13 WONDERFUL YEARS
ARRIVED in Dubai from the UK with my wife, my teenage son and daughter on April 1, 1978 and although it was April Fools day, I was anything but a fool moving there with my family. I had gone there to take up the position of Operations Manager at Dubai Aluminium Smelter DUBAL, which was under construction. There was very little to do and very few shops at first, getting things such as coffee mugs was not easy, and if the butcher got fresh meat the word went around like wild fire. There was no industry as such, but plans were underway to spend billions of dollars on industrial development in Jebel Ali. The Jebel Ali port was well underway and that brought with it the Jebel Ali Club, where just about every expat in Dubai were members. It was a great place for a meal on Thursday night and to meet people any other night. Schooling for the kids was a little thin on the ground with only the American School and the Catholic School in operation but Dubai College was opened in a group of villas in 1979 having a Cambridge curriculum, so my children moved there and finished their education there, in fact my daughter was at a Dubai College reunion in the UK four weeks ago. Within no time the locals with some money in their pockets saw the opportunities and took them firmly with both hands and within two years, there was very little that you could not buy and at very reasonable prices. The availability of housing had increased dramatically and in 1980 we moved into a very nice villa at Chicago Beach Village. There were 256 villas built right on the beach mid-way between Dubai side and Jebel Ali with its own pool, tennis court, coffee shop and grocery store, a great place for the kids. The plant was scheduled to come into operation at the beginning of November 1979, but Shaikh Rashid wanted to attend the first cell going into operation a week earlier than planned, so everybody got there fingers out and we managed to meet his requirements and brought the first cell into operation on October 29, 1979. That same year I met with Queen Elizabeth IInd and the Duke of Edinburgh who visited the plant. The following year I gave a plant tour to Princess Anne and her then husband Mark Phillips, and later my wife and I went to the wedding of Shaikh Hamdan. The moral is, if you want to meet royalty go to Dubai. We had 13 wonderful years in Dubai and would never left if I had not been transferred back to England to work on technology sales.
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