I'm off to work in Dubai as some of you know, thought I'd chronicle my experience along the way. So this will either be a very short thread if UAE totally blows, or what I'm hoping for.. an epic megathread.
I'll be avoiding cultural/religious/ethnic snipes in the thread as that's a sure fire way to get terminated one way or another in a region that's clearly got some major issues right now, but hopefully you can fill in the blanks for me and add some anecdotes of your own.
I'm pretty stoked, new horizons... I've been pushing for change in my career over the past 5 years and it's been tough at times, but this really is what I had in mind. Time and place plus hard work seems to have paid off. Probably have a different view on that after months of 50c bum rash, but for now it's looking quite rosey. I've lived through -20c for months on end in Scandinavia, so this is going to the other end of the scale.
A bit of background on what I do as some of you might already know, it's not all glam, or at least hasn't been over the years. I'm an accident repair technician, worked as a contractor for many years and more recently hit the books at night school and work as a technical trainer for the trade.
Over the years I've had the opportunity to work for manufacturers on some pretty cool projects including these...
Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren
Koenigsegg CCXR
Aston Martin Vanquish and DB9
McLaren P1
Obviously lots of high end vehicles in the ME and a big demand for the standards required to work on them. There are issues of confidentiality, not in a ninja kind of way, but corporate/personal disclosure plus of course the Smeg factor. The company is a well established multinational and the role is a 50/50 split between managing the regional representatives and giving technical training to the employees of the numerous workshops in the region.
So that's the background... there's a lot of travel involved, typically flying out of Dubai to another ME country on Sunday and flying back in on Thursday and living for the weekend in Dubai.. it's a tough gig right.. but someone has to do it