Saturday morning saw us at Abu Dhabi airport for the final flight back to Manchester. Luckily we’ve acquired gold and silver Etihad status in the past 12 months so we didn’t have to suffer the indignity of having to pay for excess luggage as I did on the way to Abu Dhabi! As the plane took off, leaving Abu Dhabi behind the tears started to fall and the stewardesses were most concerned at my fear of flying. It seemed a bit wet having to tell them that it was relief at the end of a very difficult adventure and happiness at starting the next chapter. I was also a bit overcome by John turning and thanking me for helping to make it all possible and being strong and supportive – there were so many times when I didn’t feel I had been as helpful as I could have been.
It was certainly an adventure and I wouldn’t have missed the Abu Dhabi experience for the world. I feel like I achieved something I didn’t know I could do – making a life in a new country and a very different culture, creating a home, making friends and finding a job. It has brought J and me so close, having this shared experience with all its ups and downs. However, I am also very glad to be moving on to new things and to start the next stage of the journey.
This new stage is going to need a completely new blog so it’s time to draw this one to a close. I hope you’ll carry on reading about our adventures and our travels at http://jennyandjohnsadultgap.blogspot.com/
It’s been an amazing year – thank you for sharing it.
Friday 30 July 2010
Last few tasks
Closing the bank accounts was a funny experience as you’re not allowed to have one if you don’t have a visa. The guy at Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank closed it down then and there and chopped up our cards and check books in front of us which was a bit nerve racking! HSBC tried to give me the balance of the account despite the fact that it was needed to pay off the credit card. Amazingly we were waiting in the queue behind a man who appeared to be withdrawing several hundreds of millions of dirhams in cash. I have never seen so many notes in my life. The best moment came when he asked them for a bag to put it in to take it away with him (he obviously hadn’t brought his own or an armed guard!) and was given a branded HSBC carrier bag. I can’t think of another place in the world where you could walk out of a bank, which a huge amount of money in cash actually in an HSBC bag!
Etisalat were true to form right till the last. When we went to cancel our internet, land line and J’s mobile they insisted on us paying all the connection and usage charges that we’d been given free at the beginning because we were cancelling inside the 12 month contract! The reason it was less than 12 months was due to the fact that it took them 3 months to install it in the first place. So their ongoing inefficiency even cost us money in the long run – but then would all the residents of Abu Dhabi be without their Etisalat stories! I was reading a consumer problem page in the paper where people wrote in with problems and the newspaper tried to sort them out. One was someone moaning about an Etisalat problem and at the end of their letter, instead of the usual outcome of how good old Gulf News had helped to fix the problem it just said ‘despite repeated attempts to contact the company, Etisalat failed to respond to our request’. But then powerful state owned monopolies can presumably take that attitude – like being only one of four countries in the world to ban Skype, but unlike North Korea, this is for more commercial reasons!
Everything else went very smoothly and seems to be mostly sorted out. We were told we didn’t pay a deposit on the apartment (I’d dispute this but as it went through J’s salary it’s hard to be sure). However we are mysteriously owed AED 2500 by the landlord which just might be 50% of the deposit we ‘didn’t pay’! It was sad saying goodbye to the car but the hand over of the registration went very smoothly and we found ourselves outside the vehicle registration with Helen clutching a new registration card within about 10 minutes. We were all convinced we must have done something wrong. The trip to Dubai to get the scratch fixed was well worth it and we enjoyed the Hilton Jumeirah as an expensive but fun break.
The Shangri La was as wonderful as ever, though the weather was so hot and humid it was impossible to stand outside even for a moment without becoming covered in a film of sweat so we didn’t really fancy the pool. We enjoyed Bord Eau for a last dinner and the seafood brunch at Pearls and Caviar.
Etisalat were true to form right till the last. When we went to cancel our internet, land line and J’s mobile they insisted on us paying all the connection and usage charges that we’d been given free at the beginning because we were cancelling inside the 12 month contract! The reason it was less than 12 months was due to the fact that it took them 3 months to install it in the first place. So their ongoing inefficiency even cost us money in the long run – but then would all the residents of Abu Dhabi be without their Etisalat stories! I was reading a consumer problem page in the paper where people wrote in with problems and the newspaper tried to sort them out. One was someone moaning about an Etisalat problem and at the end of their letter, instead of the usual outcome of how good old Gulf News had helped to fix the problem it just said ‘despite repeated attempts to contact the company, Etisalat failed to respond to our request’. But then powerful state owned monopolies can presumably take that attitude – like being only one of four countries in the world to ban Skype, but unlike North Korea, this is for more commercial reasons!
Everything else went very smoothly and seems to be mostly sorted out. We were told we didn’t pay a deposit on the apartment (I’d dispute this but as it went through J’s salary it’s hard to be sure). However we are mysteriously owed AED 2500 by the landlord which just might be 50% of the deposit we ‘didn’t pay’! It was sad saying goodbye to the car but the hand over of the registration went very smoothly and we found ourselves outside the vehicle registration with Helen clutching a new registration card within about 10 minutes. We were all convinced we must have done something wrong. The trip to Dubai to get the scratch fixed was well worth it and we enjoyed the Hilton Jumeirah as an expensive but fun break.
The Shangri La was as wonderful as ever, though the weather was so hot and humid it was impossible to stand outside even for a moment without becoming covered in a film of sweat so we didn’t really fancy the pool. We enjoyed Bord Eau for a last dinner and the seafood brunch at Pearls and Caviar.
Goodbye Arab Bank Building
Tying up the apartment got sorted pretty much at the last minute (why would it be different?). It turned out that my friend Liz had just moved to a new place so she took our bed, the office furniture and the water cooler and was very glad of the contents of my store cupboard. I thought the guy who bought the lounge furniture was not going to come back to collect the last settee and make the final payment and cursed that I hadn’t taken all the money off him at the time. However a ‘disappointed’ email soon sorted that out. In the end we were left with the brand new and expensive spare room furniture and the white furniture from our bedroom – we got offered AED 200 for it when it cost nearly AED 7000 so I decided to ship it to Manchester and sort out the problem of having rather a lot of furniture afterwards! The packers from Crown Relocations were brilliant and managed to pack all the extra stuff into the 8 cubic metres we’d already paid for and they were so quick and thorough I was bowled over. It more than made up for having to argue with the office about the value of our stuff and then having to itemise huge amounts of it in order not to pay to insure a ridiculous value!
With everything packed up, sold or on its way to Manchester we decamped to the Shangri La for the last few days whilst we got everything else finished off and to allow for hiccups.
With everything packed up, sold or on its way to Manchester we decamped to the Shangri La for the last few days whilst we got everything else finished off and to allow for hiccups.
Goodbye to work
So having made the decision to leave, the last few days were quite a rush, with lots of things to get finished off and everything left tidy. John finished almost at once but I still had to do another week in order to leave things in the best possible state as I didn’t really have anyone to hand over to. Poor Fatima was very upset at the news as we both enjoyed working together and as this was her very first job she had presumably hoped to learn more from me. However, she knows much better than me, how to make things happen in this different culture and she is much more confident about expecting people to do things for her. I suspect that many of the things of a more strategic nature, that I tried very hard to do, will be left undone as not being as important as corporate gifts and basic Power Point slides! We spent quite a bit of that last week looking at pictures of gold and silver plated falcon’s heads which the boss wanted to buy as VIP gifts. What surprised me was that I engaged in several meetings about these items and only stopped to think that it might be funny when I was telling John about it later! I also got a lashing from the boss because some Power Point slides he wanted were not available because the companies concerned had refused to tell me anything about themselves! So secret they didn’t even want to tell me what they did so the chances of being able to put briefing slides together was pretty remote but it didn’t stop him questioning the point of having a marketing department. It all helped me to feel quite sure that the decision to leave them to it was the right one – especially in the final days when he suddenly asked me to present something with 20 minutes notice on Emirates Skills. A project I’d worked on weeks before but assumed had gone the way of the Institutes of Technology work and hadn’t bothered to put the final presentation together. Still Fatima and I did manage to get something quite creditable together within the hour but by that time he’d lost interest
It was sad saying goodbye to Fatima and to several other colleagues from the subsidiaries, especially Al Shaheen and their new partner Dascam. I collected some very nice emails and promises to stay in touch including from Ali and Ibrahim, impressive young Emiratis who I hope will be able to realize their potential in an organisation where there is so little delegation to the younger generation.
It was sad saying goodbye to Fatima and to several other colleagues from the subsidiaries, especially Al Shaheen and their new partner Dascam. I collected some very nice emails and promises to stay in touch including from Ali and Ibrahim, impressive young Emiratis who I hope will be able to realize their potential in an organisation where there is so little delegation to the younger generation.
Thursday 15 July 2010
Signing out from the Abu Dhabi experience
As they say all things come to an end and John and I have decided to leave Abu Dhabi. It's been an interesting year and a life experience that I wouldn't have swapped for the world but we both feel that the time has come to move on and take the next step in this fascinating adventure they call life!
We decided this when we returned from another fabulous trip to the UK and it has all happened very quickly (as things have a habit of doing round here once they're agreed!) We are due to fly back on the 24th July so that didn't give us much time to get things packed, tidied up and generally finished up. Of course we've acquired an apartment full of furniture which just won't fit in the rather smaller apartment in Manchester so that has had to be sold and what an experience that has been! I posted photos and listings on dubizzle and within seconds of hitting 'send' on the final posting the phone started to ring and people descended on us. Clearly we underpriced certain items, judging by the speed with which they were sold. I could have sold the sofas and chairs about 6 times over and of course everybody wanted everything immediately. We had to beg the guy who bought the living room stuff to leave us a sofa to sit on for a couple of weeks and the lady who bought the washing machine keeps calling to see if she can have it sooner. As for the TV I had to take down the posting within the hour and turn off the phone as I was so fed up with getting calls. However, we've so far failed to sell two of the bedroom sets and the desk and are having to resort to a second hand furniture dealer who will no doubt not give us much. It's a shame watching so many beautiful things going for less than we paid for them but at the end of the day it's only furniture. Within a couple of days the apartment looked very empty and we have to eat our meals at the patio set but I'm glad that nothing has been wasted. It started to feel like living in a shop as people wandered round asking for the smaller items. I think in the end I sold a couple of IKEA chairs and table lamps for more than it would have cost to go to IKEA and buy the same items brand new!
The smaller bits and pieces and our prize (and very large) mirror are being shipped back to Manchester. I just hope the mirror will fit in the lift. Somehow organising the shipping seems to have been much more complicated than it was at the other end, despite it being the same company but then why should I be surprised by that!
We sold the car to Helen and John next door so I'm glad to think of it staying with people we know and since Helen works at the same place as me it'll know the way. We're taking it to Dubai at the weekend to get the scratch fixed where I managed to misjudge the entrance to our car park slightly. I would have loved to have brought the Jeep back with me as I adore it but the steering wheel on the wrong side would have been a bit inconvenient.
I'm gradually getting all the other bits and pieces sorted out. I don't know whether disconnecting the phone and the internet will be as traumatic as getting it installed but I daren't let them know too soon in case we find ourselves disconnected before we're ready. We also have to close our bank accounts as you aren't allowed to have an account here if you don't have a visa. I am really fretting about this one as we still have bills to pay and money to move about. Again I don't like to raise it too early just in case but it's something of a worry. We plan to complete the circle by moving to the Shangri La for the last 3 days since that was our first experience of Abu Dhabi and where John stayed when he first came out here. I'm looking forward to everything being done and spending Thursday and Friday in their beautifully chilled pool.
So what next? Well we can't go back to the UK immediately unless we want to be faced with a sizeable tax bill so we're busy planning some pretty extensive travel and enjoying our tax exile status as much as possible before coming back in the Spring. It'll be amazing to have time for trips which have never been possible in the 2 week space allotted when working. August should see us jump in the car and head for France to wander about as the fancy takes us. Autumn will probably be Europe, finishing off with a return visit to Abu Dhabi when Rachel and the family were due to come and stay so we'll all visit together. After that we might take a look at the Far East before returning to the UK in December for an extended Christmas break. Jan to March are earmarked for the Southern Hemisphere. The outline plan is Australia, New Zealand, Tahiti, Santiago, Buenos Aires and Rio though we've yet to work out the practicalities. It's all very exciting and a whole new chapter for both of us. It's also going to be wonderful to be able to spend so much time together since John came to Abu Dhabi so soon after we were married that we've been rather preoccupied since.
We decided this when we returned from another fabulous trip to the UK and it has all happened very quickly (as things have a habit of doing round here once they're agreed!) We are due to fly back on the 24th July so that didn't give us much time to get things packed, tidied up and generally finished up. Of course we've acquired an apartment full of furniture which just won't fit in the rather smaller apartment in Manchester so that has had to be sold and what an experience that has been! I posted photos and listings on dubizzle and within seconds of hitting 'send' on the final posting the phone started to ring and people descended on us. Clearly we underpriced certain items, judging by the speed with which they were sold. I could have sold the sofas and chairs about 6 times over and of course everybody wanted everything immediately. We had to beg the guy who bought the living room stuff to leave us a sofa to sit on for a couple of weeks and the lady who bought the washing machine keeps calling to see if she can have it sooner. As for the TV I had to take down the posting within the hour and turn off the phone as I was so fed up with getting calls. However, we've so far failed to sell two of the bedroom sets and the desk and are having to resort to a second hand furniture dealer who will no doubt not give us much. It's a shame watching so many beautiful things going for less than we paid for them but at the end of the day it's only furniture. Within a couple of days the apartment looked very empty and we have to eat our meals at the patio set but I'm glad that nothing has been wasted. It started to feel like living in a shop as people wandered round asking for the smaller items. I think in the end I sold a couple of IKEA chairs and table lamps for more than it would have cost to go to IKEA and buy the same items brand new!
The smaller bits and pieces and our prize (and very large) mirror are being shipped back to Manchester. I just hope the mirror will fit in the lift. Somehow organising the shipping seems to have been much more complicated than it was at the other end, despite it being the same company but then why should I be surprised by that!
We sold the car to Helen and John next door so I'm glad to think of it staying with people we know and since Helen works at the same place as me it'll know the way. We're taking it to Dubai at the weekend to get the scratch fixed where I managed to misjudge the entrance to our car park slightly. I would have loved to have brought the Jeep back with me as I adore it but the steering wheel on the wrong side would have been a bit inconvenient.
I'm gradually getting all the other bits and pieces sorted out. I don't know whether disconnecting the phone and the internet will be as traumatic as getting it installed but I daren't let them know too soon in case we find ourselves disconnected before we're ready. We also have to close our bank accounts as you aren't allowed to have an account here if you don't have a visa. I am really fretting about this one as we still have bills to pay and money to move about. Again I don't like to raise it too early just in case but it's something of a worry. We plan to complete the circle by moving to the Shangri La for the last 3 days since that was our first experience of Abu Dhabi and where John stayed when he first came out here. I'm looking forward to everything being done and spending Thursday and Friday in their beautifully chilled pool.
So what next? Well we can't go back to the UK immediately unless we want to be faced with a sizeable tax bill so we're busy planning some pretty extensive travel and enjoying our tax exile status as much as possible before coming back in the Spring. It'll be amazing to have time for trips which have never been possible in the 2 week space allotted when working. August should see us jump in the car and head for France to wander about as the fancy takes us. Autumn will probably be Europe, finishing off with a return visit to Abu Dhabi when Rachel and the family were due to come and stay so we'll all visit together. After that we might take a look at the Far East before returning to the UK in December for an extended Christmas break. Jan to March are earmarked for the Southern Hemisphere. The outline plan is Australia, New Zealand, Tahiti, Santiago, Buenos Aires and Rio though we've yet to work out the practicalities. It's all very exciting and a whole new chapter for both of us. It's also going to be wonderful to be able to spend so much time together since John came to Abu Dhabi so soon after we were married that we've been rather preoccupied since.
Tuesday 22 June 2010
Beach life
I think I spend far too much time on this blog moaning about work and not enough extolling the virtues of permanent sunshine and proximity to the sea! Just to redress the balance here are some pictures of us enjoying expat life at the Kempinski in Ajman, the Hiltonia Beach Club and the Shangri La. Not that we want to make you jealous of course when it's only 16 degrees in London in June. 50 degrees can be equally unpleasant.
Sunday 20 June 2010
More interesting takes on working life
The end of last week was full of still more bemusing experiences and this morning an Emirati colleague actually told me that you really must learn to expect things to happen the wrong way round from how they would normally be! Such a perceptive young man - so at least I'm not alone in finding things upside down a lot of the time.
Last week I was accused of writing content for a brochure using English that was 'too advanced'! So if you recruit an English Marketing and Comms manager who has a degree in English you do wonder what people were expecting. Fatima has been teaching me how to speak English to people who don't have much grasp - you have to repeat the key words and be careful not to use any linking words or politeness! We had some fun trying to rewrite some of the brochure content in this way 'CONSULTANTS, CONSULTANTS, VERY CLEVER PEOPLE, GOOD PEOPLE, WORK WITH GOOD PEOPLE'but we haven't submitted it to the subsidiary concerned. We also went to a meeting with the same people to talk about their web site. They spent an hour and a half arguing about whether the content or the design should come first - we tried in vain to tell them that the structure and the site map should come first, even waving examples at them but it fell on deaf ears. In the end we left them to the argument and hoped they won't come back and need anything from us - well there's no point in my writing advanced English for it and we can't brief a designer without a structure can we?!
Working with Fatima is a joy - she is so incisive and is teaching me so much about Emirati life but at the same time she also thinks everyone is completely crazy so I don't feel so alone! In fact the young generation of recent graduates seem to be a fabulous group of young people, ready to take on the 21st century yet still celebrate their historical culture and so well educated and with excellent English. Fatima is fortunate in that her young husband seems to share a more open approach to her life as well as his and they seem to be a very close family unit - unbelievably she has twin babies although she is only 22 and a graduate. I do worry for this generation though as the older generation seems to very unwilling to delegate responsibility or allow them the freedom to come up with new ideas so it will be difficult for them to gain the important learning experiences in order to grow and develop. Making mistakes is also not seen as an acceptable learning tool! Our boss told us that he wants new, creative ideas but we haven't yet worked out what he really means by this (he's very impressed by a calendar with his name on every page but Scott had one of those ages ago in the UK!) One of our Emirati male colleagues has been chosen for the world motorised parachute championships - in Montauban in France of all places - which looks like something pretty different and exciting so we're hoping to persuade him that the sponsorship opportunities might be something a bit new and different! Well I've never seen motorised parachutes negotiating an obstacle course a few feet of the ground so that's pretty new and impressive!
My IAT strategy now has to reduce to 3 Power Point slides so I'm fighting against this final indignity - to reduce a month of work to 3 slides makes you wonder if I shouldn't have just made it all up off the top of my head?! However, actually managing to produce a useful recommendation in that constricted a format could make me very clever indeed - perhaps I will give it some thought after all!
Last week I was accused of writing content for a brochure using English that was 'too advanced'! So if you recruit an English Marketing and Comms manager who has a degree in English you do wonder what people were expecting. Fatima has been teaching me how to speak English to people who don't have much grasp - you have to repeat the key words and be careful not to use any linking words or politeness! We had some fun trying to rewrite some of the brochure content in this way 'CONSULTANTS, CONSULTANTS, VERY CLEVER PEOPLE, GOOD PEOPLE, WORK WITH GOOD PEOPLE'but we haven't submitted it to the subsidiary concerned. We also went to a meeting with the same people to talk about their web site. They spent an hour and a half arguing about whether the content or the design should come first - we tried in vain to tell them that the structure and the site map should come first, even waving examples at them but it fell on deaf ears. In the end we left them to the argument and hoped they won't come back and need anything from us - well there's no point in my writing advanced English for it and we can't brief a designer without a structure can we?!
Working with Fatima is a joy - she is so incisive and is teaching me so much about Emirati life but at the same time she also thinks everyone is completely crazy so I don't feel so alone! In fact the young generation of recent graduates seem to be a fabulous group of young people, ready to take on the 21st century yet still celebrate their historical culture and so well educated and with excellent English. Fatima is fortunate in that her young husband seems to share a more open approach to her life as well as his and they seem to be a very close family unit - unbelievably she has twin babies although she is only 22 and a graduate. I do worry for this generation though as the older generation seems to very unwilling to delegate responsibility or allow them the freedom to come up with new ideas so it will be difficult for them to gain the important learning experiences in order to grow and develop. Making mistakes is also not seen as an acceptable learning tool! Our boss told us that he wants new, creative ideas but we haven't yet worked out what he really means by this (he's very impressed by a calendar with his name on every page but Scott had one of those ages ago in the UK!) One of our Emirati male colleagues has been chosen for the world motorised parachute championships - in Montauban in France of all places - which looks like something pretty different and exciting so we're hoping to persuade him that the sponsorship opportunities might be something a bit new and different! Well I've never seen motorised parachutes negotiating an obstacle course a few feet of the ground so that's pretty new and impressive!
My IAT strategy now has to reduce to 3 Power Point slides so I'm fighting against this final indignity - to reduce a month of work to 3 slides makes you wonder if I shouldn't have just made it all up off the top of my head?! However, actually managing to produce a useful recommendation in that constricted a format could make me very clever indeed - perhaps I will give it some thought after all!
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