Happy ever after…..?
When a publisher first wrote to me offering me a book deal after my first Sunday Times column, I assumed it was a vanity publisher, keen to make a fast buck. This morning I had an email that I read four times before I was convinced it wasn’t my best friend playing a trick on me.
I had mentioned in my column in yesterday’s Sunday Times that we might need a friendly sheikh to help with our housing problems. What do I wake up to? An email from the best friend of the property manager of the sheikh. Amazing. “Call him,” he said. “Tell him you’re a friend of mine.” I didn’t need telling twice.
I have called him, and he sounds totally charming. He runs all the properties on the Corniche which is exactly where we want to be. I am trying not to get too excited but he has asked me to call him at 9am tomorrow when he is in the office to let me know what he has available.
So tomorrow is a big day; the girls start school and we might, just might, finally have our happy ending, or even our happy beginning….
Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2008
01 Sep 2008 helena
Take it !! Your problems are not at all unusual and it will get a lot worse after Ramadan, when there will be a wave of new expats arriving. In fact I know of several people now who accepted jobs in Abu Dhabi but eventually had to give them up because they could not find anywhere to live (not to depress you or anything…). The thing you found about being asked for a whole year’s rent in advance is the norm now too — 2-3 yrs ago you could get away with paying in 2 cheques, but not anymore. Bonne chance !
I hope your sojourn in the Gulf will be happy. But let me just tell you a little story.
I come from Bermuda. I have lived in the UK since graduating Edinburgh Univ. in the late-’70s. In the early-’80s I went back to see if I could live in Bermuda; I’d always wondered if I might, so needed to give it a go, to find out one way or the other. I got a well paid job there, no income tax, beautiful beaches, sailing, etc. etc. The “good life”, one might think.
But the costs of living in Bermuda (particularly housing) are amongst the highest in the world, so my nice tax-free pay packet didn’t go as far as I’d expected - which many disillusioned ex-pats find out very soon after taking jobs there as accountants, lawyers and the like.
More important, Bermuda was, for me, a provincial backwater, culturally, even though I knew (and still know, and very much like) a lot of people from there who’d travelled and been educated abroad and gone back to live there. But to ME it was BORRRRRING and small-minded and…insular!
I hot-footed it back to the UK within 6 months to: open-minded and intelligent and diverse and stimulating and interesting debate about things; really good newspapers and (selectively) television; nice cool summers (!); and the opportunity to do what I do as a profession (writing and editing). Life, for me, was (and is) not a beach (much as I like beaches); it’s a process of thoughtful and considered evolution.
It took me a long time to realise that I could live the way I wanted to live, in the UK, and visit wherever I wanted to visit from here (including Bermuda), rather than the other way around.
Everyone’s personal situation is different, of course, and unique, but my bolt from Bermuda almost 30 years ago taught me to think carefully, and regularly revise my thinking about what kind of life I really wanted, what kind of physical and cultural and even moral environment I wanted to live in, and, ultimately, where I wanted to call “home”.
Boy they don’t make it easy for you to work there do they? Hope the apartment works out for you. I know the gnawing feeling in your gut when you are worried about these major things! Take care of yourself!