Day 1 - The Flight

I am extremely lucky to get a window seat, and on top of that, an unoccupied aisle seat next to me. This is the equivalent of 'super economy' class. I believe the opposite of this is when your aisle companion falls asleep on your shoulder every ten minutes and is flatulent from every pore in his body.

But I strike it lucky. Two seats for the price of one! I'm not sure I made best use of them, despite reclining like an Arabian prince on a divan - every other passenger, allocated one seat, slept like a baby, unless they were a baby, in which case they took their full entitlement to wail for one hour after takeoff and one hour before landing.

During the Dhabi fuel stop I make my first attempt to converse with a stranger. She was an obvious target - pretty, young, and a girl. She had chosen to sit diagonally opposite me with a very large baguette. My attempt to question her fails miserably when I time my query just after she takes a quarter of the baguette into her mouth. By the time she'd finished chewing she had forgotten what I asked her. So had I.

I march to Gate 32 for the second leg of the flight. Dhabi Airport has 65 free internet terminals. Every one I try either fails to boot, or informs me that Internet Explorer has crashed and an error report is being sent to Microsoft (along with my name, address, and favourite flavour of ice cream). Some things in the world are the same everywhere.