Foreign Perspectives

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Whilst we all love our vacation time, we all assume that places that thrive on tourist business will be open during the holidays.

That’s not always the case in France where many attractions are closed today because it’s Labour Day (May 1st). Although many people will be eating out today, a number of restaurants choose this time of year to close thus losing considerable business of course.

Even when they’re not on holiday many restaurants stick to the 12 to 2pm lunchtime and we know of one local touristy village which gets tour buses every day from 9am to 7pm yet the restaurant only serves food from 12 to 1.30pm.

Popularity: 35% [?]

There are hundreds of TV channels being broadcast over the Internet, if only you could find them.

Internet TV isn’t an overlly easy thing to track down as it’s generally buried in the midst of the normal websites for people like the BBC, CNN and, of course, a whole host of shopping channels. However, Freedom TV have made a sterling effort in collecting a vast number of these different channels and making over 2000 of them available in one spot.

It’s a fantastic resource if you’re interested in learning a foreign language as you’ve access to channels from over 70 countries around the world. In many cases you’ll get the news channels which are ideal for learning a language. If you’d rather just stick to English, there’s loads of choice from all over the world although not always of great quality as you’d expect from what’s effectively an Internet version of satellite TV.

As the video is coming over your Internet connection, you really need a sensible speed of connection. They say that anything from a 28.8k modem upwards will work and it may well be but the problem that I generally find is that the speed at which the TV station is sending out the video drops dramatically at different times of the day which in practical terms means that the range of stations available to you varies throughout the day.

It’s great to see all the stations in one place but I think it’ll be a year or two before the various components are in place to make it a fully viable option for all of your TV needs.

Popularity: 23% [?]

It’s obviously impossible to name a single bank which you can choose simply because no single bank operates in every country of the world.

There are some general pointers as to how to go about choosing your bank though.

One school of thought is that you should choose the local bank with the most branches in the area which you’re moving to. That’s a reasonable approach in that for most countries there’s a charge to use ATMs that aren’t owned by your own bank so it may save you on ATM withdrawal fees. However, be wary of local banks that don’t operate internationally on a widespread basis or that don’t attract many foreign customers as you can come unstuck very easily through not having local banking practices explained to you. This even applies in many cases where banks operate English speaking branches: they might well speak English but often banking terms don’t translate well.

The other school of thought is that you should choose a bank based in your own country but with branches in your new country. This can work well in that the banking staff should be more familiar with the banking practices that you’re used to and sometimes offer good deals on money transfers to/from your home country. So, for example, if you’re American then the best choice is usually Citibank as that operates as a local bank in many countries yet retains an American feel in every location in which it operates and offers good deals on transfers between Citibank accounts in other countries. However, if you’re British, you might think that HSBC would be the way to go yet because it bills itself as “the world’s local bank” it tends to follow local banking practices more than British ones although it does offer transfers to your HSBC accounts in other countries.

Don’t forget that you don’t need to choose a single bank. One combination that works very well is a local bank with low charges and lots of branches combined with an international bank to handle your global transfers.

Popularity: 80% [?]