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674 days ago
I had a great Christmas and New Year with the two people that I most love and care for - Tai was home for almost all of the the holiday and Alex (my ten year old who Tai is very fond of) was in Dubai from 22nd December to 2 January. I am lucky that they are such good friends. As the new year starts there is so much that I am looking forward to on the personal side. I have never felt this certain about someone or this deeply committed. Yet nagging away is uncertainty about my work - that is the nature of the company I work for. And a sense of not being settled in Dubai. In Toronto, Hong Kong and Bangkok I felt I was living somewhere that I could happily call home. But Dubai is not home. It is a place in transition and it is a place where I feel as though I am in transition. I work hard here and we make the best of the time that we have together in Dubai when Tai is not flying. But I do not feel at ease here. We were in Bangkok together last weekend and it was great ...
777 days ago
Tai and I are back from a week home in Thailand. It was hard to come back to the sandpit. We had a few days in Bangkok and spent three nights in Pai in the North West. Pai was quiet and green and peaceful and a real escape. It is the perfect antidote for Dubai. The inaccessibility of the town is part of the attraction. You have to make a conscious effort to get there and when you are there you will stay in guest houses and small cottage resorts not in big named hotels; not yet anyway. One of the great attractions of Bangkok is how easy it is to travel from the city around Thailand or South East Asia. A one or two hour flight can take you to the beaches of Samui or Phuket; to the historic cities of Luang Prabang, Rangoon or Chiang Mai; to the big cities of Singapore, Kuala Lumpur or Saigon; to Angkor Wat or Hanoi. Or a drive and a boat to Thailand's remote beaches and islands. It is all easily accessible and very affordable. Where can you go to in two hours ...
831 days ago
It has been over two months since I updated this blog. I have still been updating the pictures and my main web site at www.rascott.com Tai is in New York today. We were there together in May the week of my birthday and just before I started work. It was a happy time exploring the New World with her. And it is strange to think about her going to all the places that we went to so recently. She must be having fun....she is very quiet! After almost three months I still have not fully settled back into work. It would be unfair for me to write about the work and the Company. But it has not been quite what I expected. There are some very able people. But after years working in public companies with significant accountability and transparency a private family business is a very different environment. And working in Dubai is different. The hours are long - a 7.30 start. Levels of professional service are still not at the level of first class business centres. The ...
910 days ago
Today was quite a momentous day. I am back at work....CFO of a Dubai based regional education business. It is a big role with great potential and is going to go through rapid growth and quite significant changes to its structure and organisation. One downside - they start at 7.30am every weekday and finish at 5.30pm. That way they can have a 48 hour week and still have the whole weekend off. It is what Tai and I have been working for since we knew that we should be together in Dubai. At some stage I had to find work and find something interesting and challenging to do. I have found that. But I will miss being able to stay with her when she comes back from her trips and to be there during the days she is at home and enoying her company. But we will have to try and fit our schedules together as best we can. Her days off will not always be the same as my weekends off. So we will need to make the best of the evenings when we are both here; the nights when we are both ...
932 days ago
Tai is a very good influence on me - I know it, and other people have made the same observation. She makes me laugh, makes me cry, makes me incredibly proud of her and reminds me every day of why I love her. She is also strongly rooted to her family and to Thailand. I grew up very differently. Always moving. Away at boarding school when i was 13 with my parents in Nigeria and my brother and sister at their own schools. It made me independent and fairly resilient. But it meant that we did not grow up as a family and as we grew up we all moved in our own separate directions. I went to Canada and then to Hong Kong, Singapore and Bangkok. My sister went to Turkey 23 years ago and has built a life and a terrific family there. Just an indication of how unconnected we are is that it took 23 years for me to visit her in Izmir and it was being with Tai that prompted that visit. It was time to be a family. It was time for Tai to be part of that family in the same way that her ...
