Expatriates

This bustling port was supposed to be just a whistle-stop for Lana and Joe Reid. The San Jose retirees were en route to the tourist hotbed of Puerto Vallarta, where they were planning to buy a home near the water. But their detour through Mazatlan turned out to be a date with destiny. They were drawn to the street life of the historic downtown. They strolled the oceanfront walkway known as the malecon. They watched the fishing fleets skipping across the bay to the seafood canneries.

Burmese expatriates in Southern California love to talk about their homeland - its natural beauty, its people, its history. But, even after they leave Myanmar, many fear talking about the politics of the country also known as Burma. The election to parliament Sunday of Myanmar pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi may begin to change that, some said. The election that resulted in a claimed victory for Suu Kyi and at least 10 other members of her party, the National League for Democracy, was the ruling junta's latest step to try to persuade the international community to ease crippling economic sanctions imposed in protest of the military's brutal grip on the Southeast Asian country.

Burmese expatriates in Southern California love to talk about their homeland - its natural beauty, its people, its history. But, even after they leave Myanmar, many fear talking about the politics of the country also known as Burma. The election to parliament Sunday of Myanmar pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi may begin to change that, some said. The election that resulted in a claimed victory for Suu Kyi and at least 10 other members of her party, the National League for Democracy, was the ruling junta's latest step to try to persuade the international community to ease crippling economic sanctions imposed in protest of the military's brutal grip on the Southeast Asian country.

For all the pride the Iranian film "A Separation" has conjured among Los Angeles Persians, not every aspect of the emotionally gripping Oscar hopeful has gone over so smoothly with the city's expats. In fact, it takes just moments for the filmmaker to alienate some of his most ardent fans here. In the opening scene, a husband and wife stare straight into the camera, presumably into the eyes of a judge, as the woman explains why she's asking for a divorce: Her husband, she pleads, refuses to flee Iran with her because he feels obligated to stay and care for his ailing father.

Re "Who Cares Where They Vote?" Opinion, July 3: I'm not sure on what grounds Wayne A. Cornelius makes his assertion that expatriate Mexicans living in the U.S. have little interest in politics in Mexico and thus will not "overwhelm Mexico in 2006." If recent elections, particularly the Los Angeles mayoral elections, are any indication of the participation of the Latino electorate, then expatriates will see the power of the vote. It is not just the most recent undocumented immigrants that have strong ties to Mexico that will vote.

The vast majority of California's large community of ethnic Cambodians has apparently lost the right to vote in this country's coming national elections, a U.N. election official indicated Friday. Reginald Austin, director of the electoral unit for the U.N. Transitional Authority in Cambodia, said in an interview that only a "few thousand" expatriate Cambodians had managed to register by the close of registration in late January.

Braving a potential conservative backlash, a group of Vietnamese-Americans has formed the first nonprofit organization in Orange County to collect humanitarian aid for Vietnam. Joining forces gives the 10 expatriates who have formed the Social Assistance Program for Vietnam "more strength and power to help our people more effectively," said Bang Cong Nguyen, the group's chairman.

In a rustic, soundproof room in Santa Monica, Alireza Meybodi fanned the flames of wounded Iranian pride as he recounted the latest assault upon his homeland's 2,500-year-old history. Five ancient mummies--including one believed to be that of Mandana, mother of the founder of the Persian Empire--have turned up in a merchant's home in Pakistan, the talk show host said during a recent broadcast from KSMI, or National Voice of Iran.

String quartets still play during the cocktail hour at luxury hotels, blond children still ride their bikes along the broad avenues, the spouses of diplomats and foreign business executives still shop for luxury provisions at the cavernous Friendship Store on Beijing's main drag. After more than a week of martial law and mounting tension over student protests, troop movements and convulsions within the Communist Party, life remains normal--more or less--for the city's expatriate community.

Not even the Brazilians know how many Brazilians are in Los Angeles. Ten thousand is the most common estimate, but nobody's counting. Nobody's counting because, presumably, the Brazilians are too busy getting on with the business of enjoying life. Lawrence Christon, in his Times review of the musical "Oba Oba," lyrically (and accurately) limns the Brazilian nature as "full of style and grace, humor and opulence of spirit. . . ." Even among the L.A.

Like many in Los Angeles' small North Korean community, Kevin Song has long avoided speaking of the "Dear Leader. " Kim Jong Il's name evoked too many painful memories and stirred too many intense opinions among those who fled the hermitic nation. A couple of years ago, when mention of the North Korean ruler came up over beers in a Koreatown pub, Song ended up in a barroom brawl with a fellow defector. On Monday, as the news of Kim's passing settled in, Song and other North Korean expatriates grappled with complicated emotions.

The green fields on the western outskirts of this vast metropolis are dotted with ripening ears of corn, trash and the skeletons of half-built villas abandoned by bankrupt developers. But Dvir Bar-Gal, an Israeli expatriate and photojournalist, saw none of these as he trudged toward a putrid creek, his eyes scouring the ground. Rather, he was looking for something far older: gravestones buried in the mud — the lost relics of this city's vanished Jews "When I go out to these villages filled with peasants it's almost like I've gone back to another era," he said.

More foreign residents left Tokyo on Thursday, spooked by the grave crisis at the Fukushima nuclear power plant and heeding foreign governments' calls for their citizens to evacuate northern Japan. Many said they were pressured to leave by worried family members from afar. Some described packing within a matter of hours Thursday and heading to train stations and airports to get farther away from Tokyo. Their destinations were far and wide, with some expatriates returning to Los Angeles, while others headed on vacations to the Pacific islands of Okinawa, 1,000 miles away from Tokyo, or Guam, 1,500 miles away.

As many foreigners and natives fled the turmoil roiling Egypt, Hatem Refaat boarded a near-empty plane in Dubai on Thursday night and headed back home to Cairo to join the massive demonstrations against longtime President Hosni Mubarak. Refaat, 39, left his homeland 12 years ago for Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, and then took a tourism job in Germany. Now a divorced father of three, he owns a company in Dubai, Pure Arabian Tourism. He had grown impatient watching the protests on television.

From Seattle to Santa Monica to South America; if only Shonda Rhimes were as experimental with genre and theme as she is with geography. Instead, she has an "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" mentality, and who can blame her? Six years in and ABC's "Grey's Anatomy" is still going strong, having survived all manner of insanity on-camera and off, while its spinoff "Private Practice" appears to be holding its own as well. So there is some logic in moving Rhimes' signature conceit — a youthful and racially diverse group of doctors searching for love and self-knowledge — to a Doctors Without Borders-type setting.

American author Bill Barich, a resident of Ireland these past nine years, was rummaging through a local secondhand shop in the summer of 2008 when he stumbled across a "beat up old copy" of "Travels With Charley," John Steinbeck's late-in-life attempt in 1960 to reacquaint himself with his native country. The book is a sour look at the American people as Steinbeck, in failing health, succumbed to pessimism over the caliber of his fellow citizens and their embrace of a culture built on the plastic and the contrived.

Poised behind his desk, a computer at his fingertips and a large staff at his command, the American executive seemed the prototype of hard-nosed corporate decision-making. Then the phone rang and it became sadly plain that he was master of all except his own life style. "There's this great new restaurant," the executive told his caller. "A friend has invited us for tonight. Can I go?" The caller knew the place. It is crowded, lively, open to the street and in a high-toned suburb.

Andrew Cherng started out modestly 20 years ago with the original Panda Inn, a tiny family restaurant in a converted trailer in Pasadena. Now he's the king of Chinese fast food, with a chain of more than 100 Panda Express outlets nationwide and sales expected to top $100 million this year. The secret to his success? Not ambitious planning, nor a grand vision, he maintains--not even a special Szechuan sauce. Rather, he says, he's expanded and prospered through efficiency.

Two Russian expatriates working in Britain have been awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize in physics for their discovery of graphene, a two-dimensional layer of carbon molecules whose unexpected properties promise to revolutionize the electronics industry, the production of lightweight materials and a host of other applications. At a time when multibillion-dollar particle accelerators and orbiting telescopes are often deemed necessary for major breakthroughs in physics, Andre Geim, 51, and Konstantin Novoselov, 36, both of the University of Manchester, laid the foundation for their discovery with an ordinary piece of Scotch tape.

Dear Liz: We're a newly married couple with an 11-year-old and hope to have another baby soon. We have $20,000 in emergency savings, $40,000 in investments, $480,000 in retirement funds, $20,000 in low-interest student loans and $43,000 in high-interest credit card debt. If we have another child, we'd like for my wife to be able to stay home. I am struggling with how to prioritize debt reduction, college savings, home improvements and building our emergency fund. I don't want to tap our savings or investments, as there are often surprises in life and I do not want to be caught short.