Gainfully employed…

Well it’s happened. I have a job. I thought perhaps I had escaped the noose of a steady paycheck for the duration and could relax with a certain future of sitting on the couch, watching soap operas and eating bonbons. (Well, the Arabic equivalent of soap operas, and perhaps baklava instead of bonbons, but we *do* have a couch!) But despite my efforts, work came looking for me. “Just when I thought I was out… they pull me back in!”

When researching our move to Dubai I checked into the Macintosh activity in the area and found out about the well established Emirates Macintosh User Group, which I contacted even before our move. So once we got here and got reasonably settled in I attended a meeting and joined up. They’re a particularly nice bunch of folks and definitely birds of a feather. Also the ringleader of the group, Magnus, has for a few years published a Macintosh related newsletter/magazine, Shuffle. Last summer, with the help of an Emirati partner, he took it from being an in-house thing, re-branded it a bit as “Shufflegazine” and started distributing it to the general public on newsstands. It’s a fledgling operation, but growing and well liked in the community here.

One day, when I made a mention of playing World of Warcraft on my Mac, Magnus sent me a message asking if I’d like to write an article on that for the magazine. “Of course!” So, I wrote the article, sent it in and Magnus gave me positive feedback on it. A nice experience, and I figured I’d throw a few more articles at him if I thought of something.

A few weeks later Magnus contacted me again and had proposition. Would I be interested in taking over as proofreader for Shufflegazine when their current proofreader left? The current guy had read my article, thought it pretty good, and suggested I might be a good replacement.

That took me all of 5 seconds to think about. He said there would be some, if not a lot of pay, but that’s not a major concern right now, and working with the magazine was a big draw. Such fun! So, soon after I dipped my toe in the water and helped proof the upcoming issue. I also took on writing a few more articles for the magazine, which they also pay a little bit for. More fun work!

Not long after that, Magnus again contacted me, saying he needed to have another talk with me, about “good things”. He had said before that in future months they were planning on hiring another regular writer, and if I was interested we could talk about it when the time came. Well, they had decided to rearrange some duties on the staff, and they needed more writing help right away, so he offered me a part-time position, proofreading and writing for both the magazine and the Shufflegazine.com website.

So that’s what I spend a good deal of my time working on these days; proofreading, working on articles and following Apple news for writing and blogging on the website and getting paid to do it. It’s a rough life! And all the writing/proofreading is done online, so I can work on it from anywhere I have Internet connection! Not bad, eh? I’m still working on getting into a rhythm posting to the website; we had a bit of a crunch for a few weeks as we were trying to get ahead of schedule on the magazine to set up a better publishing timeline. Now that we’ve caught up there’s a little more breathing room and I can work on getting news feeds set up for easier daily research.

Even though I can do the job from pretty much anywhere, I like going into the office most of the time because the co-oworkers are great and some things are easier to get accomplished there. (Especially when we are going over the pages just before sending them to the printer!)

Another cool thing about the job: Shufflegazine is published in both English and Arabic, which surprisingly is pretty rare. It’s also a challenge as a lot of technical terms don’t yet exist in Arabic. They certainly have technology here, but in the past they have generally depended on Hindi techies to maintain it, so tech terms in Arabic have been slow to develop and even slower to be adopted. Hopefully the magazine will help with that for our sake and that of the region.
Pretty exciting stuff!

So if you want to keep tabs on me, job-wise anyway, just look for the entries with my name on them on Shufflegazine.com!

(posted by Daddybird)

GITEX

GITEX was this week. A whole week of a technology conference, Sunday through Thursday. Being a member of Emirates Mac (the local Mac users group), Paul got in as an exhibitor and volunteered at their booth.

Monday night was a dinner put on by ABM (Arab Business Machines – the local Apple affiliate). Paul went directly to the dinner from the convention. I tried to catch a taxi to take me there and had very little success. I was going to cash it in and go back to the apartment, but Paul didn’t have enough money on him to get home, so I had to go, if I wanted to retrieve my husband. Luckily, I did finally get a taxi. (We SO need a car.) By the time I arrived at the dinner (in one of the poshest hotels) my dogs were not just barking, they were howling. The doors to the dining room were closed and there was a gathering area where one could meet and greet, etc. WITH NO CHAIRS! There was a musician performing background music and my feet hurt so bad I was tempted to sit in her chair when she took a break. I was even considering just sitting on the floor. After standing there waiting for a chance to sit down and being in extreme pain, I finally gave up and went out to a lobby area that did have chairs.

When dinner was finally served it was a buffet with lots of sushi, so it eased my pain a little. We sat with other Mac users, including a guy crazier about Macs than Paul. He collects them. If only we hadn’t disposed of Paul’s collection, we could have made a little money selling them to this guy. The Mac users group has been our best opportunity, so far, to meet Arabic speakers.

Paul had more adventures at GITEX, but I will let him tell the stories himself.