So much to do, so little time ..

After a blog absence, two weeks of which was spent in the UK, I am now back in Dubai and have started another part time job on an arts project. This is just as well because we were recently informed that spouse had been fired!

It’s not quite that simple but apparently the funding for his job has been cut and his contract will end at the beginning of March. When I heard the news I was spitting blood and trying to find out if we could sue but close inspection of the contract reveals a complete lack of litigation options. Consequently all I can do is imagine walking into both the Brussels and Washington headquarters of the (soon-to-be-former) employer with a couple of sub machine guns.

What infuriates me is that it took 7 fuggin stressful months to get plugged in here, the upshot being that things had started to fall into place in the few weeks before we got this news. So I was just starting to relax and imagine being able to buy some new knickers rather than watching every dirham go into a bottomless pit, and then this happens.

What kind of moronic organisation relocates a new employee without having guaranteed funding for at least two years?? Then again why were we surprised? There have been problems since the very beginning with spouse's job. The organisation were hopeless at the relocational logistics and have demonstrated a considerable lack of administrative competence on a number of occasions since. Managerially disastrous, agenda driven users living off a reputation built at the expense of their employees and a board of ex-politicos who want to die without having what they did (or didn't do) while in office on their consciences. Oh yes! May curses rain upon them!

Anyway, we have to stay here. We no longer have jobs in the UK to go back to and there's somebody else living in our house! So spouse is looking for freelance and my arts project job could turn full time. In fact the project is morphing in classic Dubai stylee into something of a ‘grand projet’ so quickly that it could become double time!

It is a very exciting project although I am a little wary of a full time job. The last one I had turned me into a malevolent witch with extreme homicidal tendencies. Since then I have engineered a careful and varied self employment regime which maintains sanity, solvency and enough time to be an artist. However, going full time may be the only viable financial option especially now that I may have a spouse to support.

The trip to London was at least paid for by spouse’s (soon-to-be-former) employers. We spent the time raiding the last of our savings for the next rent instalment in Dubai and clearing out my beautiful studio and converting it into a bedroom so we can rent it out. Tragic.

It is still not certain that we will be able to stay. Assuming we can get round the visa issue we should know within six months whether it is financially sustainable or not. In the meantime no new knickers.