In 1996 my parents asked me to rejoin the family engineering business as an international field service technician. I’d first worked for them in 1988 and completed a five year mechanical fitter apprenticeship, manufacturing and assembling the printing machinery my father designed and sold. Then I left in 1993.
I spent most of 1994/95 backpacking in Asia and South America and by 1996 I was sub-contracting at British Petrolium’s aircraft refuelling division (Air BP) at Manchester airport. BP offered me a coveted permanent contract in response, wanting me to stay on, but my parents said they’d give me better job security (being family) and so I accepted their offer (they made me redundant eighteen months later, in April 1998).
Concurrent event: Khalid Shiekh Mohammed was forced to flee Qatar in 1996, with the CIA hot on his tail. He had been employed by the Qatar government’s water department as an engineer from 1993 to 1996. When the US net was closing in it’s alleged a Qatari royal family member tipped him off and aided his escape. It’s claimed KSM went to Afghanistan but when I met KSM it was in Yemen, during my September 1997 business trip to Taiz on behalf of my parents' company.