Interesting post, i’ll bite :
To put it in perspective, I’m European and feel very much so, but have spent well over a decade in Asia, spending more or less time in all the countries you mentioned there.
By European standards Spain sounds like a poor choice if you still have much ambition professionally, people, administration and businesses are more efficient if you travel further North. Top International schools in Madrid seem to have a decent reputation, besides even in Asia many of the famous international schools put much stress in creative thinking and high quality art and music classes. I wished they had better math program sometimes, but than I’m happy kids there do have a life, I wouldn’t call much of a life what many Chinese and Korean kids lead, dunno much about Japanese kids.
But I’ve heard Chinese moms telling me they wanted their kid, who was in kindergarten, attend later not Harvard but Stanford as it is better or smarter, so if that you have a similar pov, I see the issue. Plenty of Asian parents in those schools complain there is not enough homework. I complain when my kids don’t have enough sports competitions… and Madrid is top notch in that regard.
A few more things about competitivity, my experience in Southern Europe with people is they are indeed quite lazy, and feeling sleepy less than 20 hours a day coupled with some audacity is quite an edge there. Making a living well above the average doesn’t require much more ime, so you need to put things into perspective, doing business there is not like doing business in Hong Kong.
If (dunno) you are still looking for the mother of your kids, and are East Asian the dating pool will be much wider in Asia, ime while there are plenty of East Asian female/Caucasian male couples in continental Europe it is exceedingly rare to see the Asian male/Caucasian female combination. A whole bunch of Asian girls to date in Europe for Asian guys, but outside that it seems rather limited.
Cost is a factor, if you are struggling to buy a detached house in Spain, good luck with your neighbors in HK, Tokyo or Singapore, I pay double for the school as well in Asia as what we’ll pay in Madrid. Malaysia and Thailand will be cheaper, but Bangkok is not a cool place to live with kids, Kuala Lumpur probably slightly better but far from offering European quality of life.
Besides I have strong family links in Spain hence am keen to move there, but again this is not the best instance in Europe of a thriving and hard working culture ( that doesn’t seem to be hurt the locals too much, they already enjoy one of the longest life expectancy in the World and are expected to reach the first spot within a couple of decades. For some reason Spanish also appeared the healthiest people on earth in a recent study).
Right now I would rather live anywhere in Western Europe- I like most countries there - than anywhere in Asia, but definitely to each their own, and I’ve done the Europe to Asia move several times.
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():format(webp)/bidet-GettyImages-184604344-58e98a9b3df78c516253584c.jpg)
