Final input!!
Thanks everyone for feedback to my better half. She is part of this process heart-&-soul luckily for me! So if I could impose on everyone for some final input: My family and their future are my primary concern and thereafter a pleasant flying environment. The issue then is their life in Dubai while I am having a pleasant time enjoying the EK operation.
Just about everything I experienced about Emirates while busy with the selection process was positive from people to operations, except the environment for family. Most specifically here the traffic, as she said, but also just living. So, if one can find ways to cope with driving, please tell me what your families do? Whenever I ask this question, I get very nebulous answers, such as "oh, there is the biggest indoor ski slope in the world here, the EPC, picnics in the desert" etc, all of which is great, but after that? I would imagine that during school periods there is not much else that can absorb your time (for kids) but that still leaves a wife at a loss if she does not have, or does not want, a local career. I hope that the answer is the local expat community for her and their kids for my kids after school (weekends/holidays). But again, once one is finished with entertaining indoors, then what?? I also don't like the "our malls here are world class", since neither of us can stand shopping for more than 5 minutes.
My own answers centre around making this a wonderful adventure. Living is safe, education is all that could be desired (possibly more expensive than normal but subsidised), cost of living is debatable but acceptable. So when I am "home" we want to explore. I understand that some of the neighboring states and even the UAE have very attractive geography and are worth traveling to and exploring. No reason to expect that this is not possible? Also we would like to make Dubai a centre to explore the world. A hinderance to this would be the staff travel policy - does anyone travel extensively with their family during leave, ad-hoc off time? Is the Emirates leave policy useable?
I would really appreciate some input along these lines as I am on short finals for having to accept the Emirates offer or walk away. Thanks again to everyone so far.