Things are much better than they used to be for the typical expat. Coffee is plentiful, if not always cheap. Entertainment is much easier to come by in the digital age - no one needs to be bored to tears anymore with nothing to read.

And despite the fact that I’m living in a country that still maintains capital controls, financial services have opened up sufficiently so that cross-border transactions are not impossible. This makes sense to most people, I think, since business is now global.

So why does my banking institution, which will remain nameless, continue to assume that just because someone opens an account at a particular branch (you have to do it somewhere, after all), that the person will live there for their entire life and only go overseas on the occasional trip to see some Roman ruins?

Why do international, mammoth financial institutions have to maintain insular, neighborhood-based retail mentalities? Can’t they provide good local service without always having to think locally?

OK, the reason I’m a little annoyed is that following a transaction here, my ATM card was blocked. Whether this was done by the overseas bank or the local Chinese bank partner, I have no idea. And I’m actually quite happy that the bank was looking out for unauthorized activity - this is a good thing. However, when I inquired/complained and asked them to kindly unlock my account, I was told that in the future when I am on an overseas trip, please let the bank know beforehand on which dates I will be abroad.

Obviously this doesn’t work for the typical expat, but even for your typical businessperson these days, the request is silly. If I am based in New York, for example, I should tell my secretary that every time she types up a final itinerary for a trip of mine, she should make sure to fax a copy to my friendly foreign banking institution? Yikes!!!

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