June 14th : My Uncle

The last two days I have had a Calc III final. It went pretty well, but everytime I think I got a 100. I end up getting around a 60, so I hope that doesn't happen this time around. I don't have much to say today so I'm going to get an excerpt from my journal

My Uncle

He is a very complex individual, he moved to Dubai in 1999, when he was 21. He worked as a supervisor, a person who collects raw materials, gets the workers to make it, specifically stone work (granite,marble,etc). He spoke Hindi, which was the language of many of immigrant workers in Dubai at the time, that gave him an edge over the market. His intellect and hindi speaking combined made him a perfect middle man. After 10 years of working that job he started his company in 2009, with 2 other partners. He said the biggest advantage he had was working for others in the beginning and that helped him make decisions due to experience. His two other partners are on equal footing and they all basically still supervise, but get more money because they get their own clients. I asked him, how he was able to trust his partners, and how the process went about. He said treat the company like your family, for example if your dad or brother stopped working suddenly you wouldn’t stop helping them, that sort of thing. I see him praying in the morning, he prays and proceeds to take matters into his own hands. I mean that’s what I do too I guess, but he drinks when he wants to and he also smokes. Three beautiful kids and he married the girl he loved. Those are all things he made from scratch. He made his company, his cars costs 325k dirhams which is around 120k. It’s interesting, his life, he has fun and he works hard.

Words of advice

You gotta work hard today so you can biriyani tomorrow, but also eat biryani today.

- Uncle (translated from Malayalam)

Palm Jumeirah, Dubai (Artificial Beach)