Very proud of my younger brother Samson. He just got back today from Abu Dhabi (as you can tell from my pressie), he just finished his probation there as an aircraft engineer with Abu Dhabi Airways.  The airline is more a mining contractor than a commercial liner, but he says the operation is larger than Air Niugini. He started off at Air Nuigini focusing on servicing F28’s and the Dash’s so now he’s come back for a months break from Abu Dhabi before he goes back to become a permanent employee there.

He said that its actually cheaper living there compared to Australia and fuel is really cheap (I wonder why??). But real estate is expensive however. A decent flat will cost you about K6,000.00 a month. But besides that everyone and the locals are very nice, respectful people.

Then again he also mentioned you see more foreigners there then the actual locals. In fact he reckons that about 85% of the population are guest workers. I guess its because the locals own everything and the rest of the world works for them. It’s not surprising then that Samson’s been telling me allot about the Great Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan who was responsible for bringing together the Sheiks of his region to form what is now called the ‘United Arab Emirates’. Shiekh Zayed is a truly insipirational man and I think I’ll save my comments on his story for another post.

But trangu only thing at the moment is that its Ramadan time, so Samson has to hide and eat during the day so as not to offend everyone else there. Guess he’s gonna have to get used to that because he plans to live there for at least 10 years. So hell, chance haus long United Arab Emirates yah!!! All I need now is a plane ticket.

Find out more about Abu Dhabi here