the right to judge you, well not until they’ve walked two moons in your moccasins. But that wasn’t really my issue in the first place.

My issue begins when you sit in your leather recliner chair with the central heating/cooling on, in front of your burger baby kids who would have you committed to a psychiatric ward before they let you move them back to Pakistan. With your trophy wife, who would call the home office and have you jailed, before she agrees to live with your parents in this terror infested, corruption ridden uncivilized piece of land you grew up in. As you sit there, staring blankly into the idiot box watching the Pakistani news channel (or should I say entertainment central), commenting on every move Mr. Politician, whose name while living in Pakistani I don’t know, makes.

My issue is when every one of you folks lectures us on the intricacies of how the country is going to **** and no one is doing anything about it. What bothers me is how you have the audacity to lecture us from the comfort of your centrally cooled/heated drawing room. Yea sure, each and every Pakistan also discusses the same from the comfort of their drawing room, but hey! We do it without central heating/cooling! My issue with you is not the life choices you’ve made nor what your intentions were/are; my issue is every Pakistani not in Pakistan complaining about Pakistan all the frigging time. (I will concede that we do provide a tempting target given our politicians, society, mullas healthcare, education, infrastructure, security, law and justice …).

What is required is you move on, accept the fact that you will never be as Pakistani as the guy who lives here, goes through the power outages every half hour, sees the poor on the street but cannot do anything about it. For God’s sake stop confusing our weakness for indifference, we may not have been able to help the poor on the street but we do empathize with him. We may not have been able to change the system but we sure the hell are determined to try. We may not have been able to bring a sweeping revolution but we are willing to stand under the blazing sun for hours on end to vote. It’s about time you accept the fact that you gave up your right on criticizing this country when you didn’t come down here to vote.

And to all of you living in self-imposed exile let’s ask ourselves what have we done for our Country, how much tax have we paid in the last X number of years, how many schools and colleges did we open? How many people did we provide jobs? How many households did we support from the money that we earned from foreign countries? No one asks these questions, no one really cares. All that seems to matter is what the TV show guy is saying on Geo in the comfort of your modern homes. Yes there are problems with our system, yes there is corruption, yes everything might be falling to pieces, but it’s our problems. It’s the Problems of the people who live and breathe the air here, who go, day in and day out, surviving this urban circus.

You gave up your right to complain when you gave up your green passport. Not your right to life, liberty or the pursuit of happiness but a far more fundamental one, the right to criticize your Country and it’s time to accept it. You gave up your right when you realized that the day your kids are old enough to know that they can say no to visiting that stinky smelly country and stopped coming. You gave up your right to comment on every single speech the politician with opposing views makes when you paid that mortgage on the second home. You gave up your right when you couldn’t make it to your dad’s funeral because they would kick you out of the 6 digit paying job that you just joined. You’ve gave it up a very long time ago and it’s about time you accept it.

Come visit us meet us after a couple of years or whenever you want, we will welcome you, love you and respect you, like you deserve. We will open our homes and hearts for you. Just be courteous enough not to be involved in the matters of our home. This is our land, this is where we live every day and this is what we will fix. Everyone has a choice, you made yours, let’s accept that and move on. Let’s tune into the news and talk shows that affect our daily lives and the lives of our children, let’s talk about things that we deal with on a daily basis; because if words were food, nobody would be going hungry in Pakistan.

Disclaimer: I think it is my weakness of writing that I couldn’t convey my point properly. I am not criticizing anyone for moving out for one secondly I have no right to ask how you spend your money and how you live. Nor are all overseas Pakistani’s like that. Heck our company is funded by a man who built his fortune in the states lives in the states and has 500+ people employed in Pakistan and to top that off is funding start ups in Pakistan. There are those people and they are great they are the essence and the building blocks of our society and they are our only connection with the western world, they represent us and they do a great job at it. This article has got to do absolutely nothing with them, this has to do with the rest of us. The rest of us who would run away not because we need to because we want to, it’s for us the one’s who would not invest a single rupee in the state (whether charity or otherwise) yet would spend their lives criticizing the country. It’s for us who would never be ease at being where they are and would never have the kahunas to actually move back. Accepting is the first step my friend.

9/10 to the article.

He spoke the truth and spoke genuinely with a good amount of wit.

i do not know why despite his disclaimer this article had negative comments.

[STONECOLD]

He said… whilst typing on his Macbook.

Burger thanda ho raha sahib jee!

[diwana]

Re: Overseas Pakistani Syndrome

Overseas Pakistanis invented Macbook.

[Southie]

Re: Overseas Pakistani Syndrome

As an overseas desi, I really liked the article. Quite honest. What on surfaace seems a contradiction actually made sense. Some of the counters were also good read.

As for someone not being able to go to their parents funeral, we haven’t walked in their shoes. Nothing disgusting about that.

CC sorry to hear about your dads parents. Good on you brothers.

[MM]

@09:9959261

I struggle to remember anyone who’s missed parents’ funerals due to ‘obligations’. I really do. And if people do indeed do that do you not think some of us would also find it disgusting?

I forgot. We’re pathetic ABCD’s with no morals, which was what his waffle was all about, mostly. No company here would not allow you to go back if your parents had passed away. Its as true as pigs that flew by my window.

I’m not sure where “here” is, but here in The States, it’s considered a privilege to be awarded any sort of bereavement leave… and more times than not, it’s unpaid leave.. and when it is approved, it’s usually only 3 days. 5 if you need to travel, which, from what I’ve seen/ experienced, can be a long and drawn our process, where HR may require documents to prove the death & need to travel.
So let’s say you do get 5 days… out of 5 days, 1.5 days for travel there + 1.5 days back… that leaves 2 days. Adding being jetlagged and most likely in shock, I’m not sure how you’d handle the funeral/ after events. And then upon returning, back to work first thing the following day? Does ANY of that seem logical at all?

So depending on financial situations and obligations (both to your employer and their family), not everyone can just up and fly to the motherland.

And seriously, let’s not forget that airfare isnt just pocket change… :hinna:

Attending you parents’ funerals could be considered important based on society’s requirements, and of course morally… but Islamicly and logically, emotions only weigh in so much.

Just an example, because dropping $2k per person can def add up… If not for financial reasons, would you be ok with leaving your wife and children alone?

PS… This is in response to your post, but “you” isn’t only directed towards you.

[Shak]

@CoughCough

You are nothing more than an ignorant privileged brat. Privileged because you never went through the stuff. A brat because of your attitude. Ignorant because IT HASNT HAPPENED TO ME OR ANYONE I KNOE SO IT MUST BE DRIVEL.

My dad drives a taxi and me and my brother help him make ends meet with our jobs. His father passed 7 years ago. Mother passed away three months ago. Because of our financial situation he hasnt been able to leave his responsibilities here and even go see his parents’ final resting places.

You make me fukn sick.

Calm down mate, before you blow a fuse in your head.

Now as far you as your post, you should be whining and crying at the writer too who is demeaning anyone who’s gone through what you have instead of having a whine at me.

Secondly, to me the author came across as saying that people do have a choice to go back, but they don’t do, instead they prefer cash and its lure and that’s where their entire life is, around greed in foreign countries. I showed my disgust at those people. Was your father doing that? Ofcourse he wasn’t, Christ. He was making a living instead og giving a crap about money. Which is what I meant.

As for privileged don’t give me this sh!t. I have lost my own family members in Pakistan and no natural deaths, the great nation which we should all respect and not say a word against, and I have not been able to go to funerals same as your family, two at the last count. That’s some privilege, aren’t I thankful? From my own view I think the author is saying that people prefer to enjoy cash instead of coming back home for funerals, in my post I disagreed with that and it was directed clearly at anyone who does do that. Not at people like you. I should have added the word ‘greed’ in my post.

Maybe I didn’t get my point across properly and for that I apologise.

@Scherbatsky

09 would like to know what you’re smoking, CoughCough. All employers not letting you go back is as true as the pigs that fly by his window!

2-4 lines and now cheerleading is your usual contribution in this thread. Explains a lot.

[kakaballi]

Re: Overseas Pakistani Syndrome

Poe’s law - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Shak]

Re: Overseas Pakistani Syndrome

@MM

I’m not sure where “here” is, but here in The States, it’s considered a privilege to be awarded any sort of bereavement leave… and more times than not, it’s unpaid leave.. and when it is approved, it’s usually only 3 days. 5 if you need to travel, which, from what I’ve seen/ experienced, can be a long and drawn our process, where HR may require documents to prove the death & need to travel.
So let’s say you do get 5 days… out of 5 days, 1.5 days for travel there + 1.5 days back… that leaves 2 days. Adding being jetlagged and most likely in shock, I’m not sure how you’d handle the funeral/ after events. And then upon returning, back to work first thing the following day? Does ANY of that seem logical at all?

So depending on financial situations and obligations (both to your employer and their family), not everyone can just up and fly to the motherland.

And seriously, let’s not forget that airfare isnt just pocket change… :hinna:

Attending you parents’ funerals could be considered important based on society’s requirements, and of course morally… but Islamicly and logically, emotions only weigh in so much.

Just an example, because dropping $2k per person can def add up… If not for financial reasons, would you be ok with leaving your wife and children alone?

PS… This is in response to your post, but “you” isn’t only directed towards you.

I should have added the word ‘due to greed’ in my post to avoid confusion which is what I meant. As I said in my above post I have missed funerals too, so I doubt I’d be abusing myself in my posts.

Scenario 1: someone can’t go back, i.e. CC’s dad
Scenario 2: someone can go back but doesn’t himself so he can earn an extra grand when he’s loaded already.

Now with the author’s rant against NRPs and how we are so comfy in the West willing to do anything for $$$ in our ‘high paying jobs’ I perceived he was alluding to scenario 2. And when I said I was disgusted that is what I meant. I should have elaborated that. I hope its all clear now.

[ajazali]

Re: Overseas Pakistani Syndrome

@Theorist

Yeah, but I don’t consider myself Pakistani. That’s the difference. I would move to any third world country if I could make a difference there. Maybe I will once I am able to. Khud ke paas khane ko kuch na ho aur doosron ki madad kerne chalo to khud ko kaun khilayega?

I have always believed in doing good for the sake of doing good and nothing else. Race, culture, nationality, and religion do not give me a sense of belonging to a certain place.

khud k pass sab kuch ho, paisa ho, to bhi itni himmat nai hoti. sab kitabi batain hain.