My Flight from Dubai to Singapore

Singapore

2nd September 2004

Our flight left Dubai early in the morning on a 7 hour journey to Singapore. The food was quite tasty on this flight and there were plenty of friendly people from Australia and England on board. My only complaint of this entire journey was that this leg and the next I would have to sit in the middle seat.

I did have an interesting encounter while queuing for the toilet. A woman approached me and asked if I had left my partner behind. I replied "yes" and she told me that she had been queuing behind us during the check-in at Heathrow. She had gone through a similar incident with her partner whom is Austrian. It turned out that she had grown up in an English-speaking Military household near Hannover, Germany for 16 years. When her family finally moved back to the UK they were disgusted by what they saw and immigrated to New Zealand after being back in the UK for only 8 weeks.

It's quite amazing how much you can have in common with random strangers but I guess this is the type of situation where I will run into people of like minds, similar to the ex-pat bars in Germany. I always found it so interesting living in Germany. I felt so alienated and yet I found more like mind there than anywhere else; English-speaking, business-minded Expatriates trying to make something remarkable of themselves all the while making their lives as interesting as possible.

I imagine Expatriates must feel a sense of adventure and pride working in places like the Middle East. This region is feared in the west yet they, for the most part, go there because of the skills and expertise, work in an exotic region earning far more than they would otherwise back home.