What a job

Marshalling at Yas Marina Circuit

The Goat had a call out of the blue in early September regarding Paid Employment. An actual proper job, and not merely a per diem for marshalling motorsports. Excellent news: he's not done any real actual work since finishing the flat in Budapest.

One long telephone interview later, and the job was his, barring some paperwork. Just resubmit his CV in the Client's required format for the rubber stamp and Robert would be his mother's brother.

The job itself is right up the Goat's alley. It is design management and not the project management that the Goat knows and loves so well. The Goat does not fancy living and working in Lahore away from home, and the employer agreed that provided that the Goat would Roam for a few days at a time to design offices in Lahore and New Delhi, with the occasional trip to the project site up in the Hindu Kush - yes, Afghanistan - he would largely be able to work from home, co-ordinating the design teams an writing the technical reports. And as the employing firm is Australian, being paid every fortnight would be a bonus.

Start date mid-September, or so everyone thought.

At this point, the client approved the Goat's CV, that far exceeds the Terms of Reference: a Bachelor's degree in Civil Engineering and at least ten years experience in a relevant field. The said relevant field is not a level playing field, but a mountain. Exactly like the Hajjar mountains in the UAE but writ much, much larger. At his prospective employer's suggestion, he made a PowerPoint presentation to show off his relevant experience and, to be honest, his presentation skills. But this sits on his home computer gathering virtual cyberdust.

But, and here comes the big but, the international bank that is financing this huge project doesn't like the Goat's BSc. The previous candidate, who was approved and then for personal reasons ("Afghanistan? Are you out of your mind? I forbid my husband from...etc") withdrew has a MSc. Now the bank requires a Master's.

How careless of the Goat not to go to Oxbridge University and get his Master's automatically a year after graduating.

It is as if the Bank specified a Yaris, was offered a Patrol, and then turned his nose up at a Pajero.  

The firm is, as the Goat writes this, trying to talk sense into the Bank. However, here we are at nearly November. The site is now covered with snow and will be inaccessible until about May 2018. The firm doesn't have any realistic alternative projects, so the Goat sits at home kicking his fetlocks.

And not being paid.

]}:-{>

Hephaestus

Remember back in April 2010 when the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland pushed a load of ash into the atmosphere? Remember how the ash cloud grounded aircraft in and out of Europe?

I was very, very affected by this, being trapped in the UK and unable to return to my job in the UAE for over a week. I was deeply unimpressed with Hephaestus, the Greek god of fire, blacksmithing, volcanoes, and other hot things. And you don't get much hotter than molten rock. Presumably I wasn't the only one railing against the gods in general and this one in particular.

I was even more unimpressed when I got back and was, within four days, made redundant. Hephaestus, you really can't take criticism, can you?

And being made redundant from my new job eleven months after that left me as dischuffed as a broken-down steam locomotive. You have had another sense-of-humour failure haven't you, Hephaestus?

Fortunately, I landed a further new job in Qatar, but as it turns out I'm allergic to working for arseh- crazy people that particular post lasted a year. This was the firm that promised me a No Objection Certificate and then later when I asked for one told me ('told me' is a euphemism for 'lied') that they'd never promised an NOC and therefore refused to issue one. Consequently I was banned from working in Qatar for two years. Oy, Hephaestus, this has now got really old.

Despite trying, I ended up travelling, taking the occasional odd job, and generally being a house elf for two years. The novel I tried to write ended up being 50,000 words of unreadable shite, so making my fortune writing best-sellers does not seem to be an option.

After two years, I landed a job in Qatar (again) and took leave of my senses. I thought I could stand it for six months, but the contract dragged on for two years. Not funny any more, Hephaestus.

And when that contract finished and I was released from the Job From Hell, I went off to Budapest to work for Beloved Wife and myself.

And here I am now, back in Dubai and looking for a job. Déjà vu all over again.

Hephaestus, I officially hate you.

]}:-{>

The Raving

Six years in the State of Qatar made me richer; made me fatter;
Killed my student overdraft and bought a Nissan from some guy.
Just as I got comfortable came some unexpected trouble:
Made redundant. At the double, found a new job in Dubai.
Said to Qatar, “That’s goodbye”
Sold my stuff. Away did fly.

Then the global downturn floored us. Thus I got my marching orders.
Off I went to Abu Dhabi in a tiny rental car
Where it seems they were desiring those ambitious; those aspiring
Engineers, and they were hiring. It was close, but no cigar,
And so I said my au revoir
And found myself back in Qatar.

Now here comes a huge bombshell: I’d walked into the Job From Hell.
There really wasn’t anything that I could do to fix the mess.
Yet my slippy-shouldered boss who didn’t really give a toss
Or care who he could double-cross, he drowned me under piles of stress.
My valedictory address
Might well have been an SOS.

Thus I left, and I was banned , such are the rules of that fair land.
I had to wait two years, and then agreed to six months’ self-torment.
My brain had clearly gone haywire. I went from frying pan to fire
Because, alas, it did transpire that nobody would give consent
To anything I could present.
Hence my insanity descent.

“Six months,” they said, and two years on I can escape. Yes’ I’ll be gone.
I tried, but I’m not good enough to cope with this benighted place.
My shackles struck, and my release must surely offer me some peace:
The stress and grief at least will cease; I’m really not a waste of space.
And I’m not leaving in disgrace,
But entering the marketplace.

]}:-{>

Dreary Diary - TL; DR

A true account of the last few months of the Goat's diary. Only the names have been changed to protect the Goat from the guilty.

Sun 09 August
Today’s presentation went well and was “very good.’ We are “the best performing consultant.”

Unfortunately the target audience, including Mr K, was the usual plethora of OCD, ADHD, and ESN and it was really difficult to get them to concentrate or understand. Happy, joy, etc.

Plus a bollocking from my senior management for failing to achieve the impossible vis-à-vis the newly redefined Key Performance Indicators. It’s like running 100m in 11 seconds, then being forced to wear leg irons, achieving 20 seconds, and then being whined at for failing to get 11 seconds or better.

Mon 10 August
Just back from another meeting at the Faculty of Orchilalia.

Dear Mr D,

As you disagree with our contention that the meeting went well, and you do not believe Mr K’s assessment that we’re very good, may I suggest that you cancel your contract with us and do everything yourself?

That way, my employment will terminate, I can escape from this hellhole, and you can go fcek yourself.

Yours insolently…

Tue 18 August
Mr K wants a presentation on Thursday (because he’s apparently forgotten what I showed him in May) and keeps inviting more and more people. I am convinced that someone has noticed a discrepancy between what we sketched in May and what I’ve developed by August, and Mr K’s out to make me look stupid.

Thu 20 August
Unusually for me I didn’t sleep. My brain refused to shut down over today’s Presentation from Hell. Mr K has sent notes of his review of our report and has provided loads of uncalled-for comments.

Presentation did not go well, with Mr K arguing about every point. Every point, including where they are obviously wrong (citing non-existent design standards, demanding detailed designs for blatantly unbuildable options, etc).

Pissed off? Doesn’t even come close. “I am at the limits of my medication.”

Now in another bluddy meeting. What a waste of a day.

Sun 23 August
The bullshine has started already. Mr K, seeking confirmation that ducts will fit alongside street lighting in a 3m median (which they will – duh!), is now demanding (completely irrelevant) foundation details to query ad nauseam.

Tue 25 August
I have just seen an updated schedule that shows completion of design at 29 December. DECEMBER.

And the joyous news that all the document submittals are coming back for yet another go-around, so December looks very optimistic.

Wed 26 August
Today’s Audit From Hell may be summarised by “You need a register to keep track of the register that records a checklist that checks that the logged checks have been checked as carried out.”

Never mind the fceking engineering. As long as the TickyBox Police are kept satisfied…

Sun 30 August
Mr D (9am): Meeting tomorrow. Bring expert.
Muggins (9am): Expert is in in the Levantosphere. Weekend. Can’t get hold of him until tomorrow.
Mr D (3.30pm): Meeting tomorrow at 11am.
For fcek’s sake, you fceking fcek.

Mon 31 August
Aargh! Not waving but drowning.

So help me, I’m about to break. Too many things arriving in my inbox with “must be done by COB today” and I’m barely keeping up with simply distributing the work. To say nothing of report writing, coordinating, and dealing with a fcekload of QA crap which amounts to spending days creating new records, registers, etc., and populating them.

More bluddy meetings. Each one comprises a 45 minute drive, meeting, overrun, delivery boy duties, notes, 45 minutes back, draft minutes, revise minutes, catch up with emails that arrived in my absence…

Wed 02 September
Becoming sick with worry. Too many balls in the air, and more being added hourly. Everything is demanded immediately, and failure to deliver any of them results in more paperwork to explain why.

Things falling between the cracks having been buried by dozens of newer emails. Result: irate phone calls From Messrs D and K demanding immediate action. All need to be divvied out to staff all of whom are either already overwhelmed or not at their desks, or often both.

Thu 03 September
Slightly better day today. I’ve been able to shift a lot of things, and my approach at the moment to unreasonable “I want…” deadlines is “Then you can want!”

Sat 05 September
Oh, Goat…! Here we go again with another six days.

Sat 13 September
Five more sleeps; two presentations; and a fcekload of rewriting to do. I can’t start any of the rewrites until after meetings that haven’t been scheduled, and instructions following meetings. And because Mr K is already winding down for Eid… I’m getting kicked for delaying the fceking project.

Mon 14 September
Antici…

…pation. Another skill sadly lacking everywhere I look.

Nobody can understand how I can forecast the logical consequences of instructions from Upon High. Result is no preparation for the fallout that Cassandra predicted.

Dear Mr D,
Please find enclosed a plot. Provided with my compliments to replace the one that you seem to have mislaid…”

Tue 15 September
Grud on toast! This week’s dragging. Still not yet half past Tuesday.

I do not know why “Do not draw X” results in draftsman spending hours (as in every time I turn my back after repeating myself) drawing “X”.

Neither do I understand why “Copy this CAD drawing” takes all day. It took me an hour to draw from nothing, and only needs a drawing frame to be added.

Wed 16 September
“Please reprint all eight copies of the document because there’s a one-character misprint on one footer.” And we wonder why deforestation might be a problem.

Why is your design stronger and more expensive than the other contracts?
Because their calcs are wrong.
But their calcs are approved.
If we do what they did, it’ll fail.
Change the design!

Mr K puts us through the wringer, but lets others get away with shite. FFS.

Thu 17 September
Just found out Eid has shifted. I have a flight booked for Sat pm and Sun is now a holiday. I get to spend a day in Doha when EVERYTHING will be shut. Cheap Flights will charge the GDP of Latvia to change the ticket.

My cup runneth over.

Tue 29 September
Oh, deep joy. Mood yesterday was good. It has instantly plummeted today after a meeting with Mr D. He wanted me to redraft a document for this morning, and he just told me how I should totally rewrite it again.

Wed 30 September
---/..-./..-./…

The reviewer is on leave. His subordinate can’t make a decision. The designer is somewhere in the Levantosphere. We offered a video conference. Mr D is demanding that the designer appear in person. Tomorrow. Immigration is shut until next week. The designer can’t get a visa. This is all my fault.

Aaaaand…I have rewritten that godforsaken report twice more today. I’m forbidden from using ANY of the reasons why we want what we need in my justification. It will be rejected and we’ll be left with having to tear down half a bridge and redesign it from scratch. All because it complies with the 2015 standards but not the 1997.

Utterly and completely demoralised.

Monday 05 October
Oh deep joy. Report rejected because we didn’t address Comment 15. But there are only 14 fceking comments. This will go on until they nail me into a box.

I try and try, and it’s bluddy Mission Fceking Impossible. “Can’t be done, Mr Goat.”

Sun 11 October
I bust my arse to get Mr D what he wants by Saturday, an artificial deadline imposed on Thursday afternoon. Sunday morning, and there’s an email telling me to change it.

AGAIN, EVERYTHING I FCEKING DO IS FCEKING WRONG.

They changed their tiny minds, but this still doesn’t prevent me from getting the blame for failing to be psychic.

Trouble is I get blamed for late delivery of everything because of abortive work taking up engineering and drafting time. This in turn is because we don’t have an unlimited supply of technical staff, which is my fault for under-resourcing, which I can do nothing about because of offshore management.

Mon 12 October
TWO independent sets of comments (three if you include Mr D’s whinging about them) that prove Mr K can’t read simple drawings. Result is yet another fceking rewrite. I can’t dumb it down any more without writing it in Comic Sans 16 point.

Wed 14 October
Maybe I should get on with wasting my time writing technical reports for rejection, instead of whingeing about it.

Dismayed, distraught, demoralised, disincentivised, discouraged. I just want to crawl under a rock.

Not off this weekend, worst luck. Got a fcekload of reports to rewrite urgently.

I think part of the problem is the minimum 48h/wk. I generally average 52 including weekends. Compare with the stereotypically hardworking Germans. 35. And our London office? 37.

Thu 15 October
I’m still alive, so I guess I can drag my lazy arse into the office.

Sat 17 October
Good news: Anti-anger medication is available in Qatar without prescription. Coincidence?

Mon 19 October
Mr D wants my boss to come from the Levantosphere and “as Project Director” sort out various issues. Mr D hasn’t even approached me as PD. I am superfluous.

For obvious reasons, everyone is keeping me away from client meetings. Suits me fine, but as it’s a major part of why I’m here…

Much as anticipated, “Propose a bridge and get stakeholder feedback” has mutated into “For free, develop every conceivable option including ludicrous ones. Not done this? That’s ‘cos you’re crap.”

Wed 21 October
“Blah, blah, submittal is crap…

Item 3: Show this one thing only.
Item 5: Show all the other stuff too.
Item 6: Show all the stuff we previously told you to remove.”

Tossers!

Sun 25 October
You know the ongoing reports ball-ache? My email inbox includes demands for revised (again) text and additional drawings for Reports 1, 2, 3, 5, 6 by tomorrow. They take nearly a week each when drawings are included.

Wed 28 October
In THE SAME COMMENTS SHEET, Mr K disputes the traffic figures from the approved report, demands printouts of the analysis that he already has in the approved report, demands two traffic lanes because he thinks one lane isn’t enough, and demands one lane because traffic flows are light.

Rebuttal of this garbage will take me a week.

Thu 29 October
Mr D: “Blah blah…no reports have yet been approved after one year, which is holding up construction and it’s all your fault. You are to blame.”

Fceking aresholes. Do they think I’m not trying my best?

Mr D sees the garbage we get back from Mr K and regards it as my fault for not delivering what Mr K wants to see today,even though it’s exactly what Mr K demanded yesterday..

I sent an internal email including “Does Mr D think we’re not doing our best?” and got a response from my boss: “He doesn’t think.”

Sun 01 November
I wonder which part of “Update the road cross section drawing” means “Use the old cross section in order to give some anally-retentive reviewers something easy to reject.”?

Thu 05 November
Today had to resubmit eight copies of a 20 page document because one instance of ‘2015’ had been mistyped ‘215’. Like it could’ve been something else in the date field: ’20 October 215’.

This is the level of Mr K’s anal retentiveness.

It has taken me over 11 hours, but I have made it to the end of the day.

Thu 26 November
Mr K doesn’t want me at today’s presentation. Looks like Mr K has been looking for an excuse, and seized upon last week’s perceived slight. Apparently he was grossly insulted by me; something everyone else in the presentation, me included, completely missed. I have no useful function. I might as well not be here.

My only remaining functions are to produce paperwork for Mr K to reject, and to earn money to give away to financial institutions.

Apparently Mr K’s Roads (not Motorways) department liked the proposals. With any luck they’ll do some serious arse kicking of reviewers for failing to approve this stuff months ago. But I’m not holding my breath.

Owing to a colossal design cockup that I’ve known about for months but been powerless to correct, everyone is gunning for a scapegoat.

Perhaps I should fall on my sword and save the company’s face…

Joyous news. I think I’ve been fired.
Everyone is talking to everyone else (but not me) about my fcekwit intolerance.
I can’t stand it anyway. I leave and everyone is inconvenienced.

Happy Thanksgiving to me. “Are you OK?” No, I am not fceking OK.

Maybe I can spin it out until after Christmas and get paid for not being at work.
Oh, but annual leave is all taken unpaid, then refunded in September.

Tue 08 December
My boss refused to accept my offer to resign. So I can’t even escape.

As a mood descriptor, “fed up” doesn’t even come close.

Mon 14 DecemberI just calculated our best guess for final approval of all design elements. Assuming that out employer doesn’t throw a massive spanner in the works (which is my no means unlikely), my job here will evaporate at the end of April. APRIL! Aaarrrrgggghhh!

Tue 15 December
Yet more comments on the documents. I have to make tiny semantic changes and resubmit the usual eight copies for further review. I’ll just leap through this flaming hoop again, I guess.

Sun 27 December
Back from ten days away from the Whole Hole from Hell. All my reports are back yet again. Mr K want’s them rewritten “like this” this time. Only the engineering never alters. Everything else is a constant carousel of changes.

Congratulations us. Today we hit 100 submittals. How many have been approved? Nil, nada, zilch, zero, sifr…

Sat 02 January
At 1330 I went back to Cloud City to try to avoid any further buffoonery.

Sun 03 January
I think the phrase rhymes with ‘Clucking bell.’

Tue 19 January
“We the unwilling
Working for the unknowing
Doing the impossible
For the ungrateful.”

Again.

Sat 23 January
I think I’ve cracked a rib, but nothing can be done beyond painkillers. Funny how ‘en panne,’ which is French for ‘broken,’ sounds like ‘in pain.’


And so it continues, with no light at the end of the tunnel. Mr K has recently returned all the submittals as "not accepted", so they all need rewrites and resubmittals. Actually one of them is accepted in principle, but still needs a rewrite and resubmittal, so Mr K is simply jerking me around because he can.

Actions speak louder than words, and the actions indicate that, despite all the rhetoric, Mr K doesn't ever want to see any of this stuff built.

]}:-{>

Only a matter of time

]}:-{>

The Moggy Whisperer

The idea was laudable enough. Pet and feed the feral cat, get her to trust me, and then book her in for a 'spay-and-release,' which was being offered free by Al Barsha Veterinary Clinic throughout February. I made a booking, but the earliest appointment was late in the month.

By the time the appointment date was only a few days away, it had become startlingly obvious that the said cat was pregnant. We suspect that the Long-Haired Lover from Over The Road is at least partially responsible. Our stray cat ballooned. She looked as if she'd swallowed a foopball. I quipped that she looked like the moon.

"That's no moon," exclaimed Beloved Wife.

And as I'm not allowed to name her DeathStar, she's now called Luna.

It was clearly way too late for a trip to the vet, so I cancelled the appointment. If Luna decided to have her kittens in the Crumbling Villa, we'd look after them and deal with weaning, house-training, and eventually disposal of the bundles of joy that Luna was eventually going to produce.

It is now obvious that Luna is nowhere near as feral as we'd been led to believe. She's instantly litter-trained, she knows she's not allowed on the furniture or worktops, and she's extremely friendly even when she doesn't want food. We think Luna got the proverbial Sandal Up The Jacksie the moment she got buns in the oven. And she's now obviously mine - or I'm hers. I am now officially the Moggy Whisperer.

Naturally, my popularity with The Family Under The Stairs is reinforced daily by the unfortunate fact that I don't seem to be able to secure any gainful employment. I'm at home every day providing food, water, attention, and removing cat truffles from the litter box. The post of Moggy Whisperer does not pay well, or indeed at all.

LinkedIn has produced nothing by way of job interviews, and applications through multiple employment agencies, company websites, direct mailing, and even personal visits with CV in hand have yielded precisely one Skype interview that went nowhere.

Even my attempts to volunteer for motorcycle marshalling work were also inexplicably ignored. So much for this year's RAK Half-Marathon, the Dubai Marathon, and the Abu Dhabi Triathlon. I know that I was passed over for the Dubai event because of my careless choice of motorcycle brand: it isn't a BMW, but my attempts to volunteer for the Triathlon, even after receiving an email request for volunteers, didn't even elicit a "No thanks, we don't like Japanese motorcycles" response.

At least I managed to do some voluntary work at Yas Marina Circuit last week, and my continuing unemployment does mean that I'm available for marshalling this years Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge.

If only any of these were salaried posts.

 ]}:-{>

Fly me to the moon

Someone suggested that if I wished to move away from Project Management, and all the financial crystal-ball-gazing that that entails, perhaps I should divert my energies in the direction of a more technical and less managerial role. I can already drive AutoCAD, and I'm also a dab-hand at Excel and PowerPoint. I even taught myself how to use MicroDrainage and SYNCHRO. Perhaps I could learn Civil 3D?

Some of these might be a bit of a mystery to anyone who lives beyond the borders of Civil Engineering, but shall I say that they're technical software packages.

I have a copy of AutoCAD 14 on my little laptop. This is a very old version of the program, and was probably the release used by Noah in the preliminary designs of his ark. Newer versions of AutoCAD and the increasingly popular Civil 3D won't run on my little laptop, a device that has enormous difficulty with Photoshop Elephants (version 2 - how quaint!) because the disk drive is nearly full and the machine is approaching a decade old.

I checked online for Civil 3D and AutoCAD, and was very alarmed at the cost, and also the rather demanding specification of a machine that would run them. Further alarm, then, when I saw how much a suitable computer would cost.

At this point, I had an epiphany: AirMiles.

I've been slavishly presenting my AirMiles card at every possible transaction for many years. In fact, because I started with AirMiles Qatar, it must be over ten years, and those miles have piled up. Beloved Wife has been contributing to the same account, and by using credit cards for everything except petrol, I had managed to amass approaching a million of the things. AirMiles wrote to say that in 2013 there would be a session of "Use 'em or Lose 'em" so there was now some pressure to buy something expensive.

Such as a new computer. The eMax shop does direct exchange of AirMiles. I was expecting to have to apply for vouchers, await their eventual arrival by mail, and then go into the shop to be told that there were terms, conditions, restrictions, and all that other stuff in the small print.

I was really over the moon to learn that eMax exchanges AirMiles for toys at the face value of 14000 miles to AED100, which is the same rate as for gift vouchers.

So it was extremely gratifying to come away from eMax last evening with boxes containing a new and powerful laptop and a second monitor, all for an outlay of less than AED50. And I even have enough AirMiles left over for a bean-grinding espresso machine (but I don't actually want one of those because I'm a fan of the moka pot). Hilariously, no-one in the shop really seemed to believe that I wanted a home computer for work-type stuff; they all seemed to think I want it to play Gears of War or Skyrim. Hey, I don't even play Solitaire or Minesweeper. Honest.

The delight fell over once I got home, when I discovered that AutoCAD 14 won't run on a Windows 7 64-bit system. At least Photoshop does. And I fortuitously remembered that my Office 2010 had one remaining licence, so I'm up and running with a full version of Office too. Apparently AutoDesk doesn't support their software running under the all-singing, all-dancing Windows 8, so I think I'll stay away from Microsoft's latest operating system pro tempore.

Now, Civil 3D and AutoCAD 2012 remain an expensive proposition. I wonder if the nice people at AutoDesk would let me have them on the extremely cheap? It is only for training and non-commercial use. I have a demo version, but that's only good for a month.

The plan, then, is to devote time at home with a powerful computer and a big book of "AutoCAD and Civil 3D For Dummies" until I'm an expert. I may be some time.

]}:-{>

Babel fish

The ingredients for an instant translation tool already exist, and we don’t have to wait until the 23rd century. I’ve been thinking about how such a translator might work, and because I’ll never get around to doing it myself, the recipe is set out below.

Ingredients

1. One smartphone with voice to text and a 3G or WiFi connection and Bluetooth
2. One Bluetooth earpiece
3. Google

Method

1. The speaker talks into the phone.
2. The phone converts the speech into text.
3. The text goes wirelessly to Google, where one of the Google elves translates it into the target language and sends the translated text back to the phone.
4. A phone app converts the new text to speech.
5. The speech is delivered to the recipient’s ear through the Bluetooth earpiece.

According to Douglas Adams, such a device could cause “…more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation.”

Whilst surfing the net to find a picture of the Star Trek Universal Translator (Reference: TOS “Metamorphosis”), I found that a much less clunky version of my idea already appears to exist.

http://www.speechgear.info/products/interact

Oh well. Such a shame I gave up my day job.

]}:-{>

Make it stop

It has finally come to this. I had a previous rant about work-related issues, and that supposedly should have got things out of my system. But alas, that was not to be.

My job stinks. Without going into details, because I operate a deliberate moratorium  on discussing work-related material, I’m so utterly fed up with it that I’m chucking it all in. I’m exhausted, completely burned out, and I lack the thick, waterproof skin necessary to shrug off all the grief. There are limits to the amount of work-related stress someone can handle, and I long ago passed that limit. Assuming I’m not already there, I’m heading for what used to be called a nervous breakdown.

Something must change. A new job is possible, whereas the jury’s still out on the possibility of a new life. So the job has to change. I can’t stay in Qatar, and even if I could I wouldn’t. The employer might change but the client wouldn’t, and that is another part of the problem. So here is where I raise my white flag and run away and hide.

It will be difficult, of course, not least in either shipping all my stuff back to Dubai or selling it in the early summer when half the population of Doha is leaving to escape the heat. And I have to deal with everything in the correct order so that I don’t lack the relevant piece of officialdom to do any particular task.

]}:-{>

Sic semper capris

Plenty of things have happened since the Goat’s previous post, including a Wedding, some outrageous Millinery, the death of a Terrorist and the UK’s first Referendum in 36 years. All of these have been commented ad nauseam by others, and the Goat doesn’t feel able to add much in the way of new thoughts.

Sadly, offers of permanent employment have remained non-existent, and the Goat is therefore currently in the UAE visiting his Beloved Wife in 30-day chunks.

The process of becoming a Kept Goat under Beloved Wife’s sponsorship turns out to involve various jumps through widely-spaced flaming hoops. Although an official marriage certificate was obtained from the Commonwealth of Virginia in 2007, it now transpires that this original copy cannot be attested because it is more than one year old. How about that? American marriage certificates appear only to be valid for a year, or so it seems.

The document is perfectly acceptable to prevent the Men In White from kicking down the door of the Crumbling Villa and hauling folk off to Al Slammah for adultery, but is insufficient proof of marriage for the purposes of obtaining Resident status.

A new certificate has been obtained from the County. This now has to be returned to the County for attestation. Then it has to go to the State Office. Of course, the document must be returned to Beloved Wife at each stage; it’s not possible to post it to the office just up the road. And then the multiply-stamped certificate goes to the UAE Embassy in Washington DC, again via Dubai, before it has incurred sufficient bureaucracy to be acceptable, and the Residence Visa process can commence.

How about getting someone – a brother-in-law, perhaps – who lives in Virginia to handle the various stages? Not possible: fees have to be paid by cheque* drawn on the account of one of the parties named on the marriage certificate, and the document must be returned to that person each time.

Of course, the moment the Goat becomes re-employed, all this marriage certificate attestation will become moot. Unfortunately, the Goat is not holding his breath.

* Possibly ‘check’ given that it’s drawn on an American bank.

]}:-{>

It's cheap 'cos it's crap

This is getting to be too much of a habit. I took a week’s vacation last April, and was made redundant upon my return to the Lands of the Sand. It was fortuitous that I dropped straight into a new job, albeit in Abu Dhabi, but such good fortune does not last for ever.

I took a week off at the end of February to go to Barcelona for the wedding of two Dubai refugees, and to visit other ex-Dubai friends in Madrid. More fool me: I got my redundancy notice out of the blue the morning of my return.

Here commenceth the rant. Normal service will be resumed in due course.

The official reasoning behind my sudden enforced departure is that bids for new work have not been won, jobs for Abu Dhabi government have been cancelled and there is, well, insufficient work to go around. Despite money pouring out of Abu Dhabi’s ground at $105 a barrel, there seems an over-riding desire not to spend this mineral largesse. With little in the way of construction work going on elsewhere because of the Great Global Downturn of ’09, we find such contracts that are available being bid for at suicidally low rates. Much to the delight of Purchasing Departments, no bid is low enough.

The only construction firms able to win anything at all do so by bidding at or below cost, and hope desperately to make money with additional fees. Commonplace becomes the contractor who waits until the ink on the contract stamp is barely dry before hitting the client for a massive claim for additional payment because of a shoddily prepared contract. Maybe spending a bit more at the design stage instead of rushing it out the door without checking it would have avoided that unexpected piece of nastiness.

Good luck with getting the money: the track record for getting payments out of parsimonious clients in the Middle East (and elsewhere) is not good... Everything remains negotiable, from the tender, through negotiating discounts with the lowest tenderer prior to award, until finally demanding further discounts prior to making actual payments: “Ya Habibi. You can have 40% of your bill now, or nothing ever.” etc.

And so develops an incentive for a design team to take short cuts, to schmooze, possibly even – horror - to utilise the sort of lubricant that comes in a plain brown envelope.

But that is not the way the Goat plays the game. Basically, if you wanted someone who would cheat, lie and behave in an underhand and treacherous manner, you obviously employed the wrong Goat. This one lacks the social skills necessary to do politics; he scores almost zero in so-called ‘emotional intelligence’ tests. The result is that this particular Goat does honesty, professionalism and moral rectitude. (This blog post notwithstanding – names have carefully remained unnamed.)

And the Goat’s inability to achieve the impossible and his consummate refusal to produce crap have resulted in this new entrant into the job market.

]}:-{>

Do you love the commute? Err...

The Goatmobile costs around Dh1.50 per kilometre to run. That includes everything spent to date, but does not allow for any money back when it’s traded in. It is assumed that there’ll be little if any residual value once I’ve finished abusing the vehicle on and off road. Perhaps I can get the odometer right around the clock and then sell it as low mileage but a bit tatty for 2004. More than a million kilometres. One careful caprine owner.

Perhaps the equivalent of a return trip to the Moon is starting to look faintly possible. As regular readers of this little corner of cyberspace will doubtless be aware, Muggins was made redundant a week or so ago, five days after bending over backwards to return from the UK, dodging airborne ash particles and generally cashing in favours with friends and family.

The boot up my jacksie happened on Thursday 29th April. I went into the office the following week to clear my desk, return the company laptop, deal with outstanding issues and leave my former boss with the world’s most comprehensive handover notes. So comprehensive were they that he did not find it necessary to ask any questions at all.

Later that same Thursday, one of my colleagues tried to give me some work to do and I apologised that as I no longer worked for the Firm, he would have to find one of the few remaining engineers to deal with his technical queries. The long story short is that my colleague passed my name and phone number to an employment agency on Thursday, the agent phoned me on Friday, I sent him my latest CV on Saturday, and on Wednesday 5th May I had an interview that was immediately followed by a job offer. I started the new job on Sunday 9th May, five working days after being told Sayonara, habibi.

Having been removed from the old sausage machine, this particular cog is now part of a different machine.

This proves that I have marketable skills; that there is demand for what I do. Unfortunately, my previous employer has clients who appear not to want those skills. More specifically, they want them but are unwilling to pay for them.

A further discussion of the new job brings me back to the subject of driving. I now work in Abu Dhabi, and am thus the latest applicant for the post of Driver who Incurs 1500km per Week at his Own Expense. Running the arithmetic reveals that renting a car and thrashing that into the ground would be marginally cheaper than running the Goatmobile, and there would be no inconvenience every seven weeks of getting the vehicle serviced. My motorbike would chew through a back tyre in typically one month because almost the entire journey is bolt upright on a motorway, and it would need to be serviced at the same time. Big bikes need a lot of servicing. However, a rented car would be a Yaris, Tiida or similar. Ugh. I’m on the horns of a trilemma. Bike; rented Yaris; Goatmobile.

Plus there are the added delights of navigating around the capital to find the elusive parking space. Roadworks on Salam Street are confusing and disruptive to bucolic yokels such as I: yesterday I was completely flummoxed and was unable to find my way out of the city via the new Yas Island highway. Twenty minutes after setting sail for home I was still within spitting distance of the office. This situation will, however, improve as I learn my way around Abu Dhabi.

Beloved Wife has agreed in principle that we should move house to somewhere closer to Abu Dhabi than the Crumbling Villa, yet within a sensible commute to her Dubai job. Assuming, of course, that we can find somewhere at a reasonable rent that is large enough for all our stuff.

Finally, as for EoD and Alexander’s suggestion of commiseratory or even celebratory drinkies, I should be at Dubai’s Oirish Village on Friday night after eightish. Dead easy to identify: I’m the one with the beard. And the horns. All welcome. RSVP in the comments.

]}:-{>

May Day m'aidez!

The plan was to live relatively modestly, build up some savings, and then retire in about 2018 to 2020 to the dream house in Cyprus. The best-laid plans of goats and men, together with a load of half-baked fantasy ideas, are now thrown into disarray following an unexpected meeting in the boss’ office on Thursday afternoon.

The Goat has been in continuous employment since January 1986. He spent three years in Guildfordshire, seven years in t’English midlands where he survived a major company buy-out, and then in 1996 he jumped on to an aircraft. Six years in Qatar and nearly eight more in the Emirates. That’s a total of just over 24 years working in the construction industry and only four different employers. Three, if working in the English midlands and in Qatar are recognised as being for the same company. This is a level of company loyalty that might be considered rare in this day and age. The Goat must presumably have been doing something right.

What happened last Thursday?

Owing to the global downturn, UAE governments cancelling any and all projects at a whim, and bills not being paid, the Goat’s job is now redundant. Rather urinating on the Goat’s pyrotechnics, this is the third wielding of the scythe across the office. It is for the Goat a new and not altogether pleasant experience, and follows a statement from the CEO that the company had cut deep and hard, was now out of the woods, and sought to start building business up again.

Unfortunately, it appears that the engineering company wishes to eliminate engineering and technical staff and build up numbers with accountants. Not that the Goat has anything against accountants, who deserve a career as much as everyone else. But the company seems to be viewed from the stratospheric heights of the executive office as some kind of sausage machine. Payroll is dropped into the top, someone winds a handle, and fee income comes out. There are also by-products that are emitted somewhere out the back. These are engineering designs for roads, bridges, tunnels, sewers, buildings, marinas, but these by-products simply happen automatically. It appears that the really important stuff is comparing what goes in the top with forecasts of what is coming out of the front, and the accounts executives can spend their days gleefully comparing financial forecasts.

A practical experiment is also under way: How may parts of the sausage machine can be removed whilst allowing it to continue to function?

Yes, the Goat does realise that salaries and rent are paid for with money, not engineering designs. He also notes what a design consultant actually produces, and wishes that the people who asked for this stuff would now pay for it.

Evidently, the Goat is currently feeling rather bitter, twisted and worthless. He was concerned that a late return to work last week would result in a termination of employment, but has been assured that his unexpected extra week in the UK had nothing to do with the redundancy decision. However, the ultimate effect remains much the same. Redundancy payment is a month’s salary plus what the Ministry of Labour decrees is the level of End of Service benefit. Not a lot, then.

Job seeking will commence in earnest early next week with an up-to-date curriculum vitae. Preference is for the Goat to remain in the same country as his Beloved Wife, but que sera sera. There are presumably other options.

]}:-{>