One wouldn’t expect an engineer to be interested in anthropology – assuming I’ve got the right “-ology” here, for the study of human behaviour – but working in the places I do with such a bewildering array of nationalities, mere observation provides considerable insight into the subject.  I struggle to explain why certain peoples behave as they do, but that they do behave in such a manner is beyond question.

One of the things I noticed about Russians back in my Dubai days was their unwillingness to socialise with one another when abroad.  There were tens of thousands of Russians living (on various visas) in Dubai at the time, yet there was no Russian bar.  There was a sort of Russian nightclub in the Ascot hotel called Troika, but none of the Russians I knew went there, and I don’t think the main clientele were Russian.  There were one or two restaurants serving Russian food, but they also served western and Arabic fare.  Towards the end of my stay a nightclub opened called Red Square or something, and the few Russians who went there said it was gaudy and shite and I don’t think anything became of it.  Outside one or two friends, most Russians in Dubai kept themselves to themselves and had no interest in socialising in “Russian” bars with their compatriots, let alone setting up and running such an establishment in the first place.  I remember being surprised at how fragmented the Russian diaspora in Dubai was, and when I learned more about Russian culture I discovered this was not untypical.  This unwillingness to form groups left ethnic Russians exposed in two situations I have read about.  In the Gulags, the ethnic minorities – the Balts, Chechens, Kazakhs, Poles, etc. – quickly formed groups for protection, and immediately brought any newcomer under their wing.  By contrast, the ethnic Russians arrived alone and were the softest target for sadistic overseers or criminal gangs.  The same thing gets reported in the present day Russian army where the worst victims of Dedovshchina are almost always ethnic Russians having the shit kicked out of them by their own kind.  Rarely is it a Tatar or Buryat who is on the receiving end, they having grouped together for protection.  Among ethnic Russians, there seems almost no concept of mutual support or socialisation outside ones immediate friends.  Making new friends and expanding the group is almost actively avoided, or at least no attempt is made to further such goals.

At the other end of the spectrum you have the Filipinos.  If keeping abreast of the minute details of every friend, family member, and their friends’ work and life is nowadays called social networking, the Filipinos beat Facebook to it by two decades or more.  I have a Filipino colleague in Lagos, who told me of the large Filipino social scene in the city which no outsider would even be aware of.  He stopped taking lunch in the staff canteen after the first couple of weeks when he was invited into a system whereby one of them brings a whole load of others to his apartment and prepares Filipino food, with somebody else doing the honours the next day and so on.  I asked him how he found the other Filipinos in Lagos.  He said they found him.  If any Filipino is in a supermarket and he spies one of his compatriots (they can spot each other a mile off) that he doesn’t recognise, he will go up and ask him if he “knows everybody” yet, and if he doesn’t he will be provided with the necessary phone numbers to get himself into the next social event.  I’m not sure exactly what they do in the evenings, but I heard they have their own parties at the weekends and so have no need to frequent bars or nightclubs.  The Filipinos are mad about basketball, and I asked my colleague if the Filipinos in Lagos had a basket team.  They have a basketball league.

It was the same in Sakhalin.  Every Filipino knew exactly which projects in other locations his friends and family were working on, which positions were available, and how much the going rates were.  They shared information in order to get the best deal and get their countrymen on board.  They stuck together like glue, even if they weren’t particularly good friends.  There was strong evidence that a sauna located not far from the Sakhalin Energy housing complex was actually a brothel catering mainly for Filipinos.  I took an 8-hour overnight train ride up to Gastello with a Filipino once, and we were supposed to be sharing a cabin.  But as soon as he boarded he went up and down the train poking his head in the compartment doors until he (inevitably) found one crammed with other Filipinos and he returned to me, grabbed his stuff, and said he was going to be bunking down there instead. It’s impossible to imagine Russians doing this.

So where do the Brits fit in?  In the oil towns, we don’t actively seek one another out but we end up meeting anyway.  Brits don’t necessarily want to hang out with one another, but we do want to watch football, rugby, and cricket and that means going to a pub which, if you’re abroad, is most likely to be an Irish or British pub.  And once you’re in a pub watching sport more than two weekends on the trot, you’ve pretty much got your social life sorted out.  For me personally, I meet a lot of Australians in Phuket mainly because the best place to watch sport is the Aussie Bar on Bangla Road.

But meeting and socialising with one another isn’t the Brits’ greatest strength.  That is our ability and willingness to socialise with absolutely anybody.  Even the French.