Off and away

Information Communication Entertainment (ICE) on Emirates

I am off to a great start! Move over South African Airways my favourite airline, come in Emirates! To begin with the seats are way more comfy. I don’t agree with the choice of colours on the seat fabric – grayish, pinkish but certainly more comfortable, more leg room, adjustable headrest and my favourite part of all…the inflight entertainment system. Over 100 movies, 70 of them the latest, not the latest releases but at least released this year. Spoilt for choice I was… I am the kind of person who can choose a flight solely based on the choice of inflight entertainment especially when I know I am going to spend close to 18 hours on the plane. The air hostesses were genuinely friendly, the food was good (seven sizeable prawns in the salad… I counted), the plane was not packed to the rafters, I had two seats to myself( after moving). I think these are all signs of good things yet to come in Cambridge.

Dubai airport what chaos! But truly connecting the world – its mille of people. West Africans, Arabs, Asians, Indians, Americans, Europeans…everyone going somewhere. Even at 5am in the morning the airport is alive and breathing – people come in and out – immigrating, planes taking off and planes landing. The world is a certainly becoming smaller. In all the thousands of people in the airport, I actually met someone from  Malawi that I knew! A true international hub should be defined by the chance meeting you have with someone you have not seen in a while. I have had similar experiences  at OR Tambo Airport in Johannesburg. The most interesting meet was Jeri, we attended the same training academy in the Caribbean eight years ago. He is from an Eastern European country. I was in the airport bookshop and it just so happened that I saw in the hands of who I thought was a stranger at the time a book that looked interesting – it had a title like Surviving Johannesburg or something like that – and I asked this “stranger” where I could find it the bookshop. But “hey don’t I know you” and then it all came flooding back. He was on his way to Angola. Is the world becoming a smaller place or are people just travelling more and further from home…Either way they transport engineers need to figure out a way for us to get there faster and cheaper and of course with less pollution. Take me for example, I left Perth at 10:30pm and it took me close to 24 hrs including transit time to reach my final destination in Cambridge (including two half hour coach ride).  But hey at least I had 70 movies to keep me company.