On the way toBeijing

I am flying Emirates to Beijing and am half way there: currently sitting at Starbucks in Dubai International Airport waiting for my connecting flight. Here are a few observations for you.

 

The first thing I did with Emirates’ fantastic entertainment system was to listen to Drip, drip, drip little April showers ... from the Disney cartoon Bambi. Can’t beat it.

 

I then watched a film about two schoolboys’ daft antics. English film with English actors set in England, in the main. One excellent moment, though, involved the really cool French exchange boy. This boy wanted to light his cigarette but didn’t have any matches or a lighter. He got several boys to line up and hold hands, with him as the last one. The first in the string of lads then touched the live wire in the street lamp they had opened up. Touch the wire, boys all jiggle a bit and French fag bursts into flames. Fantastic!

 

Two oldish Lancashire Lassies sitting across tbe aisle from me, this happened:

 

Stewardess (Korean I think with a pretty good English accent) said, as the plane was landing: Sorry, guys, can we just have your seats forward please?

Lancashire Lassie 1: (In true Lancashire Music Hall gormless style) Yer wot?

 

I cringed.

 

The pilot told us that as the weather in Dubai was warm and humid we should be careful as we went down the steps of the aircraft as they might be slippy.  I followed the two Lancashire Lassies out of the plane. Lassie 1 was OK but Lassie 2 immediately started walking very slowly and gingerly and held out her arm and hand getting ready to grasp the hand rail for dear life a full five metres before she got to it. They were then the slowest two down the steps by far.

 

As I drank my coffee I looked from time to time at the departures screen. As planes took off they were removed and new ones added ... as usual. As we got nearer and nearer to my plane being listed I started to watch more frequently as I didn’t know the gate. This is true: when it got to my plane being next to being listed, they didn’t update anything for around 10 minutes. So I got sick of looking and opened up this laptop and started typing this. As the computer was booting I took a look at the screen and lo and behold, in true watched pot never boils style, they updated the listing as soon as my back was turned.

 

DW