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I became hooked and attracted to living in lands other than the United States as a very young man. My stepfather was in the US Air Force and stationed in Japan during the Korean War. In 1953 my mother bravely packed up three young kids and joined him in a country still very much under US military occupation.

I still vividly remember the foreign sights, sounds, crowds, and smells of a Japan that has long since vanished in it’s post war rush to modernization and industrialization. The family stayed in Japan for 18 months. I can still almost smell the cherry blossoms in the spring and the charcoal cooking and heating fires in winter.

I particularly remember the Japanese Winter. Snow frequently covered the Air Force base at Tachikawa and converted the drab military base into a winter wonderland. Japan was an exciting adventure for a ten year old. My attraction for the different experiences that one has living in a foreign land was born.

The family returned to the States in 1954 and to the flat expanses of the Air Force base at Warner Robins, Georgia. We were there for a year and then off to France.

France was wonderful for a teenager. While I was too young to drive a motor scooter, you had to be 16, I was a good athlete and large for my age so most of my close friends were older and had motor scooters. I was a happy passenger.

In the France of 1955 to 1958 Vespas were everywhere so we blended right in. Almost. Our Levi blue jeans and black leather jackets did tend to set us off a bit from the local kids.

We zoomed up and down the picturesque secondary road system and in and out of villages and city streets without ever being challenged by the Gendarmerie or anyone else. The French were remarkably tolerant of fun loving military brats. Even when we occasionally stopped at local bars and cafes to play a game of table football and ordered a cognac and coke they cheerfully served us. No IDs required.

So by the time I was 15 I had spend about a third of my life outside of the USA. When I reached adulthood my country thought that they needed me to spend a year in Vietnam so my overseas life continued although not in the best way.

I do have some pleasant membries of Vietnam. Even in war time Vietnam was a beautiful country, especially the beaches and mountains. On our half day off a week (Sunday afternoons) we were occassionally allowed to venture down to the beaches near Danang and Hoi An. The sand and surf are as fine as you will find anywhere. The background noise of occasional small arms fire and the thump of outgoing artillery fire didn’t trouble us too much after being in country a few months. In fact “it don’t mean a thing” became a common phase used for the entire Vietnam War experience no matter what “it” was.

Many years later I was working in New York City when I received an offer to manage a small commodity and forex trading office in Honolulu, Hi. The deal was I was to work in Honolulu for a year and then work as a manager in Hong Kong and Taipei, Taiwan. The offer really didn’t make much sense career wise as I was carving out a decent niche for myself in New York and at about the same time had been offered a position with one of the top New York commodity and forex brokerage firms.

However, my early fondness for travel and adventure asserted itself so off to Honolulu I went. I definitely made less money there, a whole lot less, but after a year of swimming and sunning myself on the Waikiki beaches I was much more relaxed and fit than during my NYC days. And ready to return to Asia.

The start of the adventure to Hong Kong and Taiwan took place almost 20 years ago. With a couple of years of visiting family and friends in the States spread over the past 20 years I’ve been living overseas ever since.

Don’t misunderstand me. I was born an American and still love my country. My father died in World War Two as a young aviator whose squadron was flying daylight bombing missions over Germany. I served in Vietnam with the US Navy Seabees out of a sense of duty (and I admit a reluctance to sit around and be drafted by the Army)
even though I thought the war a mistake. So don’t think of me as unpatriotic. I understand very well the cost of freedom.

I want the best for my country and as a patriot will speak out, as I’m doing now elsewhere in this blog, when I think American is being lead down the wrong path by incompetent self serving politicians.

As a young man I had the opportunity to interact with citizens of other countries and found that at the basic human level their desires, hopes, and fears in this world are not so different from my own.

From my early years I developed a love of traveling and meeting and interacting with people of different cultures that continues to this day. There is nothing to fear by communicating with people who are from different cultures and backgrounds. In fact there is a great deal to give and to gain.

And travel I have. In 1997 I retired from the Chinese company that sent me off around the world. At about the same time the Internet was beginning to open up as a way to earn an income. Since 1998 the Internet has allowed me to continue with an Expatriate lifestyle with Internet ventures financing the costs of traveling and living overseas.

I will cover that in some detail in Part Two of this article. It will be in the Expatriate Lifestyle Category. I’ll link to it from here once the article has been written. Until then.

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