You have seen Gladiator right? The Russell Crow film? Of course you have. Russell is a wronged man fighting the fight but one constant thing keeps pulling him through is this flashback of him being reunited with his wife and kid. It’s a beautiful thing and it’s what i will be in two weeks. I’m kind of freaking out. It’s all falling onto place.

My wife is 34 weeks pregnant and I am shitting it. Every time I am in communication with her I think she is going to tell me her waters have broken and I will miss the birth. Every morning I wake up in a cold sweat relieved no texts or missed calls have occurred during the night. It’s hell but it’s a hell that is drawing closer and closer to an end. I am here and she is there and all the months of planning and planning and planning and heartache are ending. The tearful drive home from Bahrain airport in July as I waved my son and wife goodbye with only a long tunnel of isolation, loneliness and work insecurity seems eons away. Here we are. October. Purgatory is drawing to a conclusion. The plan has been months in the making but it’s going, by fate and design, to plan. I have been posted back to the desert.
(more…)

I had this amazing dream. It started last Thursday and ended yesterday. My dream was about me in Bangkok with my wife, my son and my extended family. I was surrounded by people not covered in cloth and people that smiled and laughed and had fun. People could drink and eat in the open and there was a vibrant energy to the city that everyone could enjoy. My son could play outside with or without the nanny and my wife was happy and supported with her every need counted for. I was surrounded by love and my records and I spent hours just being happy. I arrived home yesterday to drab dusty skies and the harshness of a banal familiarity that was not easy on my mind, soul and body. From love to hate, family to isolation, liberation to oppression, poor to rich, ease to struggle. Months of build up gone in the blink of an eye like a Burning Man sculpture. So I awake at the other end of the tunnel looking down to a small spec of light far, far away. Again. This time it will be different. This time I have no fear. None. Eid has been and gone and they can sack me tomorrow and I’ll be pleased as punch. If they don’t I’m going to crawl over the month of November line and try and get 7 weeks out of the cunts as paid/unpaid leave as most of December is a holiday here in Bahrain. So, get through October and if I am made redundant then sweet Jesus Alabama I’m all for it. C’est le vie is the theme from now on. The fear of job loss gone. 9 months they have called the shots now the worm has turned.

The end game looms into view. Over a month ago I said goodbye to my little family and I had to be strong and hold things down here and be strong and held things down here is what I’ve done. The end is in sight thank Allah and its now a matter of 8 days until I board the silver bird back to Bangkok and back to my family. June, July,August all merge into one out here. January, May and April do as well come to that. Everything is always the same because the weather is the same. Blue skies. Hot. Beautiful no doubt but it’s hard to know what time of the year it is apart from Ramadan when you can tell because nothing is open and everyone is at home. I’ve done it now. I’ve done a summer in the Middle East and yes it’s jolly hot. Check. Another tick in the box of life experience. It’s been a blast out here (no, really) and I will be sad to say goodbye (really) but I can hear the bells of London calling us from afar. In four days it will be the 3rd Anniversary of our move out of London and the UK to work abroad. We’ve been on the run for a while now and I’d like some stability for a few years with the devil I know. I hated London when I left but I think I have fallen in love with it again on our return although I know I will hate it again. I’ve done the slog and now it’s time for a rest and some family time. My life here is poor. I am constantly tired, bored and frustrated. There is nothing to do here. Nothing. Even the shops are shut until 6pm. My colleague, a young American chap, the world at his feet, told he spent 22 hours in his flat this weekend. That’s fairly typical. There is nothing to do natch. I, and my colleagues, are going out of our tiny minds.

8 days.

So, predictably, here we are at the final melting down of the Bahrain office. Something remarkable needs to happen to keep this thing going. Firstly it’s Ramadan here. What’s Ramadan like? Well it’s not a grim as I had initially feared. Firstly and most importantly, the working hours are reduced as the locals are now zoned out thanks to their starvation. We work six hour days which is awesome as you can go home early. The streets are empty in the day and everything is chilled out. Of course you cannot eat, drink, smoke or chew gum but it’s not too arduous. Local staff are not exactly full of energy at the best of times so watching them slow down even further is not exactly a jolt. Besides, what is there to do? Zero. That’s what. As I posted last week we need new projects and we need them now. We are not getting them and we won’t get anything of any substance until next year I am guessing. The situation is as serious as cancer.

(more…)

So this is the day. This is the day it all falls down. Today has been a pivotal day job wise. It has seen the canning of a key project our company was due to work on. You know the project that was going to see us all ok until October? They had counted on it being signed but the client has fucked us off. The best part is that was going to be my project. All mine. A CV defining project. Not anymore. All over. Word only seeped out today and its not official and I thank my spies and colleagues in high places for the tip off as at least I know rather than wait until some faceless Chinese colleague tells me when they are ready. Still, it now leaves me kind of fucked and vulnerable when set against my other colleagues who, no better than me, are part of a pre-defined clique in existence way before I turned up. Now, last in first out comes into full effect and that’s not a great look for me. All this this running from burning building to burning building is getting very tiring. This time last year I was in Shanghai and things were just dandy after a nightmare two years on the career front in Hong Kong. Two months later the wave of recession smashed against our profession and I have been running ever since. From continent to continent try to avoid the advancing wave but here it is again looming up behind us its shadow long and dark. I can’t tell you how much effort I have put into things here and it’s crushing to know that it may have all been a waste of time. Time will tell of course and it will take weeks to filter down to the point where people are sacked as a result of today’s news but I am a prime target. Again. I’m tired. I’m tired of running to keep still, of the uncertainty, of the worry, of my family moving to the four corners of the earth every year, of this fucking desert. I want to go home now I think.

28 days.