Oh Yeah!

The call with the executive leader went pretty good yesterday! And that rocks!
Personally I'v got a very good feeling and once more hope that the processes will now take off. The first day date we basically said, should be January 1 2009 - and that's pretty soon.
The issues around that are of course that we still need to resign from our rent, from various insurance policies, quit the car lease and sell the stuff we don't want to bring to Dubai.
But as I don't have a contract or something like an offer letter or whatever would be needed to show that there is a firm commitment, I just don't dare to quit and break down our life over here at this point.

Fear

While preparing ourself for our journey and our new life in Dubai, sometimes real fear pops up.
Yet is not everything clear. I don't have any written nor any oral commitment. Hence the start date and the contract details are all pretty unclear. However, I strongly believe that this time it'll become true and we finally can had for new waters.
Nevertheless, in lonely hours the feeling of fear comes along. Will it really happen? What will we do if not? Will the new salary package be ok? Can we afford to stay in a nice place? Will we like it in Dubai and what happens if not?
Many more questions arise when I start to think about it. But I need to get it going. Grab all the stuff we don't need anymore, sell it over ebay or ricardo (ebay-like service in Switzerland, pretty nice interface) and prepare the rest for movement. Because, when it happens, it'll happen soon.

Tomorrow, the Executive Manager for my profession invited me for a first phone-interview. Hopefully I am not to nervous and can ask all the questions I have in mind. Like: when can we go there for a look-see trip/project? When will we talk about all the formalities? How will my final job look like? and so forth... (writing this post makes me even more fidgety)

Oh dear, let it happen rather soon!

planning

Yesterday, I had the chance to talk to the responsible manager in Dubai. 

He was so kind and called me from his holiday (!), which I deeply appreciated.

During the call he asked me why we would actually want to move to Dubai. Well, that's an easy question:

- Switzerland is a very mature market and therefore not very dynamic. Say, it's almost a bit boring... and hence, we would very much like to work in a emerging  country and be part of such a dynamic environment.

- the weather is pretty bad in Switzerland, especially during fall and winter time. The midland is mostly covered by fog and therefore sun is a rather rare thing between November and late March.

- we would like to discover new cultures and see other parts of the world.

Then he explained how the salary and compensation is organized: there will be a base salary, paid monthly. On top of that one will get a housing and car allowance. While the car allowance should be enough to cover all expenses related to it the housing allowance might not. Simply, because the housing prices are very high in Dubai and still raising. However, the good news about it is, that my employer just raised the housing allowance by 65% recently. Hence, we should be ok with it. 

The next step will now be to plan for a look-see trip, bound to a project that could profit from my knowledge so that there is a business reason behind such a trip. So, I need to find a sponsor and hope that my manager will support it. Keep your fingers crossed!

Originally uploaded by The Great Shadow