[career? what career?]

As of last week, I made two discoveries.  I wouldn't exactly say they were new discoveries, but they could be termed reaffirmations of notions I already had about living here.

To sum it up, I have a double disadvantage of being myself.  Firstly, I'm not a local, and more specifically (my own deduction), an Asian.  Westerners are treated as gods here, men and women alike. Arabs are in the middle runk.  Asians are varied, with people from the Indian subcontinent being at the lowest end of the heirarchy, and I would say, being a Singaporean gives you a slightly upper hand.  However, after talking to Dr M, in his exact words after I asked about the possibilities about being trained overseas or the like, "they wouldn't sponsor me, because I'm not a local".  ("they" being the university)

This very blatant disclaimer came a couple of days after I talked to Dr F about my job change considerations. Ha, here I was thinking that talking to him would help.  What essentially came out of the discussion was that it's my own decision to make, though they like me and definitely want me to say. Though in the midst of it all, he said something to the effect of my news being shocking and that he didn't know I was unhappy with my current position, and that "any other woman here with your kind of job would be happy [with the workload], but you're from a different background". 

So basically, being a non-local, Asian woman (maybe that's 3 disdvantages, no?) has put me at a great disadvatage. While I knew I would have career suicide coming here, I did not think it would be this bad. Then again, maybe I did and I wasn't being pessimistic afterall.  What's even more disappointing is to have the people I work with say things like that without any reserve.  As a follow up to my conversation with Dr F, yesterday he asked what I felt/thought about what we had discussed about.  Honestly I said "I've come to a conclusion that women here cannot have a career". His reponse? "Well, I thought you would've known that even before coming here." Light-hearted or not, it was yet another slap in my face.

I have a very important decision to make. To stay in my boring job and have it as just a job i.e. let's not talk about "career advancement", much more a career, or to be daring and venture into a different field, with more challenges (according to Dr A they will work my butt off there, and I believe him judging by how much the nurses are overworked there and how they're already giving me work even before joining) and a less willing husband.  Compounded with the decision of wanting to start a family soon, that's the main thing holding me back from taking the job, otherwise I am all up for it.

Dr F once asked if he knew someone with my background he could hire. Even then I was thinking, who would want to come to this place.  My response to him from now on will be: Why would I want to ruin someone's career by asking them to come to this MCP country???

I'm down in the dumps. Keep wondering how I can move forward from this but at this moment, I just feel that I NEED TO GET OUT OF THIS FREAKING PLACE. HELP!!!