Dear Eaglemotors,
I read you query with interest and I believe I might be in a position to shed some light on my experiences.
Firstly, you do not have the job yet, so a decision need not be made until you are actually offered a job.
Sometime ago, I was at Cathay. I enjoyed it very much when I first got there......very nice and helpful people, big planes, fly fast, make lots of noise etc etc etc. Life was good as a single guy.
But then I realised that living by myself in Honkytown was actually quite expensive. I was in no way living comfortably like my previous lifestyle in my home country. Simple things in life that one would take for granted were prohibitely expensive. Sure for me that was OK, but considering I had another 25 years of service to provide.....was this going to get better......what about the time I one day get married, and have rug-rats climbing the walls in a 3m x 3m play pen / house. I would not be able to bring my children into the world in a manner that I would like. Because simply on the wages you get after a wife, kid, house, food etc etc simply is not what I could have in my home country on a much lower wage.
On an SO / FO / Capt wages, I did all the figures, and they simply did not match up with what the rest of the world had to offer.
So, I packed up and left for a lower paying job, with a better lifestyle. I sort of figured that after 25 years of service with CX - what would I have to show for it....perhaps an OK provident fund, but what happened to that 25 years???? I would never get it back. If was an A scale dude, I would have stayed, as I could have covered the lifestyle changes with the increased pay.
The irony is I actually liked HK. After leaving I have actually now become engaged to a beautiful Chinese lady. I enjoyed my job (except the worry continually about changing conditions of employement...). The people I flew with were much more professional and astute than those I will ever work with. I love Asia and the asian ways. I would have been what I would have thought as the ideal profile for an employee.
But at the end of the day, you fly because you enjoy it. But when you have a family, you also fly to give them the best possible life they can have in this world. When you worry about your changing conditions of service, pay rates, being an expat in a somewhat unsecure 2 systems 1 country ( you could be expelled whenever they like) system........if you like it or not, it rubs off on your friends, family, girlfiend or other. Their lives suffer too.
I did not realise this until I visited my parents on holidays and their first words were "..Do not tell us anything about Cathay - we do not want to know.....by the way, how are you???"