19 December 2007

Goodbye to Dubai

Having spent the last few years in Dubai, in complete amazement of the mad rush of buildings getting constructed, roads and fly overs popping up within a month or two, people arriving and leaving, prices of housing, food, entertainment etc shooting through the roof we have decided it is time to look for something better.

First option of course was to go back to South Africa - but as the good old ANC Government still uses a non-racist racist policy to decided who should have jobs, who should be allowed in colleges and Universities and has no clue whatsoever on what to do about rapidly escalating crime that option was a non starter (watch this page for a good old rant on this subject later).

Next on the list Australia and New Zealand - OZ quickly feel out of the race as they decided age really is the ultimate decider as to how productive people can be. Thanks for that one - I will be now joining your neighbors and sporting rivals - watch out for the guy with the NZ jersey and springbok cap when you play us.

Of course that left New Zealand - smallish group of Islands (two big ones and some lesser island) sitting at the other side of the world from every-one else who think they are important. First steps was to find out all about immigration rules etc. - great web page Immigration New Zealand which at first has so much information that it literally takes days to get your head around the different options (maybe that is part of the sifting process - testing for perseverance and tenacity)

Anyway - I got the old CV dusted and updated, found a few web sites with NZ connections and send out a few replies to adverts and waited for the replies to start streaming in - and waited, and waited and had some serious damage done to my self esteem. This nothing happening phenomena, as anybody who has tried any of the so called job-sites before can tell you - is perfectly normal. It is also part of the learning process - job agents are very much like housing agents - they wait for a seller - me with my 'skills' and an employer with his opening and 'expectations' - to match. Of course been in the computer field looking for a computer job sometimes is a very high expectation of non technical people to understand the words I am using in my CV, and the ones the prospective employer are using actually means the same thing e.g storage ~ data management, operating systems ~ management systems tec.

(I expect a postgraduate student should be able to write a program which interfaces with a few thesaurus web sites that can do a better job - watch this space - the site should be up and running soon. Also for anybody thinking of stealing this idea - I formally announce it today 20 December 2007 on the world wide web in this blog - and I will sue your arse.)

Eventually I got a telephone interview - which was a start but the expectations of the employer and me did not quite match up ...

more re. this in the next action packed blog episode.

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