"I've spent the last three weeks singing "Marrakesh Express" by Crosby, Stills and Nash - much to my family's annoyance, as I only know two lines of the chorus. And it turned out that I even sing those wrong. We had already travelled at the beginning of September and had chosen Greece instead of Marrakesh. When an offer from TUI Blue Medina Gardens appeared on the intranet, I showed it to my partner Fran and joked, "Look, we could go to Morocco after all".
You should never joke with Fran about a holiday, especially not one where there is sun. She is from Sicily and "suffers" from a severe vitamin D deficiency most of the time. "I still have plenty of holidays to take," Fran said. But the problem was that I didn't have many holidays left and I had a big project coming up. That's when Fran reminded me about the "working abroad" thing and asked if I could work from the hotel?
Fran had a good point. TUI had just launched TUI WORKWIDE. The prospect of working in 35 degree heat and occasionally jumping into the pool was very tempting. So it happened that I put in an enquiry with my employer about 10 days before the planned departure. There are some practical things to consider when you want to work abroad. The first and most important point is Wi-Fi. As it turned out, TUI Blue guarantees a download speed of 2 Mbps, so I was pretty confident it would work out. Secondly, how much time would I actually spend working and how much on holiday?
We were on the road for a total of seven nights, one day of which I took holiday, so we had a long weekend off. Otherwise, I worked full time. While I was in Morocco, I chaired a couple of team meetings with about 40 people dialed into quite an extensive presentation, and it all went smoothly so no one really noticed I wasn't in England."
Austria
