I know you're just describing your personal impression and don't claim them to be universally true.
But allow me to present some evidence, er, anecdote to the contrary: I have also traveled the world and lived on three continents. I met lots of cool people and was lucky enough to make friends with some of them in all the places that I visited. I never observed the same as you apparently did, namely that they invested themselves in nothing but their career, traveling, parties, etc.
As a matter of fact, coming to think of it, a lot of the people I know (most of them college age) were also from abroad and made sure to stay involved with the family business back home as much as they could. Also, a lot of my friends were actually couples, showing that they cared for more than just work and individual leisure. Some of them got married since.
Of course, differences may be due to a number of reasons. What area of work you're in, for example. What geographical location you're in. And naturally, you probably tend to make friends with people that are to some degree similar in some respect. Also, there's varying degrees of peer pressure to like the same things if you want to be part of the in-crowd (or any crowd you like, really). Oh, and let's not forget: cultural background.
So I don't think you can generalize as much as you did in your post.
I know you're just describing your personal impression and don't claim them to be universally true.
But allow me to present some evidence, er, anecdote to the contrary: I have also traveled the world and lived on three continents. I met lots of cool people and was lucky enough to make friends with some of them in all the places that I visited. I never observed the same as you apparently did, namely that they invested themselves in nothing but their career, traveling, parties, etc.
As a matter of fact, coming to think of it, a lot of the people I know (most of them college age) were also from abroad and made sure to stay involved with the family business back home as much as they could. Also, a lot of my friends were actually couples, showing that they cared for more than just work and individual leisure. Some of them got married since.
Of course, differences may be due to a number of reasons. What area of work you're in, for example. What geographical location you're in. And naturally, you probably tend to make friends with people that are to some degree similar in some respect. Also, there's varying degrees of peer pressure to like the same things if you want to be part of the in-crowd (or any crowd you like, really). Oh, and let's not forget: cultural background.
So I don't think you can generalize as much as you did in your post.