Alea iacta est

The die is cast - returning to Kim's house in Maritzburg after a few beers with Franek Raciborski and Brian Hewitt (old Fort Vic High School mates) I fired off a polite resignation letter to my boss and the HR Director back in Riyadh. It has been interesting and instructive living in one of the most conservative countries in the world but it finally occurred to me that my limited expertise in attracting women centres on my sparkling wit after a few drinks - and being somewhere that beer and dating are both illegal meant the chances of finding the next Mrs. Hogga were vanishingly small. Also the surgeon's acerbic comments on the state of my knees in particular and my health in general have hastened the move to a less stressful lifestyle.

So where to now? Well, as I sit in the smoking lounge in Joburg Airport (a little known fact is that they have free internet connections) the plan is to see out the month of September in Riyadh then head back to the UK and spend October doing some rehab on my knees. I may return to the Gulf and Levant regions for November and December to work on the internal EY rollout of PeopleSoft financials, but as a contractor. January onwards I think I'll be back in the UK doing contract work and relishing the free availability of alcohol and pig products. And by July 2006 I should be a loyal subject of HM the Queen of England, duly kitted out with British passport and the ability to legally cause havoc anywhere in the EU. Then, in true Hogga fashion, with a house and residency in the UK all sorted, I will probably go somewhere else like Oz or back to SA.

It was good to be back with the family in South Africa. But (and those of you who are passionate Afro-optimists should skip this next paragraph), all the reasons I originally left SA are still very much there. The crime level is still horrific, most of the HR work available is restricted to non-white people and as far as I can tell the only culture in Natal was due to an overturned yoghurt tanker on the freeway a couple of days ago. Already the mutterings over land redistribution are getting louder and more strident; the new Deputy President of SA (replacing Jacob Zuma who was fired for corruption) is on record as saying SA can learn from the Zimbabwe methods and the streets are awash with litter and faeces thrown by striking municipal workers. If I won the Lotto I'd acquire some land in Oz and forcibly relocate my family, bribing them wherever necessary. But they are well settled there, and heavily invested too meaning a move will be a great trauma. Of course each brother has not only a wife and kids, but in-laws too and none of them will take kindly to losing their daughters.

So back to the desert it is. Dubai tonight, Kuwait tomorrow morning and (a curse on the inaccessibility of the Saudi capital to external flights) Riyadh tomorrow evening. Ah well, spare shirts in my bag and a load of books and I should survive. It will be interesting on Saturday morning when I return to the office for the first time since early July and see how my boss handles the resignation letter..