Working in other countries to earn good tax free / low taxed money ... seems always an attractive idea ,,, but yes pitfalls and adjustments ... The story .. A friend of mine partner ,, took early retirement from SABC last year at the age of 58 .. we tried to persuade him to stay on till he was at least 60 as his pension payout would be better .. but now looking at whats unfolding in the news about the so called " transformation " of the SABC I can now understand the frustration he as a senior technical person was going through ... he was ending upo with serious stress related symptoms .. In reality the new transforming board managers etc of SABC transformed it into a financially strapped inefficient overstaffed money squandering entity , the results thereof now under scrutiny by an audit .. another failed social experiment ...
anyhow Due to reduced pension Vic has been keeoing himself busy doing some part time teaching assignments here in SA but yes he earns a pittance ... so when he came across this opportunity to work for a year in Jeddah Saudi Arabia paying when converted to rands very good money , he decided to have a go ... He flew out on Saturday ... I enquired last night as to safe arrival etc .. David sent me this email ...
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Yes have heard from Vic but does not sound all that good ! He has been put up at a dreadful residential hotel that has a toilet with no seat
a small bed side table and small telly .City he says looks like a huge construction site with very few trees if you can call them that at all !The heat is beyond description and he does not even have a kettle to boil water for tea. There are three eygyptian teachers staying at the hotel with him who are evidently very pleasant but when they took Vic to a local supermarket they could not go inside for fear of been arrested by the religious police as it was prayer time and all locals have to be in mosque at the five prayer times daily.They had to explain to the door man that Victor was a visiting foreignor in order to let him in ! Vic cant get his computer set up until he gets first pay cheque and cant use SA credit cards while he is working overseas according to banking regulations.To crown it all he was told to get to jeddah by the 28th but was informed today that the school is only opening on the 10 th or 12 th of next month so he has to sit around in this dingy hotel room for two weeks before begining to teach! He said that the city is dreadful and just full of sand ! I am too depressed about the whole thing but at least am surrounded by familiar things , he is cooped up in an awful hotel room with few prospects of getting anything better as it is just too expensive and the school stipend only pays for virtually half of the cost . the europeon compound is far from the school....
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Mmm seems a bit of a shock , culture shock ... or reframe it in a positive light , an adventure ,, and yes adjustment .. and yes currently he sort of very hamstrung , caught between a pillar and a post ... maybe a warning here if you ever considering something like that .. ensure the broker who hired you is totally kosher organized and takes proper care of you ...
I'm sure he will settle in once busy .. but for now ...
But then the other side of the coin where is the graciousness that countires are supposed to display to their guests albeit working guests ,, who are providing a valuable service that it appears they in their oil washed wealth are too lazy or regard as below their station .??? After all they are teaching their children valuable knowledge ... ???
For my part I could not go to a place like that , the thought of religious police trawling around looking for errant non prayer folk just makes me feel as though I'm being smothered ... I would keep myself sequestered in the European compound instead and only move to work and back ....
In a strange way it reminds me of some of the stories on this site about the shock some womenfolk had first arriving in O'mund many years ago when the town was still growing up .. but t even then people were given reasonable and free accommodation and yes as the town grew , it became a comfortable oasis...
AN UPDATE ... Got a very long redirected email via David from Victor .. I used the words adjustment .. adventure .. well Victor is doing just that ... he cast the die .. and now where he is .. the preferable would be to be in a compound in the compant of other like minded .. ... but yes he found a few good hlepful folk in the persona of four egyptian gentlemen ... who are currently helping him through and protecting him from being fleeced ... I will quote his opening words " from leaving what was becoming a humdrum life in Sa I'm now thrust into survival mode" .. and I think secretly enjoying it ... lots to be said for reframing any bad situation one is put in ....
SOME SETBACK ,, THE ADVENTURE TAKING SOME BAD TURNS .. A Mail from david this Morning ... interesting reading .. again .. how ungracious !! what a way to treat guests in your country ?? read below ./...
How am I doing ? Not toooooo well Managed to speak to Vic on skype last night and could see him on the webcam but lo and behold
This morning he was no longer on line and it now transpires that the kingdom of saudi controls all access to the internett usage and has bared him from using it ..so no telephone or internett usage ! However if he paysR550 .00 per month they will allow him access.P@#$%ses in turbans!!!!He cant even pay accounts from there as planned !!!via the nett. They shoved another of the teachers from CT into his room late Monday night he and the guy had to share the same bed!!!! Vic beside himself .He was also short changed by the principal for the airfair, to the amount of R1000.00 and they did the same to another of the teachers . All very sleazy and dishonest afair and definitely not what it was made out to be
Silly boy to have even thought of going there never mind to live there, hope he is able to sort things out and get out of there, the sooner the better.
policedog-small
Sandy!!! the plight of you friend in Saudi Arabia is all to common in today's world, and I remember a TV series 'ARF WIEDERSEHEN PET' it was set in the North East England around the seventy's.
The main characters Jimmy Nail and "Timothy Spall" ( was in Harry Potter films) went over to Germany to work, and the gist of the series was they all landed in one of the huts on the building site.
Now most of us younger generation had no idea what to expect when we first left the mother land and traveled by ship or aircraft to South Africa.
I remember Durban nice city, and then being told about a town in Namibia were it was a good family orientated place, and you could have a good life there.
Of course flying into this town from the green lush vegetation of the Cape Town area, looked very daunting, and with a young family to support the word fear crossed ones mind.
I hope your friend settles down there in Saudi Arabia and he learns by the experience.........because there are not many places around like
Oranjemund.................................................
Diffs is O.mund did not try to fleece anyone ... the beginnings were rough and ready .. but then as i mentioned before it became this oasis and indeed a hospitable one ... and people were paid fairly ... if not better than the outside world ..
I guess that Oranjemund also was stocked full of your own ethnic countrymen back in them those days...... that would have helped.....
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Well the saga I reported on inititally has now come to an end for this friend ,,, turns out he was
"suspended " for steadfastly refusing to adjust the horrendously low test and exam results of these oil rich parents brats into close to 100 % pass rate ,,, the headmaster of this private school is well connected with the royalty and oil wealthy .. runs a passing mill whereby the kids who most probably wont have to work a stitch in their lives , thats unless OIL suddenly runs out , or some really wonderful cheap replacement by some scientific wonderwork of energy that makes oil redundant ....are given these wonderful markings which make the parents proud and willing to pay the huge fees demanded , sadly so turning the kids into " qualified academic cripples " a travesty of which he in principle would have no part ,, anyhow he was left alone to do the educating till crunch time being the end of the year came up , again he refused to mark them up , so hence " suspended ' and for the last month relegated to sitting in the staff tea room , an egyptian teacher obvioulsy desperate for work and continued stay put in his place and obviously persuaded to adjust the marks ... Not to comb all under the same comb , but yes in that space he found himself a lack of honesty and integrity ,,, lots of laws and rules that were in black and white the only time grey applied was for expediency of the rich and connected ... below the mail I got ,, I have removed names for privacy ...
I love the expression of the desert wasteland " paradise "
yes ............. arrives tommorow at 8.30am... but what a saga...evidently they only paid him YESTERDAY late and then witheld the exit visa.They wanted to accompany him to the airport and give him the visa there so that he would not then abscond and try and remain behind and work elsewhere!!!! Can you f@$%ing believe these people ! they think everyone wants to remain in that desert wasteland as if it is paradise !...He phoned me at 12 today to say that he had just snatched the visa from their hands in the office and ran off ...at that point he was waiting for his lift to the airport.I phoned him about an hour later and he said that he had weighed his luggage in and was waiting for the flight .He sent a facebook message which if you read between the lines strongly says that he cannot wait to be out of there!!! So maybe we can expect a slightly more enlightened ......... when he returns
Hi Sandy, If I can say the following. I have travelled a lot in my timne and managed projects in the Middle East. The last place anyone wants to go in the Middle East is Saudi Arabia. I fortunately was not in Saudi but had work mates that worked there. They told me the same stories as what your friend went through.
I was very fortunate to have worked in Kuwait and travelled often to Dubai and Bahrain. I must say it was the most enjoyable experience of my life. If I could go back tomorrow, I would.