On the way to the Kiwi's
I flew from JHB international airport to Dubai where I stayed for 5 hours during my transit. The rumour spread that things are so cheap in Dubai Duty-free shops at Dubai is not entirely true. At least from my perspective. Prices seem to be quite the same as in SA for most items except for choclates and maybe alchohol, which seems to be about 30-40% cheaper. While at dubai I had breakfeast at the Emirites Dining lounge and met a man from Sudan named Mustafa Said. He was number 26 of my contacts and I made a full disclosure about my stuttering to him. He is and electrical engineer living in Berlin and has a son who is backpackking in Australia, "Your own world is too small" he said. "It is good to explore". We had breakfeast and I tried a few dishes that I could not identify immediately. I concluded that it was some kind of fish I ate and also a spicy bean dish. I sat amazed to see some people filling their plates with seven full scoops of rice and then only add a spoonfull of meat or beans on top of their mountain to add some flavour. I guess that some people only have the opportunity to eat once a day. My flight from Dubai to Auckland lasted 12 hours and I made full use of the entertainment facilities on the plain. This was my first set of international flighs and I was impressed to have my own little TV screen in front of me to watch anything from movies, cartoons, listen to music, and even have a veiw from the bottom of the plane and from the cockpit from cameras located there.
Tip: If you would like to attract some attention from the crew members, get a nose bleed. Wit a big nose like mine you generate pretty powerfull sneezes. I guess I must have tried to hard and one of my shallow internal nose veins popped. I frantically searched for the correct button to push and within one minute a air hostess was by my side. The situation accumulated and in the end I had four hostesses, one docter, two glasses of water, one class of ice, two puke bags and 4 small white towels all dedicated to me. Must have been quite a site to speak to a South-African, nosebleeding, stuttering person. Luckily the bleeding stopped they started to fade away.
I stopped over at Melbourne airport for two hours, had a $3.50 cuppachino and two people calling me their mate, what a friendly bunch! The transit went smoothly and it's always sports to hear people pronouncing van der Merwe whithout rolling r's. and the I arrived in Auckland, New Zealand. At this stage I had made only 36 contacts......
