Next stop... ... ?

My 12 month contract with the YLC in coming to completion in 1 week and unfortunately my life plan after YLC hasn't quite come together as I was hoping. I was hoping to study Arabic here and then take up a high-paying job in one of the gulf countries as an electrical engineer and be able to continue using Arabic. My girlfriend wanted me to return to Australia for a year or so after Yemen and then we'd marry and move to Dubai together. But 2 weeks ago we officially broke up and so I'm trying my best to stay in the Middle East and find a rewarding job here.

I must have applied for about 12 jobs in Gulf countries and have not received a single response from any of them. Meanwhile I've applied for about 5 jobs in Australia and had 2 bites of interest. It seems career-wise there's no better move for me than a move back to Australia. Then, while I'm there and accumulating more experience, I can keep looking for a job back here. Chances are it looks better on my resume to a Gulf employer if I have an engineering position as my current employment rather than tech boy at the YLC and the vast majority of electrical engineering jobs in this area are for engineers of 10-15 years experience.

I am worried if I go back I'll forget all the Arabic I've learnt and worse than that, get trapped back in the lifestyle back home. Once I get motorbike, a house, a credit card debt, a footy team and/or a wife and kids, that's it, I'll be stuck there for life with nothing but yearly holidays as my life's sample servings of adventure. Yes.. that's exaggerating but I enjoy it here. I feel I've grown more in 1 year than I grew in the previous 2 or 3 or 5 back in Australia. In short you could say I'm scared of myself. Wherever I go I develop some sort of attachment and loyalty towards the location and become reluctant to leave. I want that loyalty to be here and I said that before I arrived here. I have a little more time to think now because the big boss has agree to extend my stay here for a further 6 months and he will be paying me a bare living expenses wage. One of the perks is 6 months more Arabic would be really beneficial and I'd aim to finish the Al-Kitaab series and the journalism book series the YLC has written. After that I think I'd be in a very good position to understand more of newspaper articles and without reaching for a dictionary and understand the TV news.

For now I'm staying, although there seems to be big neon lights in my life telling me I should head back to Australia.