[NomadSK]

Originally Posted by rrsteer

The fascination with emigration to western countries in my part of the country has no end. This newly erected blue colored structure in our village piqued my interest from afar.

I guess, It's high time for our own Gujrati community to wake up and put "Statue of Unity" at New Jersey

[rrsteer]

Originally Posted by sunilch

Wonder what shall happen once the current generation and the next settles down abroad and no one here is left to take care of these properties in such small towns/villages?

Its already happening. Some villages of the Doab region just look like housing societies - houses where no one lives or the dwellers just don't know each other (as they rented or being looked after by care-takers). The feel of the village - which was essentially that of a tightly knit community is being lost forever. Its also one of the contributing reasons, why in a central election, Punjab typically under-polls its neighbouring states by 5-7 pp.

[Samurai]

Originally Posted by rrsteer

Ladies and gentleman, presenting the Statue of Liberty of our little village.

This was on news last week.

https://news24online.com/trending/pu...ection/273207/

A Punjabi man's US visa rejection got him thinking outside the box (or should we say, onto the rooftop). He installed a mini Statue of Liberty on his house, sparking a viral debate about travel dreams and American visa.

[rrsteer]

Originally Posted by Samurai

This was on news last week.

https://news24online.com/trending/pu...ection/273207/

This one was done in Moga, about 100k kms from where we are.

So this is the second or third 'Statue Of Liberty', or only God knows how many more have been erected in this part of India. Poor Americans, they have no idea, thousands of kms away how sculptors are butchering their national monument!

[Samurai]

A popular youtuber visits USA and shares her findings. Stating everything is rupees instead of dollars gets very irritating, but it is understandable since she was spending from her Indian income. It takes couple of years in living in USA to lose that habit.

Nothing surprising in the video, however it is interesting to see USA from the eye of someone young who is visiting for the first time. I also feel sad for America, it was my second home for a decade.

https://youtu.be/8KgF9k9dAc0

[DigitalOne]

Originally Posted by Samurai

A popular Youtuber visits USA and shares her findings.

Nice video and well presented. It would have been great to see some examples of people who are working in 2/3 tier IT companies say an IBM, Accenture, Indian WITCH companies and located in other places (TX, PA, NJ etc). On top of what she has covered in the video, there are expenses like vacations, college education, trips to India, parents' trip to US. With all this does a median IT engineer and working thru the ranks in a 2nd tier IT co actually save any money in the US?

[Samurai]

Not the usual kind of immigration. This one requires lots of training before you can land a job.

https://youtu.be/Yg6PRt6GgNI

[DigitalOne]

Originally Posted by Samurai

Not the usual kind of immigration. This one requires lots of training before you can land a job.

Thanks for the video. On a personal note, I am getting into this Japanese Language training sector. A little background is perhaps needed. As part of my job in one of the WITCH companies in the early 2000s, I learnt a bit of Japanese. The hours were long, the customers were demanding, language was tough, work was hard, and I couldn't even enjoy any of the numerous business trips to Japan. I wanted to get away from that and so I quit and joined a well-known ERP product company, where my work had nothing to do with Japan.

Flash forwards a decade, during one of the "new year resolutions" periods, I got an itch to do something different; 10 mins of googling led me to a Japanese institute and I restarted my Japanese journey during weekends. Now that I was learning Japanese purely out of interest, with no stress of job or monetary expectations, it was exhilarating. I never looked back. I progressed through the Japanese Language Proficiency Tests (JLPT), including the advanced level (barely ) at my own pace.

In March of this year, I took a F.I.R.E (Financially Independent, Retire Early) decision from the ERP company to plunge fully into this sector. Baby steps yet, as learning a language is completely different from imparting training. More so, because what I learnt (1000+ Kanjis, complex grammar structures etc) is not necessary for the migrant skill workers. The course content and approach are entirely different. The workers need the conversational skills to be able to handle the situations they would face in their workplace or daily life.

There is a lot of collaboration at the government levels, e.g. Japan's Technical Internship Training Program (TITP) in collaboration with India's National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) and at industry body levels to bridge this skills gap. In my own small way, in the coming years, I hope to address this gap. I am also a bit apprehensive because the expectations from the trainees would be high. They are not in this as a weekend hobby (as I was).

I am sure, I will never earn the salary as before but hoping to find my Ikigai in this endeavour. All I ask for is the occasional trip within India and to Japan to keep life interesting. Wish me luck!!

-----

JPY is depreciating rapidly against all major currencies. This year JPY has fallen ~10% against the INR. As of today, 100 JPY is only 52.9 INR. Last October, when I visited Japan (as a tourist) 100 JPY was around 58 INR. JPY is predicted to depreciate further. Working in Japan and hoping to repatriate the savings to India is not going to be remunerative. This is huge problem for Japan as foreign workers will not find it attractive enough.

On the plus side, tourism to Japan has become cheaper.