Welcome to the New ExpatWomen.com!

Dear Friends,

It is with much pleasure that we unveiled today our new home page. As mentioned previously, the home page is complete, but it will take us a week or two to change over the colours properly on all of the other pages, so thanks for your patience on that.

Full thanks for the new design go to:

1. Beth Nori, of Nori Studios, who has been an ExpatWomen Mentor for us in the UK. Beth wrote to us like a guardian angel one night and miraculously translated our ideas for our new top banner into reality within two days. If you ever need a web designer, we highly recommend Beth! and
2. Our regular web designer, Ines Castro of Blu Concept in Mexico, who spent many, many, many hours with me developing the rest of the home page. Ines, for your patience and persistence, we thank you immensely!

Loyal ExpatWomen.com readers will notice that the feature format on the home page looks different. This is to better profile the selected features and also to rotate the feature concepts from month to month. So, if your favourite feature is not there this month (eg. Book of the Month or Business Idea), just keep a look out in future months.

Home Page features for March:

Special Report: From Chennai to Shanghai: Expat Executive Women in Asia. This is the article that we mentioned in a previous post, that was written for ERC's Mobility Magazine (which they published in February). It is the result of interviews with seven expatriate women working in Asia. Thanks go to Nancy, Christa, Julianne, Basia, Cisca, Lesley and Sarah for their participation. You can read the article and see all of their photos here.

Success Story: Ambassador Sharyn Minahan, Australia's Ambassador to Denmark, Norway and Iceland. Sharyn has had experience abroad in Argentina, Spain, France, Chile, Mexico and is a very interesting woman.

Winning Story: Welcome to the Dark Side - Depression in Cambodia. Yes, we know, not the usual cheery fare, but an excellent account of a very real issue - all over the world. It's very well-written and full credit to the author, Bronwyn Sloan. She fully deserves her US$100 (our lucky last winner of the US$100, as that promotion has now ended) just for the courage to speak out. Congratulations Bronwyn.

Expat Confession: Infidelity Online. This was a very real confession from one of our members. (Name and location changed on request) Has this happenned to you?

New Book Giveaway: Thanks to our friends at Explorer Publishing in the UAE (namely Kate Fox - thanks Kate!), we have a great new book giveaway every month. Instead of five individual winners scoring one book each, Explorer are helping us to give away one complete set of Explorer Mini-Guides (16 in total, and more being published all the time) to one lucky member - who hopefully loves to travel. If you have not got around to joining up yet, please do so here for the chance to w-i-n.

New Bronze Sponsor: Clements International. A very genuine welcome to Clements International, who are a leading provider of trusted and reliable insurance services for expatriates, covering more than 170 countries. If you need automobile, personal, property, life, business, school and/or any other form of insurance, please support Clements, who we thank sincerely for supporting us.

Okay, thanks everyone and we wish you all a wonderful weekend! Andrea

Want to Write for Culture Smart?

Dear Expat Women Writers,

A good friend, Jo Parfitt of the ExpatRollercoaster.com, has been asked to source potential authors for some upcoming Culture Smart! books. If you think you can write about 30,000 words in an upbeat style about what it is like to live in one of the following countries as an expatriate, please email Jo and she can connect you with the series editor.

The countries are: Jordan; Syria; Tunisia; Mongolia; Bosnia Herzogovena; Slovakia; Nigeria; Tanzania; Venezuela; Columbia; and Ecuador. This is a great opportunity to gain a reputation as a country expert and an author. It will apparently earn you GBP1000 (a one-off fee).

If I had lived in any of those countries, I would do it! A thousand Pounds helps pay for the next exciting trip right? Go for it! Andrea.

Face-Lift Update

Hi Everyone, Just a quick update on ExpatWomen.com's face-lift. All going well, we are pleased to report that our mad efforts over the past couple of weeks should be unveiled on March 1! :-)

The navigation bars (that need to be changed manually, on every single page) will take another week or two to update to the new navigation bar colour (which will not be pink). So thanks for your patience on that.

The top banner will however keep our famous pink branding - but it will be a 'new' pink. We hope you will like it.

Thanks and enjoy your day/evening! Andrea

HSBC Offshore's Global Expat Survey

BREAKING NEWS: HSBC Bank International (one of our generous Gold Sponsors) just unveiled an ambitious project to conduct the largest ever survey of expats. Can you please help?

Here's what HSBC said: "The project aims to give more than 2000 expats across four continents the opportunity to have their say on what life is really like for people living and working away from home. The survey will look at opportunities that come with starting a new life in a foreign country away from home, and the challenges and difficulties that they may face at home and at work. The survey will also reveal how new technology helps expats start their new lives and manage their professional and social affairs. It will also find out how expatriate children’s lives differ from the lives of the friends they leave behind."

To make your opinion heard, please visit this link.

Thanks Everyone!

Women Inspiring Women

Hi Everyone, please let me share with you a good news story that I've been meaning to share for some time...

After appearing on our home page as our Mentor of the Month for December, Vicel (a Filipino expat woman in Afghanistan) wrote to us recently to share her excitement about being subsequently contacted by a Filipino researcher to participate in a very interesting study on the values and traditions of Filipinos living abroad. Vicel was also excited that her story inspired her sister’s friend so much that her sister's friend is no longer overwhelmed with anxiety about her move soon to with her husband to Tanzania. That’s fabulous Vicel. Thanks for the good news, and here's cheers to women inspiring women, all over the world! Andrea.

Intelligent Women Drink More?

I read something very interesting the other day, when I was Stumbling around on the web. The article was entitled "Intelligent People Are Prone to Alcoholism - Especially Women". Written by Stefan Anitei, Science Editor, Softpedia.

The results quoted were apparently the results made by the Medical Research Council and published in the American Journal of Public Health. They claim that "women are particularly prone to drink heavily in their thirties, if they have an over-the-averge intelligence". If you are interested, you can read all about it here.

Regards, Andrea.

An Expat In India?

Hi there, Julia is looking for expats in India, to survey for her Masters thesis on cross-cultural adaptation in India. Please help Julia if you can, thanks.

"I would like ask for your help to contact non-Indian expatriates or family of expatriates living in India regarding their success while working and living abroad. This research is issued by the University of Groningen in the Netherlands.

It has been found that expatriates do not always perform as successful in the foreign country as they did in their home country. Some causes for these personal differences have been found in personality characteristics. Through this new research we would like obtain more certainty about the determinants of cultural effectiveness; in this case, job success. A lot of money could be saved when one could predict which employee is going to be cultural effective and thus successful in an international assignment.

To help me with my research, please click on this link (the survey should take you about 10 minutes). Hopefully you are able to help me and in this way help me graduate. Thank you very much!"

Yours sincerely,
Julia Wijnmaalen
Turfsingel 41
9712 KJ Groningen
The Netherlands

Face-lift for Expat Women

Ladies, it's time ExpatWomen.com (mainly the home page) gets a face-lift. We're working on this behind-the-scenes right now, but any ideas are more than welcome here. All going well, you should see a new-look Expat Women home page in either March or April. Thanks and stay tuned...

Got Something To Confess?

Dear Friends,
Following on from the positive feedback that we have received about the Expat Confessions section on our site, we would like to put a book together of both these confessions and new confessions, to help expat women the world over feel supported and that they are not alone in struggling with some/all of these issues.

If you have additional topic ideas, or things to confess that you have struggled with as an expat, ALL ideas are welcome via: contactus@expatwomen dot com. The topic ideas and/or personal confessions are purely voluntary and they will be kept anonymous in the book. (We can easily change names and locations.)

Thanks in advance for your support and for your contributions! Andrea

Family Matters Survey - Please Help Robin Pascoe

Hello Everyone. I would love you to help Robin Pascoe with her new "Family Matters!" survey.

This survey is different from other expat surveys in that it focuses more on the family and the impact of relocation on all of the family members. It was released today by my good friend, Robin Pascoe, aka the Expat Expert, in collaboration with one of her sponsors, AMJ Campbell International.

Robin has been running her Expat Expert website for 10 years now (congratulations on your anniversary, Robin!), devoting countless hours to helping expat women all around the globe. I encourage you to help Robin if you can, as a small way to contribute back to someone who has been helping expat women for many, many years.

The survey took me 30 minutes. You might be quicker. Thanks in advance, your willingness to help is genuinely appreciated.

Andrea.

British Expats Running A Business Abroad? Television Opportunity

If you are a British Expat running a business abroad who is needing some help, Anne Stone might just be able to make your day...

"I work for a London based TV Production Company called RDF Television- we make programmes such as Secret Millionaire and Faking It. I am doing some research for a new documentary series for Channel 4.

I am looking for someone whose dream of running a life and a business overseas has not gone to plan. Maybe it’s cash flow problems, language barriers or simply cultural differences that are making things difficult. The idea of our program is to help families get back on track – we want to help them save their dream.

We are looking for British couples who might welcome some advice to help rescue their business. I wondered if you knew of anyone who might be interested in talking to us. Thank you so much for your help. Anne Stone"

If you are interested in contacting Anne, please contact her via:

Anne Stone
Casting Producer
RDF TELEVISION
The Gloucester Building
Kensington Village
Avonmore Road
London W14 8RF
tel. +44 207 013 4115
fax. +44 207 013 4001
anne.stone @ rdfmedia dot com
www.rdftelevision.com

Expat Women February Newsletter now online

Hi Everyone, Our February newsletter is now online here. Members who did not receive the newsletter today should receive it tomorrow (as we had some hiccups in the sending process today and need to complete it tomorrow).

If you are subscribed to our newsletter with a Yahoo email, the newsletter may have gone to your spam folder, as sometimes happens with Yahoo accounts. To fix this, you are welcome to give us a new email account, or we encourage you to white-list the email address: admin @ expatwomen dot com (as per these instructions).

Thanks and enjoy your day/evening, Andrea.

Have You Seen Amazon's New 'Kindle'?

Hi Everyone, If you haven't seen Amazon's video for their new 'Kindle', take a look here. It is amazing what technology can do these days. What a great invention for internationally-mobile women like all are. And very interesting technology for the many authors and would-be authors among us.

Thinking further ahead... Imagine a day when school students only carry Kindles to and from school, saving their backs from lugging heavy school bags (filled with heavy text books) to and from school each day. Imagine book clubs sitting around with members only referring to their Kindles. Or instead of packing your holiday books for beachside-reading, you just pack your swimmers and your Kindles. Imagine. :-)

Can Anyone Help Jamuna (Expat Survey)?

"Hi, I'm a student from Malaysia University of Science (USM). I'm a MBA candidate doing research on Expatriate Adjustment. This is a 10 minutes anonymous survey on Expatriate's Adjustment. Its totally anonymous, no email address request. It takes 10 to 12 minutes! You can do halfway, Quit and Continue later. The results will be available to public. Please help me to give a broad distribution. The link to the survey is here. If you need more info from me, please let me know. Thank you so much for your help. Regards, Jamuna."

Jamuna Sulaiman
MBA candidate
School Of Management
Malaysia University Of Science (USM)
Penang, Malaysia
Contact: 6012-4587903
Email: jamuna.sulaiman@yahoo.com

Dr Anees Janee Ali
Lecturer/Supervisor
School Of Management
Malaysia University Of Science (USM)
Penang, Malaysia
Contact: 604-6533888 (ext: 3434)
Email: aneesali15@yahoo.com