LIFE IS AN OASIS

Ever since coming here to the Middle East to work as an OFW, my life has become an oasis. Well, to put it correctly, my life here has become attached to the word “oasis”. I’ve noticed this ever since I started life here in Dubai, UAE. Sounds vague? Let me explain.

I first worked here three years ago as a Graphic and In-Store Artist for Tower Records Dubai, which closed business after a year and used to be located at the first floor of Palm Strip Mall in Jumeirah Road. Tower Records was one of the business ventures of Oasis Entertainment LLC, the real name of our company. Ironically, it was an oasis that dried up, so to speak and so I moved on to look for another oasis in the UAE business desert.

In September 2002, after eight months of working for Tower Records (and enduring my former hot-headed boss’ shouts and endless arguments during the time I asked for a release) I found a new job as a Graphic Artist for the Marketing Department of Splash Gulf LLC, a fashion company under the Landmark Group of Companies. We used to hold office in the Oasis Center in Sheikh Zayed road, one of the malls owned by the company and where Splash, Babyshop, Home Centre and Shoemart stores could be found. We subsequently moved to the first floor of the building next to it. It was not really the professional oasis I was really looking for but it held water for me during those times. For the financially thirsty man in the desert I was then, I had to grab it for it was the first and nearest oasis of work I found.

(One odd thing I also remember about these two companies I worked for before is that they both used Oasis Mineral water and no other brand. Very strange indeed.)

My job in Splash helped me bring my beloved sister here in Dubai. After numerous interviews and job offers, she accepted a managerial job in Ajman for a spa and health resort, surprisingly called The Beauty Oasis. (There’s that word again!).

I left Splash after two years and in September last year, I found the job I’ve always wanted and desired for in ABS-CBN The Filipino Channel Middle East. I used to hold office at DMC but our Marketing and Sales Department has now been moved to the first floor of a new building in Karama, known to be an oasis of OFWs in Dubai. Anyway, in my new company, I found that there is no real connection whatsoever with the word “oasis” perhaps only in terms of work. I thought that was the end of it. But I was wrong.

This time in association with my wife, two new “oasis” connections have come up. Now that we are going home to Manila to get married, we found out that the reception venue her mom and sisters were able to book for us is coincidentally called the Oasis Pavilion somewhere in New Manila. Also, the song Champagne Supernova – which has always been a favorite song of mine and has become more special to me for it has become my song for my wife Nova – is composed and sung by one of my favorite bands, no other than the Brit rockers Oasis. How’s that, huh?

See, how strange these happenstances with the word “oasis” are. It is obvious that I have an unexplained and even perhaps a mystical relationship with this word. Well, with an oasis of friends, an oasis of experience and an odd bond with the word, my life here in Dubai has really become an “oasis”… literally and figuratively.

(But hey, didn’t you notice that my life also revolves around “first floors” and the month of September. Hmmm, looks like I already have a story for the next issue.)

With foolish thoughts marooned in the sand.