I am 22, and have spent most of my life since 13 studying at schools in different countries then the one where my family lives and works. Thus, I guess that whole '100 miles or more' from the article applies to me, but for high school it was more like 2000 miles, and for college more like 12000 miles. I am currently a director on the board of three companies in my father's group with a combined turnover of $10,000,000.00 annually, in the jewellry manufacturing, diamond polishing, and luxury retail sectors. While this is not a massive turnover by any means, being as we are located in a developing country, and that we employ over 150 people across the group, and that we've been around since 1970, we are in the top 125 companies in my country (top 100 in a few years if everything goes to plan). What does this have to do with maturity?
Well, being 22, male, having gone to a liberal arts college in the USA, having grown up on a tropical island, yep, its a developing independant island nation, I naturaly am completely spoiled, party-addicted, hopelessly immature, ex-school and university party and comedic personality, and basically the type of person who was late for everything in all parts of my education and life, perpetually underachieved and defaulted on my responsiblities due to party binges, I handed in my all-too long thesis that I still don't believe is finished on the last possible day, a month late of the original final deadline, still somehow graduated with my double major, and promptly stopped on stage at graduation, attempted to coerce the crowd into increased applause, which they obliged, and then swayed over to the president to collect my degree.
Now, less about me, more about maturity. I was asked by my father to come back here to work with him, and I naturally wanted to come and hang out back home for a while (tropical island, duh!), so I said okay during my winter break before graduation, little did I know what I was getting into. Two days after graduation, I was in New York, meeting clients, and learning the business in their many offices for two weeks. This entire work and responsibilty shock snow-balled to the point where my father, after dragging me all over to meet our associates and giving me a few months running around the companies and departments, just threw me into the top of the management structure, and stepped back, and in fact over the last three months, our peak selling season at retail, he has been overseas not really on business for about a month, and was at home, albeit with a sprained ankle, for 3 weeks, with me driving him to work when he wanted! On top of this, leaving me to take care of any other personal investment projects that he seems to have conveniantly left to me to look after.
The long and short of all this is that I have and had no desire to manage the family finances, and thus be responsible for myself, my mother and my sister, be responsible to all those employees for the health of the company and thus their jobs, their familes income and thus lives, and any and all the other mistakes and irresponsibilites my father may have made in the past that have been thrust on me as a new manager and memeber of the controlling family, but I unfortunately have had no choice thus far, I have been forced to give up my life, from getting drunk 4 days a week, getting high everyday, basically being one of those people you hate if you work hard because they seem to never do, to someone who never goes out, who falls asleep in front of the TV on Friday nights while all his friends are waiting for him at the bars/restaurants/nightclubs, and in fact I've even started doing the same thing Sat nights as I work Saturdays to, and I can't do the whole socializing and work thing anymore, I tried so hard for the first 6 months but its nearly impossible now, I even used to go out mid-week in the begining.
So the question is, am I more mature because I've changed my life to adapt to these responsibilites that I can't avoid because there are so many people depending on me to be there everyday, to work at
why don't you tell all those people and families that work and live in my country how 'piss-poor' their hard earned pay is, or how 'piss-poor' the business me and my family run that provides jobs to 150 people, or why don't you start to question where all this wealth came from for all the 'mighty' western nations who worked so hard stealing productivity, wealth, land, freedom, and pretty much anything they could from countries like mine, using us only for our geography...thats the only reason Mauritius is anything, geography, just like cape town, or any city bult by a river or in a natural port. The western world needed somewhere to stop and resupply themselves during their global conquest via the indian ocean, and as there is a historic prescence of money, then it just somehow stays around and remanifests itself...kinda like those western powers...Theres been a US diplomatic mission here since 1792, right aftet tyhe civil war ended if I'm not mistaken, though who gives a fuck about US history, considering it sonly one 'piss-poor' nation in a world of nations, much like mine. so much for democracy, and eaulity for all, we all know its bullshit to cover up the money.
hey there,
I've been living here my whole life, just graduated from Vassar college in may and thus have returned to work with the fam. we're actually really developed compared to most of africa, but we still fall well behind most of the western word. for example, we have A highway, which is up to 6 lanes at some points, but is also 3/4 lane one (government stole the rest fo the money to truely make it a 4 lane road) near my house (in the north, lots of fields and resorts and small villages, not much else) So we have that, we also have wireleess, internet, satelite tv, all the electronics you could want, but we don't have sewers in most towns. We also don't really have civil services that work well/are adequetly if equiped at all. so our police force is badass, and love beating people up and issuing speeding tickets, but our ambulances and hospitals are dismal, our fire departments iffy, and pretty much every govenrment office is slightly all the way up to grossly corrupt, slow, inefficient, and quite often ineffiective. Though the postal service is great... There is a substancial wealth gap, but our middleclass is probalby larger than america's by percentage, though we are soo sooo small. Like a city state...on a tropical island, with weird industrues and banking laws. No movie theaters really either, a few, for bollywood and french films, and you get pretty board of the say 20 or so night clubs in the whole country, though many are full of dsrugs and prostitutes, though depends what you're looking for. I like it here, though my family has a good busniess and i haven't ived here in a good while. Hope this helps, I love talking about my country.
umm...okay USA patriot...since when did you think that there was no communication between....saaayyyy asia and the americas? or , i dunno, europe and the americas. we don't need to get to you guys directly cos we know we can rely on the industrial powerhouses of europe and asia which co-exist with the 'mighty' americas, and thus will always need effective communcation links between them that we can piggy-back on...although as i'm too lazy to read the rest of this conversation on the subject which means you might alreay have come to this conclusion, and if thats the case my apologies...we still rule (mauritians that is...yeah first wireless nation!)
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I am 22, and have spent most of my life since 13 studying at schools in different countries then the one where my family lives and works. Thus, I guess that whole '100 miles or more' from the article applies to me, but for high school it was more like 2000 miles, and for college more like 12000 miles. I am currently a director on the board of three companies in my father's group with a combined turnover of $10,000,000.00 annually, in the jewellry manufacturing, diamond polishing, and luxury retail sectors. While this is not a massive turnover by any means, being as we are located in a developing country, and that we employ over 150 people across the group, and that we've been around since 1970, we are in the top 125 companies in my country (top 100 in a few years if everything goes to plan). What does this have to do with maturity? Well, being 22, male, having gone to a liberal arts college in the USA, having grown up on a tropical island, yep, its a developing independant island nation, I naturaly am completely spoiled, party-addicted, hopelessly immature, ex-school and university party and comedic personality, and basically the type of person who was late for everything in all parts of my education and life, perpetually underachieved and defaulted on my responsiblities due to party binges, I handed in my all-too long thesis that I still don't believe is finished on the last possible day, a month late of the original final deadline, still somehow graduated with my double major, and promptly stopped on stage at graduation, attempted to coerce the crowd into increased applause, which they obliged, and then swayed over to the president to collect my degree. Now, less about me, more about maturity. I was asked by my father to come back here to work with him, and I naturally wanted to come and hang out back home for a while (tropical island, duh!), so I said okay during my winter break before graduation, little did I know what I was getting into. Two days after graduation, I was in New York, meeting clients, and learning the business in their many offices for two weeks. This entire work and responsibilty shock snow-balled to the point where my father, after dragging me all over to meet our associates and giving me a few months running around the companies and departments, just threw me into the top of the management structure, and stepped back, and in fact over the last three months, our peak selling season at retail, he has been overseas not really on business for about a month, and was at home, albeit with a sprained ankle, for 3 weeks, with me driving him to work when he wanted! On top of this, leaving me to take care of any other personal investment projects that he seems to have conveniantly left to me to look after. The long and short of all this is that I have and had no desire to manage the family finances, and thus be responsible for myself, my mother and my sister, be responsible to all those employees for the health of the company and thus their jobs, their familes income and thus lives, and any and all the other mistakes and irresponsibilites my father may have made in the past that have been thrust on me as a new manager and memeber of the controlling family, but I unfortunately have had no choice thus far, I have been forced to give up my life, from getting drunk 4 days a week, getting high everyday, basically being one of those people you hate if you work hard because they seem to never do, to someone who never goes out, who falls asleep in front of the TV on Friday nights while all his friends are waiting for him at the bars/restaurants/nightclubs, and in fact I've even started doing the same thing Sat nights as I work Saturdays to, and I can't do the whole socializing and work thing anymore, I tried so hard for the first 6 months but its nearly impossible now, I even used to go out mid-week in the begining. So the question is, am I more mature because I've changed my life to adapt to these responsibilites that I can't avoid because there are so many people depending on me to be there everyday, to work at
why don't you tell all those people and families that work and live in my country how 'piss-poor' their hard earned pay is, or how 'piss-poor' the business me and my family run that provides jobs to 150 people, or why don't you start to question where all this wealth came from for all the 'mighty' western nations who worked so hard stealing productivity, wealth, land, freedom, and pretty much anything they could from countries like mine, using us only for our geography...thats the only reason Mauritius is anything, geography, just like cape town, or any city bult by a river or in a natural port. The western world needed somewhere to stop and resupply themselves during their global conquest via the indian ocean, and as there is a historic prescence of money, then it just somehow stays around and remanifests itself...kinda like those western powers...Theres been a US diplomatic mission here since 1792, right aftet tyhe civil war ended if I'm not mistaken, though who gives a fuck about US history, considering it sonly one 'piss-poor' nation in a world of nations, much like mine. so much for democracy, and eaulity for all, we all know its bullshit to cover up the money.
hey there, I've been living here my whole life, just graduated from Vassar college in may and thus have returned to work with the fam. we're actually really developed compared to most of africa, but we still fall well behind most of the western word. for example, we have A highway, which is up to 6 lanes at some points, but is also 3/4 lane one (government stole the rest fo the money to truely make it a 4 lane road) near my house (in the north, lots of fields and resorts and small villages, not much else) So we have that, we also have wireleess, internet, satelite tv, all the electronics you could want, but we don't have sewers in most towns. We also don't really have civil services that work well/are adequetly if equiped at all. so our police force is badass, and love beating people up and issuing speeding tickets, but our ambulances and hospitals are dismal, our fire departments iffy, and pretty much every govenrment office is slightly all the way up to grossly corrupt, slow, inefficient, and quite often ineffiective. Though the postal service is great... There is a substancial wealth gap, but our middleclass is probalby larger than america's by percentage, though we are soo sooo small. Like a city state...on a tropical island, with weird industrues and banking laws. No movie theaters really either, a few, for bollywood and french films, and you get pretty board of the say 20 or so night clubs in the whole country, though many are full of dsrugs and prostitutes, though depends what you're looking for. I like it here, though my family has a good busniess and i haven't ived here in a good while. Hope this helps, I love talking about my country.
umm...okay USA patriot...since when did you think that there was no communication between....saaayyyy asia and the americas? or , i dunno, europe and the americas. we don't need to get to you guys directly cos we know we can rely on the industrial powerhouses of europe and asia which co-exist with the 'mighty' americas, and thus will always need effective communcation links between them that we can piggy-back on...although as i'm too lazy to read the rest of this conversation on the subject which means you might alreay have come to this conclusion, and if thats the case my apologies...we still rule (mauritians that is...yeah first wireless nation!)