The Job Offer and the Decision

So today is the day I lose my 'Blogging Virginity'... If I'm honest, I know little or nothing about blogging, purely because I've never envisaged myself as the blogging type. I'm not sure if it's because I've never really had any interest or if it's that I've subconsciously thought that I just don't have the time (code for I'm just too lazy)... Either way, this is the start of (hopefully) many updates as I prepare to move to Mauritius to start a new job and more or less a new life .

I suppose the reason I've decided to write the blog is so that friends and family can keep up with how I'm doing and sure if anyone else takes an interest, that's an added bonus... So I'll try to give some information about me along with a bit of background as to how this has all come about.

So about me... I’m a Building Estimator from Dublin, Ireland but have been living and working for the last two-and-a-half years in the UK, in a small city about 20 miles north of London called St. Albans. I transferred here in January 2010 with the company I’ve been working with for the past 5 years or so and like so many others in similar situations to myself, I’ve experienced first-hand, the effect that the economic downturn has had not just on the Construction Industry in Ireland and the UK, but on life as a whole.
Moving away from friends and family was never going to be easy but at the time I was faced with the choice to continue employment with my company’s UK business or join the list of redundancies and remain in Ireland waiting to see what came along. As someone who’s never been out of work for more than a couple of weeks though, the choice for me, although not easy, was obvious and almost two-and-a-half years later, here I am moving even further afield (although arguably to a much more favourable location), who would’ve ‘thunk’ it? Not me!

While I’ve been in England I’ve made a lot of really good friends, some of which I hope will remain lifelong friends and aswell as this I became heavily involved in a relationship with an amazing girl, who for almost two years was more or less my closest friend. Unfortunately that aspect of my time here didn’t work out the way I would have liked and that’s really a story for another time/place so I’ll keep that to myself.

Anyways, at the moment the job I do is in demand so for the last year or so I’ve regularly been contacted by recruitment consultants offering me interviews with various different companies, most of which I respectfully declined.
At the end of February however, I was approached via e-mail by a consultant representing an international infrastructure and civil engineering company with a very interesting proposition that unlike the others, caught my attention straight away. The position was a new role with a company from Johannesburg who had recently merged with an Irish engineering company and were expanding their International team working from their Mauritius offices. As a result they were looking for someone with my qualifications and experience to fill that slot in the Mauritius office.

For those that don’t know too much about Mauritius, it’s a sub-tropical Indian Ocean island off the south eastern coast of Africa (about 870km east of Madagascar) with about 1.2 million people descending from many different places ranging from Africa, India, Britain, France, Netherlands and China, so basically it’s a veritable melting-pot of different cultures and as someone that loves to travel and see new cultures and places, my interest was well and truly tickled!

The reason the job caught my attention was because I had worked with a guy named Joe in Dublin a few years back. He had just moved to Dublin from Mauritius and aside from being extremely friendly, the way he spoke about Mauritius and the pictures he had shown me every time he arrived back after a few weeks at home, always made me want to go there, I’ve not got much more of an explanation but ever since I had laid eyes on those pictures I had always wanted to see the country.

Anyway, after the standard fare of communicating back and forth, I did a Skype interview and was eventually unofficially offered the job and sent for my medical and inoculations etc.
The day after receiving the offer, to say I was in two minds over what to do, would be a massive understatement. The stress of making such a big decision was almost making me physically sick, there were so many pros and although not so many cons, the cons that did exist, were quite substantial. It was a huge step to take and one or two reservations I had about the job and other minor downsides, were eventually blown out of all proportion and I turned the job down...
The following day I received an e-mail from the recruitment consultant with some comments my ‘boss-to-be’ had made regarding my e-mail declining the offer. His comments didn't beat around the bush (him being from Limerick in Ireland that wasn't surprising). Basically he schooled me on why I would be crazy to turn down such an offer, but at the same time put most of my other hesitations to rest and within a day, I got back in touch and asked was the position still available and if so that I’d like to accept.

So this was the middle of April and after signing all of the relevant documentation and going through all of the necessary admin stuff and receiving my flights details etc, that was that, I handed in my notice at work and started working out what I needed to do before the 22^nd June, when I would be flying out of Dublin airport to start my new life as an Indian Ocean Islander.


So that’s the guts of how this all came about... I hope you enjoyed my first blog and there’s more to come about the weeks after the job offer and the weeks leading up to my departure date... Oh and sorry if the next 8 or 9 posts lack substance but my intention is to get this onto the ‘Expat Blog’ forum which requires a minimum of 10 posts for new blogs.


Anyhoo, till my next scrawlings.


Do chara, do mhac, do dheartháir...


Damien