My Life Journey – Part 17:
Australia….
After 1 or 2 weeks from arrival to Sydney, I went to the business lunch meeting with my ex- sub-contractor, the meeting was the executive team, they showed me around Sydney and we had discussed the running projects, then finally they offered me a job.
Now I’m under huge pressure to find a home before starting my new job, luckily I met a guy who is a brother of a friend and he is one of my best friends here, he visited us and gave us some great advices on how to start this new life.
We did so many inspections in several areas, but never was easy to decide, then we had the chance to meet my wife’s friend at her house, she and her husband have played the most important role in our settlement, After inspecting more than 20 houses in more than 6 areas we have decided to search in Greystanes in the same area where my wife’s friend lives, with great luck we found one suitable house owned by a great family, so we moved here. It is a quit area with lovely and friendly neighbours from different backgrounds.
One of the many challenges I faced in Australia was the driving in opposite direction, one guy advised me to follow the other cars and to try not to be the first on signal or roundabout.
In mid of September, I started my new job as a Senior Project manager and Region manager to handle all projects in the middle east. And because of that I had to travel to Qatar and UAE almost every 3-4 months and stay there for 1-2 weeks, I remember the first visit to Qatar was in Jan 2016 accompanied by my boss, which he wrote in his report that Imad was received in his old company like the lost child. Yes, it was great to meet my team and colleagues after leaving to the unknown.
It was crazy, everyone was confused, I was a colleague and a boss for some of them then now I’m a subcontractor but It was fun, I really enjoyed my work and the frequent travel especially with the 6 figures salary.
Cost of settlement and daily life in Sydney is expensive, we had to use our savings in addition to my salary.
On the other side, we are new to this open and mixed culture, so we have decided to enrol our daughter in an Islamic school for the first few years until she and us understand how the life is look like here and how to integrate in the community safely. So, my eldest daughter joined and Islamic school from year 7 till year 10 and then moved to public school, while the 2 younger kids joined a public school since biggening till now, year 5 and year 3.
End of 2017, I decided that I have to practice my lovely hobby “Mosaicking” and purchased some tiles from a supplier in China and started, the first mosaic I did here was a gift for our first supporter in Sydney.
After working for 3 years and in December 2018, the company decided to close the middle east branch and because they couldn’t find me another position, they made me redundant.
At that point of time, I decided to purchase more mosaic to do more art and try to gain some money. It was very difficult to sell mosaic art due to so many reasons, I tried and tried and couldn’t sell more than 1 or 2 pcs for few months, and also in the same I was not getting any interviews at all.
Within less than 6 months I had applied for more than 400 jobs of all levels but without even a call. it was tough, after all this long experience I’m unable to find a job any job at all… One day, I decided to leave and go back to Qatar. My old boss offered me a job with him in his new company, the salary was good but not to my expectations, so we spent some time negotiating. During the negotiation, something happened changed my direction completely…
At that time when I decided to leave, I decided to sell out my stock of mosaic tiles in order to move my family to a smaller place. So I contacted the major mosaic retailers in Australia to sell all the tiles in bulk with wholesale price, but luckily no one showed interest. Then I started selling per kg online and found that people are eager to buy mosaic tiles in bulk with semi wholesale prices. I was surprised that my tiles were sold very quickly.
So during my negotiation for the job offer in Qatar, I received a letter that our citizenship application is approved and to attend the citizenship ceremony, at this point I declined the job offer as I don’t want to risk delaying my citizenship certificate.
Due to the change in direction and to good result of tiles selling, I decided to import more tiles and sell online. Now I feel now that I was pushed towards this, all other doors were closed and only this door was open and here we go…
Now my Facebook page has more than 1500 followers and I’m able to pay my bills from this business, my plan is to be a distributor of some mosaic types in Australia and expand internationally also to design and supply swimming pools mosaics.
I’m very optimistic despite my very small budget, but I know one day it will be big company with lots of employees and several branches.
Looks like this is the last part of my life journey, I may write about some events which had or have noticeable impact on me.
I did really enjoy writing this series and your reactions made me very excited and proud.
Thank you all…..
Imad