The Man From Kerala Province

"Glad to be leaving Saudi?" joked the Flight attendant as I made my way to 64C - an aisle seat as requested and given. "I am always glad to be leaving Saudi!" my tongue in cheek retort. "so am I and I've only been here forty minutes!" she replied in a fairly pure Australian lilt with a heartfelt laugh. Seems that when flying with Emirates there is a high degree of understanding of their customer passengers on the part of the staff, sharing a light-hearted and witty empathy towards the expatriate traveler, on board for work, and certainly not on leave in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, by any means, that makes an Airline like Emirates stand out, in my mind.

The flight was on an Airbus A380 on a Wednesday night, so the volume of PAX was way less than say a Thursday night flight - precursor to an Arabian Peninsula weekend which starts on Al Jumah and ends on Al Sept.... A distinctive Malayalam moto-cross race / whitewater river of words tumbled from the mouth of a small Indian man, i turned and yes, there he was, in the middle seat RIGHT beside me, a small Keralite man with graying beard and hair and huge-ahem smart phone in hand, from Kerala Province, veteran of his given technical field, also on his way out of "the Kingdom" and back to Dubai. The diminutive man's elbow was initially not a problem as he chose to place it behind mine on the armrest. It became an irritation as we took off and he lost himself in a flurry of texting on the biggest phone in the region, whilst intermittently and unawares, he began to poke my ribs with yon elbow. I sighed loudly my irritation and made exaggerated movements to try and make him aware of his flagrant seat-space invasion, but as his focus was his stammeringly large smart phone, he took no notice of the over-obvious social clue at hand, and his elbow kept rhythmically poking my ribs in time to his Shakespearean, herculean text-generation efforts. Well, only one thing I could think of, I took my provided mini pillow and found a very practical use for it, finally, as a convenient soft barrier between the Kerala pokey- mon's elbow and my ribs. "Solvlem probbed...".

The served meal, as always with Emirates, was really good. I had the Chicken and not the Lamb. And I can speak for the consistency of quality in the chicken dish they serve because I always choose the chicken. Does not disappoint. Nice always also to have a Stella or a scotch and ale on board and on the rocks to celebrate leaving "the Kingdom".

Anyways, it is a short review this one as I am at work waiting for the rest to show up. So I will rap it up here. Talk to ya'll soon.

Oh, by the way, Jeddah to Dubai was almost long enough to finish watching Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol 2. I started watching before push-back, too. Watched it again without reserve and without dual language safety instructions and DXB as a tourist destination adverts and the rest of it, on OSN Network, from my couch and beside my son.
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