Don Tai (Canada) Blog

It is with great dismay that I have been reading news reports that the recession in Canada has been over for many months, yet I still cannot find work. I consider myself to be an intelligent fellow, very well educated with work experience to match, but somehow I’ve lost my golden touch. Really, that is putting it mildly. Logically speaking if I had not been fortuitous enough to live a frugal and stable life in the past, today I should be in bankruptcy, living off food banks and be a beggar in the street. Smart strategies and a whole lot of luck in the past have saved me this fate. Or was it typical Chinese values. One will never know.

Please bear with me for just a moment. So the sub-prime mortgage scandal in the US has precipitated a global credit crisis, where banks cease or curtail new lending and call in outstanding commercial and personal loans. Overdrawn Americans lose their houses to the banks and reduce spending. Companies cannot expand without loans, reduce their business, and lay off employees. US unemployment rates skyrocket and consumers put the brakes on spending. This effect goes around the world, precipitating reduced global spending. China and other predominantly export oriented countries get hit hard. Their factories lay off workers and close. It seems all is not economically well in the world.

Ryan has a great blog called Lost Laowai and writes from China. One of his readers contacted him about a dire situation he faced. The thread is documented here: What to do when your Chinese ex-wife runs away with your child?. Situations such as these seem common enough that they surface from time to time from different countries but always remain under the radar of the international news services. They apply not only to children but to adults as well. If you are living abroad, you start a family and have kids, be aware of these supposedly well known international laws or you might be in for a huge shock when this go badly wrong.