You know you have lived abroad for too long when…
- you have spent more time abroad than in your own home country.
- you have acquired a foreign accent.
- you have lost the fluency you once had in your two mother tongues (Nepali and Seke, referred to as a dialect in the Wikipedia entry) and have pretty much lost the ability to communicate in (Hindi) the third language you learned growing up.
- the language you express yourself best in is (English) the fourth language you learned growing up.
- you even think and dream in (English) the fourth language.
- you return home you experience not reverse culture shock, as is the norm, but reverse reverse culture shock, basically culture shock.
- your home country has become a vacation destination.
- you have celebrated some other holiday (Christmas) more than any of your own.
- you have acquired some not-very-useful skills, such as the ability to
- interconvert between five or more different currencies.
- recognize and distinguish twenty odd languages (though you might not speak them all!).
- recognize a dozen or so different accents.
- swear in several different languages.
- determine the nationality of many people by just their appearance and/or their gestures and mannerisms.
- identify the nationality of people from certain countries and regions based on their handwriting (such as those from Italy, Hong Kong, Japan etc.)
You know you have been travelling/moving around too much when…
- you have made 30 changes in residential address in 25 years; in other words, you have spent less than a year at a residential address on average.
- you have lived in 14 cities in 11 countries spread across 5 continents in that same period.
- the longest you have retained a residential address is for just two-and-a-half years, just once at that, and the second longest is two years, also just once.
- you have set foot in over 40 countries (in spite of the hurdles to travel imposed on you because of nationality).
- you live for the journey–the journey becomes more important than the destination, really
- you have lost your sense of how expensive or cheap things are (when you have paid anywhere from 50 cents to 15 (US) dollars for a 300 ml bottle of beer, for example!).
- you compare costs with not only your home country but four or five other countries (anyway).
- only one of the material belongings you set out with 25 years ago remains: a tie.
- you have lost your intuitive sense for the direction you look first before crossing a road; in other words, you have to remind yourself which side of the road people drive on.
- football means any one of three different sports: American Football, Australian Football, and what the rest of the world calls football!
- you use a travel adaptor at home, because your electronic gadgets come from four different systems! (Still missing Swiss though!)
- every major city begins to look the same–they all have McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, Burger King, Subway, huge sky scrapers, big expensive cars, busy and noisy streets etc. etc., unfortunately.
- you have a world view about most issues.
- most importantly, social status has lost its meaning (since it has changed so often, so many times).
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