For the first six days after surgery my legs were locked with splints to protect the skin grafts. I was pretty comfortable though – no real pain, a private hospital room with a flat screen TV, and plenty of decent nursing care. I watched more movies during that period that I probably have in my whole life! When the splints were removed I attempted to walk and found I couldn’t – both calf muscles had gone into deep spasm, probably from a mixture of surgery trauma and not being able to move while my legs were in splints. To cut a long story short I was discharged last Friday. By this stage I could get about, but only by using a walking frame. My wife collected me and we went home, 10 days after I was admitted.

Our bedroom is upstairs and while I can just about get up and down those stairs I decided to set up camp on the sofa in our living room. This is primarily because my normal sleep pattern is shot (I’m writing this at 5.30 am) and it would unfair on Lana if I was sharing the bed and being awake most of the night. Another reason I’m camped out here is I have 24/7 access to my laptop. The hospital did not have any internet facilities so I have lost 2-3 weeks on the Masterclass course. I contacted Dan at the support desk and he replied “no problem – work hard and you will catch up”. Great reply – I felt good.

It’s about time I came to the point of posting all this. Well, for starters I am not soliciting sympathy of any sort. You see, I had plenty of time to think while in hospital and also now, while recovering at home. I have found so many reasons to be grateful; to my company for understanding the situation and supporting me, to my wife for helping me and doing things only she can do, and just generally for being alive and discarding all the negative thoughts I had harboured not so long ago. I’m sitting here typing, in some discomfort, but hey, I actually feel great, I feel positive about the future. My goal is to be a full time internet marketer by the end of 2010 and my recent experience has simply reinforced the desire to achieve that goal in a way that is difficult to describe. I can come with catch phrases – ‘no pain, no gain’ for getting my legs back in shape, ‘focus and courage’ for getting a difficult work task done. There are plenty of other such phrases as well.

I think I found some kind of inner strength whilst in hospital, a strength that perhaps came from the realisation that time stops for nobody, that what must be done must be done now and done well. No procrastination, no wavering, no negative thoughts or influences. I have an eBook to put together and I am behind schedule, but no matter – I will complete it no matter what it takes. I will achieve my goal.

So, really, I just hope this tale can provide some kind of inspiration to anybody who needs it. Before I finish, one more thing. The cancerous lesions that were removed from my legs were sent for post-op pathological examination. The result – pseudocancer, not actually cancer at all. The lesions just presented themselves that way.

Life is good.

This video was shot from Maho Beach which can be found on the island of St Maarten in the Netherlands Antilles. The aircraft is landing at Princess Juliana International Airport which, as you can see, is located as close as you can get to the beach. There are plenty of videos and still photographs, of aircraft carrying out this spectacular approach, available on the WWW. There have also been many claims that the images have been Photoshopped or doctored some way, but these claims are false – the images are all genuine.

I showed this video, and others, to my wife and…she approves! Maho Beach is now officially on our list of places to visit. We won’t be going this summer, a UK trip has been planned, but hopefully in the next couple of years we will get to go there. I can’t wait!

One by-product of the development programme is the increase in the number of people now working in Dubai and, since these folk need transport, the number of vehicles on the road. According to the last statistic I read, Dubai has a population of around 1 million, yet there are apparantly 1/2 million cars on the road! No wonder there are traffic problems; Dubai is not a large city by any means and there is a limit to how many congestion-reducing roads and bypasses you can build. So the Dubai government came up with a plan – the Metro.

The Metro idea was conceived in 2004 with actual construction commencing in early 2006. The US$ 4.2 billion first phase is due to open a little later this year. Basically, the Metro is an overhead light rail system with a subsurface section passing under the ‘creek’, a natural waterway that divides the city in two. If you have the money, it is even possible to purchase brand naming rights for some of the stations! But will it work? Will the Metro ease all the traffic congestion problems? In my opinion, I’m afraid, the answer is no. At least not as a stand alone solution. I just can’t see people giving up driving their Mercs, SUVs and Toyotas for this. Also, with summer time temperatures well over 40C in the day, it is not going to be much fun walking for 10-15 minutes to the nearest station. In my opinion, for the Metro to work it needs to be coupled with, at the very least, city congestion charges and, probably, increased fuel prices (petrol / gasoline is currently sold at below production cost). I hope the system does work in the long run though and I am sure the authorities have already thought of the various problems that could arise with encouraging people to use it. Will I use the Metro? Definitely, maybe!

In mid-December I decided to visit my wife in Russia (she was there on family business) for Christmas and New Year. Lana is from Russia and we own a flat (apartment) in Voronezh, which is located about 600 km due South of Moscow. So anyway, I bought the ticket, obtained the visa and was set to leave Dubai at about midnight on 23/24 December. Having checked in, and done the duty free bit, I was nursing a drink in the Irish Village, happy that I was going away for a few days, but with a nagging feeling that I had forgotten something. Oh well, the flight was called and off I went.

I duly arrived in Voronezh the evening of Christmas Eve and was quickly reminded of what was nagging at my memory whilst waiting for my flight; I was seriously underdressed – jeans, street shoes, a cotton shirt and thin ‘hoodie’ kind of thing just doesn’t cut it when it’s well below zero and snowing heavily. My wife bundled me into a waiting cab and we got home an hour or so later, where I was revived by a good helping of the well known local ‘firewater’.

Lana made sure I got kitted out properly of course, and I did venture out into the cold occasionally. But to be honest, I have lived in the Middle East for a while now and enjoy the weather here. Russia in July sounds a little more appealing. But it was a great break and I returned duly refreshed, as breaks are supposed to do for you. Strangely though, it didn’t snow again until I left, after ten days in Russia – dressed in the same garb I arrived in! After all, I was going back to the sun.

It so happened that, after a few years toiling in the UK, I was offered a position in Bahrain which I took up in 1989. By chance, once settled there, I started socialising with a few of the Gulf Air flight deck crew members who were based in the Gulf state. Of course, supping ‘beverages’ with these guys, who got paid to fly Tristars and 767s around the World, just brought the old hankering back to the surface. And to make matters worse, even though I had a bit of spare cash by that time, there was no local flying school to go and have a try on my own!

Fast forward four years. In 1993 I transferred to Dubai, where I still live. And guess what… Dubai International Airport (DIA) a place where I’ve worked for the last four years, boasts its own little flying club. Needless to say, I enrolled on a Private Pilot License course ASAP and obtained the PPL flying qualification in 1998. Flying at DIA is a great experience – it’s unrestricted, in the sense that you are using the same airport facilities as the big jets and at the same time. Unfortunately, private flying is expensive and I stopped ‘going up’ in about 2000. I still have the license (of course it needs a bit of work to regain the currency) and who knows…I may ‘get up’ there again one day.

A little about myself first. I am a British expatriate living and working in Dubai with my wife Lana. We have two lovely daughters who are both studying abroad at the moment.

You may have heard about Dubai, but if not….well, it is situated in the United Arab Emirates on the Arabian Gulf coast and has a massive development program going on right now. There’s shopping malls, hotels, residential developments, marinas, golf courses and more being built – plus all the infrastructure works that goes with that. It is said that 25% of the World’s tower cranes are located in Dubai!

I actually work on the new terminal / concourse development for the Dubai International Airport expansion and the development is one of two main flagship projects here. The other flagship project is, of course, the Burj Dubai. The Burj (which means tower in Arabic) has yet to be completed but it is now officially the World’s tallest structure and is a site to behold, believe me! Part of the Burj development includes the Dubai Mall, a truly massive shopping complex.

Okay, that’s my first post nearly done – a mini-bio and a bit about where I live and work.