BS”D
Not so much of an effort to stay frum (in fact the lack of availability of junk and processed kosher food here helps me stay healthy) but the very opposite in fact – a very strong community which is like a fishbowl for a private person like me who does not put marriage and family ahead of career and does not like admittedly well meaning people to poke into his personal or even business life.
The only other alternative for me in the present economy is working in India while living in EY, and the prospect of living in EY, which is an even bigger fishbowl, is really not for me.
At least here I live far from the shul and can stay home if I want, behind my double doors and far from anyone from the community. It is only in shul and on Shabbos that the questioning and kibitzing starts and if I decide to I can live with that.
In EY your neighbor is (usually) Jewish and feels he has a need to know everything about you and to waste your time with stories and questions. On my last trip to Tverya I literally had to scream at a strange woman for peeking over my laptop screen in a hotel lobby – in EY looking over someone’s shoulder is not considered rude but in civil society it sure is. (You don’t want to know what I screamed at her in Yiddish to send her scurrying away in fear LOL!).
Living in India is going a little too far in terms of remaining private. Then again if there is a shul and a rav it might be enough for me if need be, at least temporarily.