Guardian Abroad

The Guardian have launched a new site called GuardianAbroad, aimed at expats. I saw this advertised in a recent Guardian Weekly (the international summary of Guardian articles, distributed internationally). The site looks new and rather small, but it has a lot of promise.

Truth is, websites for expats are a rather mixed bag, in part because expats are a far more diverse group than may appear to be the case from the outside. Perhaps one of the main differences is in how closely people hold onto their country of origin identity. In Delhi, we met people who seldom if ever left their embassy compounds, or the security of the embassy neighbourhood, and others who lived very local lifestyles, with everything inbetween. This means you often have to navigate information that might be naively simplistic, blindly optimistic and even at times, turgidly depressing.

I used to read BritishExpat and still occasionally post there to help out people moving to Delhi. I found that site from another forum which shut down while I was in Delhi. However, the way it is moderated means you cannot privately send information to others unless you are a heavy user and external links are deleted, which it makes it impossible to share much information. IndiaMike, is another good forum for expats in India (as well as travellers)and I found it very helpful and also occasionally post there. However, it used to have a lot of apologists on there, which made it hard to discern truth from fiction (e.g., Delhi is a great city but no, you CANNOT get any kind of food you want there and NO the cinnamon you buy in Indian markets is not the same as what you use in European cooking).

My hope is that since the GuardianAbroad is blog based, it will be richer in a different way than the existing expat forums.

[tags] Guardian Abroad, IndiaMike, BritishExpat [/tags]