I left UK in 1997 to work in Saudi, that was working overseas with trips back to UK around every four months to see the kids. I'll cut a long story short(ish), got divorced in 2003, left the job in Saudi in 2004, went to work in Syria for a short while (before that place turned to shit) and when I got back to the company office in Dubai I was offered a contract there. Now, being single again and in a place like Dubai, that was more like emigrating. I didn't want to go back to UK and I was able to get the kids over to me for visits every now and then, nice little villa, etc. Then I met a Chinese girl who is now my wife, we were OK in Dubai, quite happy really but then the company I worked for were bought out by a Swedish company, kept me on for a while and then in 2010 made me redundant. I sniffed around for work in Dubai but there wasn't much happening so we became resigned to the fact that I would have to go back to UK and my wife would have to go to China. T'was a tad emotional at Dubai airport that day... Anyway, I remember I stayed in the transit hotel at Manchester airport for the night when I arrived back in UK, looked out of the window in the morning at the cold, grey, leaden sky and pissing rain and thought to myself 'it's good to be back... for a while'. I stayed at the old fella's house until our stuff arrived in UK, put our things in storage and then headed off to China again for a couple of months as I still had a valid visa (I had been visiting regularly since 2007). I had a look around for jobs but the ones that did fit my 'skill set' were out for me as I don't speak Chinese. Anyway, I sorted out a visit visa for t'missus to go back to UK with me and off we went but jobs were thin on the ground there too. However, I did notice whilst I was in China that there were a lot of teaching / training jobs on offer but for low salaries. Whilst back in Manchester I did the TEFL course and got the certificate, I thought that that could come in handy. Anyway, still no job in UK, my wife stayed with me through the winter and although we spent many hours of on line job searching from my local office (Weatherspoons, cheap Ruddles, free wifi) not much was happening but there was something going on in Sweden. My wife went back to China, I was offered a job in Sweden so off I went. That job went TU as well but Ericsson offered me a contracting job, passed the interview etc., 'oh, by the way, the job is in England...' OK, back to UK but in Reading this time. More visit visas followed for my wife. I had numerous attempts at obtaining residency for my wife, all doomed to failure and UK Ltd Visa dept. keeps the dosh even if you don't get the visa. Apparently, although I met the annual financial requirement with 3 months salary, as I was working on 6 month renewable contracts I didn't have the job security. So, got a salaried job in Winchester, got everything sorted out, wife applied for a visit visa, and it was refused. Not even a F*cking visit visa now! So I said to myself, f*ck this, if she can't live with me in my country, I'll go and live with her in her country. Back to Manchester :) into the Chinese visa place, one week later I had a 12 month multiple exit re-entry family visit visa. One way Business class ticket on KLM to Beijing, met by wife and step daughter at t'airport, spent a few days chilling in Beijing (Ok, a lot of that was in Paddy O'Shea's) then off to Dalian. Rented an apartment for 12 months and commenced the expat (retired) routine. It didn't take long to realise that the dosh was going to run out a lot sooner than I had planned, I needed a job. I'd found the local expat hang out (strangely enough, an Irish bar) and made some contacts. I was put in touch with a local college, ended up playing the TEFL card and started a sort of supply teaching job for some of the local public schools. After around half a year of that, I was offered a salaried job with a proper contract, teaching physics, but not in Dalian. So here I am in a quiet backwater (population around 10 million, of which around 3500 are expats) but with a job, a reasonable tax free salary and a decent apartment included, and the all important residency visa. When I first got here I thought 'this is a shit hole', but now I've been here for a year I've got to know people and find some decent places to go for walks and stuff, and the big plus point for me is that there aren't many bars here :) So, that's life :). My only concern right now is the situation with N. Korea, that nut job is going to really screw things up if we're not careful and Kim Jong Un is almost as bad.
That ended up being a bit longer than I intended, I could have just said that I emigrated to be with my wife.
