This article is from page 15 of the 2011-12-27 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 15 JPG
ENNIS WOMAN Siobhan Keane is spending Christmas in Dubai, having moved there 12 years ago. Siobhan is enjoying the festive season with her Dublin-born husband Karl, having fulfilled her dream to move overseas.
“I always wanted to travel, I remember one time when I was around 10 years old showing my sister a photograph in the world book encyclopedia of Cairo city centre, saying, ‘I’m gonna live there someday’……Little did I know it was going to be somewhere very near there,” recalled Siobhan.
“I suppose the writing was on the wall when I won a set of suitcases a year later. I asked my parents after I left college would it be okay to head off to Australia for a year. The reply was a very firm ‘No’. Anyway, when you have an itch it has to be scratched and a few years later, when sitting in my office in NUI Galway in the Accountancy and Finance Department, I heard Colm McLoughlin from Dubai on the radio talking about Dubai,” she said. “Now this took my interest. I had always seen the ads in the glossy magazines at the hairdressers talking about Dubai, the most cosmopolitan city in the Arabian Gulf, so I listened in. To cut a long story short, within the week I had been in contact with Colm and had arranged jobs for my friend Patricia Walsh and I at ‘The Irish Village’ in Dubai. Tickets were booked, visas arranged and the itinerary sent over. I was extremely excited, but this was only my short-term plan… Once over there I wanted to go for an interview with Emirates Airline and start air hostessing and travelling all over the world,” she said.
Despite some anxiety at home, particularly from Siobhán’s parents, she headed to Shannon Airport on August 21, 1999, and her trip took off.
“For all of about two minutes I wondered if I was doing the right thing. I applied for Emirates and got accepted and started flying in June of 2000. It has been an amazing experience and I have been travelling the world since, from places as far afield as Christchurch, New Zealand, at one end of the world and Sao Paulo in Brazil at the other end.
“The friends I have made have been amazing and the experiences invaluable to me. Along the way I have met many Irish people and with them many Clare people also. At the Irish village there was Brian O’Dwyer from Bodyke and Dermot Geoghegan from Mountshannon. I met Helen McCarthy from Ballyvaughan in Emirates and we became friends almost straight away. Herself and Dermot got married and they are settled in Ennis now with two beautiful daughters. There is a guy here called Will Moroney from Corofin and I met him through his fiance Fiona Devlin, who is from Perth and also Emirates Cabin Crew,” she said.
Six years ago, when Siobhan was considering moving home, she met Karl Tilson from Donnybrook in Dublin in the Dubliner Irish pub in Dubai. “I joke that he ruined my plans to go home but we both couldn’t be happier. We had our wedding in the Cathedral in Ennis and the Temple Gate Hotel in June 2009 with 30 guests flying over from Dubai to see our beautiful country,” she said.
Although Siobhan will spend Christmas in her adopted country, her family will be very much in her thoughts.
“This year I arrive back from London Gatwick on Christmas Eve morning… We haven’t had an Irish Christmas in six years so we really hope to be at home for it next year, as it is never the same when you are not at home. Having said that, if I didn’t have Karl here with me it would be much more difficult. New Year’s Eve we will go to Abu Dhabi to see Coldplay and the new year isn’t starting out too bad for me as I get to take the first ever flight out of Dublin Airport with Emirates on January 9, so I’m very excited about that. You can’t beat the Irish Christmas with family and friends, but please God in the future when we come back home we will have many more Irish Christmases to come,” she said.
Siobhan extends Christmas greetings to her family; her parents Stephanie and Francie on the Golf Links Road in Ennis, her sisters Shauna and Ashling and brothers Ronan and Barry.