Just out of curiosity, I showed my palm to a Russian lady in Abu Dhabi. At that time, I was a Flight Crew (DC10 Flight Engineer) of BIMAN- Bangladesh Airlines and was really enjoying my work.
After reading my hand, to answer my questions related to retirement, she told me that I would live near a lake after my retirement and would possibly go through a serious medical procedure. Both, to my amazement, turned to be true, however, the one thing that she left out that after my retirement I would migrate to Canada - a vibrant and beautiful country. Often, we plan our future in one way and in reality, things shape up to be something quite different.
Before joining BIMAN- Bangladesh Airlines, I was working with Lufthansa, Germany. I joined Lufthansa immediately after my graduation from Hamburg Engineering University. After Bangladesh was liberated after a bloody war in 1971, my life along with many others had also went through changes. I went back to Bangladesh in 1972 to help build BIMAN – Bangladesh Airlines. When I was working for Lufthansa, a delegation of BIMAN looking for the right aircraft for BIMAN invited me to come to London and help them with the selection. As an employee of Lufthansa, I had no trouble flying to London. In fact, during independence war of Bangladesh I often used to go to London to meet people at Bangladesh High Commission, who were in exile. My Lufthansa connection helped me to connect easily with Aer Lingus airline in Dublin and British Caledonian in London Gatwick. The 1st chartered flight arranged by BIMAN was a British Caledonian B707 aircraft flown from London Gatwick to Dhaka via Bahrain. It was the 1st international route opened by BIMAN.
Abdullah Mohibuddin (left) with Hon’ble M.P. of Waterloo
As I was already known to BIMAN management, I was requested to meet General Osmany, the Honourable Civil Aviation & Tourism Minister of Bangladesh. I went to see him for a meeting with a time limit of ten minutes, which ended up in an hour-long discussion over coffee. With his encouragement and inspiration, I left my job in Lufthansa and joined BIMAN.
That was the start of my journey with BIMAN. I spent 31 wonderful years with the airlines. Out of that I spent 10 years in the Sky, 10 years away from home living in hotels and 11 years at home office, living with my family.
Since I was having a wonderful time with BIMAN, I felt that it would be difficult for me to retire all of a sudden. Before the retirement, I discussed with one of my well wishers – a former Ambassador of Bangladesh whom I knew for years. He pointed out that I had two important connections - Cadet College and the Germans. Fortunately, both my connections worked out very well. Today Cadet College Club (CCCL) located in Dhaka is a well-known facility all through Bangladesh. Interestingly I was one of the founding members of that club. In our 1st meeting held at Raowa club each one of us committed to an initial contribution to fund the starting cost of creating the club. According to recent stat Cadet College Club has over 1500 members and a yearly income close to a million dollar.
My German connection, on the other hand, gave me an opportunity to work with the German Ambassador in Dhaka who I was in good terms with. I periodically helped them with elaborate reports of various donations that NGOs in Bangladesh received. Also, during my work with BIMAN I had built up a large number of friends and acquaintances in various cities like London, Athens, Dubai, Tokyo, and Singapore, where I used to fly frequently. Once retired I kept close contacts with all of them and remained quite content with my life in Dhaka, which was, anything but boring. I had truly started to enjoy my retired life.
In 2009, my daughter who was living in Canada informed me that she had applied for Permanent Residency for me and my wife and urged us to come to Canada and live with them. Obviously, it opened up a new chapter in our lives. I had visited Canada several times in the past, but never thought about migrating. Initially, we planned to stay six months in Canada and the rest in Bangladesh. However, things quickly turned different when our youngest son got the admitted to Wilfrid Laurier University (WLU) in Waterloo, Ontario and our eldest son got admitted in MBA program at the University of Toronto (UFT). Since all our children ended up here, we decided to move to Canada permanently.
Making the move to Canada and getting settled down had been a completely different story with its own share of challenges. Anyway, even before migrating I had found out that several of our younger ex-cadets were living in Canada. During my conversation with them I advised them to form an organization to represent ex-Cadets who lived in Canada. One of them, Ataullah, had taken the initial steps to start the group called Excadetsincanada and along with many others started to actively promote it. Later, after moving to Canada, I met several other ex-cadets (Nazmul, Iftikhar, Hasan and Hanif to name a few) who made me feel at home immediately. Today, Excadetsincanada has over 700 members across Canada.
Today, apart from being a member of this group I am also closely involved with a corporation named Joint Investment Group, which I established along with 19 other ex-Cadets and together we have purchased a rental unit in the popular all season resort - Blue Mountains. Instead of spending my retired life in quietness I have rather embraced a relatively busy life style where my involvement with multiple organizations provide me enough things to keep my life active and interesting in this land, a true platform for multiculturalism. I am proud to be a Canadian.
Abdullah Mohibuddin (center) with a group of ex-Cadets