Stefan’s blog

One more time I am angry on a bank. I opened Passport account last year with HSBC UK. It was perfect as the account would automatically close after one year if I will not decide to prolong it. Good opt-in feature. But now HSBC decided to change the contract, so my account will automatically prolong until I decide to close it. They changed their services from opt-in to opt-out and locked me inside.

Now staying in Slovakia I have difficulty to close the account. Not to mention that there is £6 monthly charge.

HSBC sucks. Never open a bank account with this bank. Loyds TSB will give you current account free of charge.

I am looking forward to future encounters with banks cheating on me. This will never stop. I wish you fast death greedy banking institutions. Good luck financial crisis, you are doing good job hitting the right ones.

If you study abroad or work abroad and travel back to your home town regularly you may observe something interesting. People are very different. I do not mean it just culturally, but rather that they have different needs and wants and different perception of life, success and everything.

I study in Brno and travel regularly home to north east slovakia. During my studies I spent a lot of time studying abroad. Always when I came back to Brno I experienced some kind of culture shock. Even now when I go home from my university town, I experience slight culture shock.

By living in the new environment you are alienating yourself from that old one. Than when you come back you suddenly miss the new environment to which you have adapted. People you know lived through different experiences than you did over the year you were abroad.

When I go home to north east slovakia I have to become suddenly used to jealous gossips about neighbors in the village, and reality TV shows which are popular in Slovakia and everybody is talking about while I haven’t seen any episode and I am not even eager to waste time watching it. On the other-side suddenly nobody knows what The Apprentice is. It seems like there is nothing to talk about. Even though you speak the language it is hard to find common language and common topic to speak about.

People tend to search like minded people. I can tell that in the cities people tend to be more open-minded than in the villages. There is also huge difference between different working environments. Universities, international corporations or local companies each have distinct cultural traits.

So this way I start to think about “social clusters”. In today’s mobilised world people can move to locations which will best fulfill their personality and give them opportunities for future development. Such a clusters of certain mindsets can boost productivity. This however creates big cultural differences not just between countries but even between regions in the same country.

Ok enough. Too much thinking. But what I am curious to find out are the answer to few questions. Is it better to adapt yourself to the environment in which you are? Or to move to the environment which best fits your personality? Is it wrong to have a differed mindset than most people in the environment you are currently in?

Time for more thinking