Turkmenistan Guns

Where is my goddamn roster, huh? It’s late coming out, and I’m offended. I can’t sleep even with a head this heavy.

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So. The other day I flew with a Romanian guy who is leaving next year to become a magistrate (which I knew to be something judge-y and court-y, but had to look up to find out what it meant precisely). The spectrum of people in this job confound me, especially recently. Entrepeneurs and academics and business potentials. Who would’ve thought?! This job is to fuel the fire for them, or I should say, fund their fire. Crew I meet often have an endearing line of circumstances; a colourful life history at least. And me? I’m here only as a spacey uneducated white trash (brunette) bimbo, doing this job for it’s own sake. And I’m ok with that (kind of).

I also want to mention that I met a female First Officer on MUC. Australian too! She is just finishing her training flights now and moved to Dubai last week. Worked for Jetstar before. Putting aside the novelty of being a kick-ass girl in the flight deck, she also seems really cool. I want to jump back into a wishy-washy expat pool, maybe at Dubai Marina. I won’t even mind the yuppies and prams, I just need some Native English jokes.

Once you surpass the top 20 EY cabin crew questions, it gets good. Flight attendants rule in the anecdote world. Maybe that’s why I’m so miffed at my terrible attempts to tell any story, personal or parroted.

So anyway, my flight yesterday was on a 320, which means only myself and two other crew and working down the back. A Moroccan girl who exchanged an extended eye contact moment with Collin Farrell, and a guy from Turkmenistan. Of our 3000-odd crew, I’m told we have two from this country. Less than Kazakhstan then (..ha!).  Turkmenistan is one of those Central Asian (read: obscure) countries, sharing borders with Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, and Iran. It only became independent in ‘91. He said when he was 15, in school, boys were taught how to assemble, handle and fire guns. Combat preparedness type of thing in case of an invasion. He also said that at that age boys are expected to be able to be men.

There were also nuclear bunkers under each school. I want to say ‘neat!’ but it seems wrong.

This girl and this guy said they think ‘Europe is racist’. I didn’t know that was even a possible opinion to have? It sounded blundering and outrageous, you know Europe is a continent right.. is it allowed to have personality? I should put gaffaw in here somewhere.. They said the European Union has welcomed those (white) Eastern European countries.. so why not Turkey? That the people power (by population or vote?) of Turkey would outweigh the retiring Western dogs.

…….Eastern Europe is chock full of -ia and I wanna visit me some! Slovakia, Slovenia, Estonia, Bulgaria, Latvia, Croatia.. Wanna see ia…..

On good old Wikipedia it said this:

Turkey would be the first Muslim-majority country to join the European Union, although Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo are also Muslim-majority, and have been recognized as potential candidate countries.

And also this:

Public opinion in EU countries generally opposes Turkish membership, though with varying degrees of intensity. The Eurobarometer September-October 2006 survey shows that 59% of EU-27 citizens are against Turkey joining the EU, while only about 28% are in favour. Nearly all citizens (about 9 in 10) expressed concerns about human rights as the leading cause. In the earlier March-May 2006 Eurobarometer, citizens from the new member states were more in favour of Turkey joining (44% in favour) than the old EU-15 (38% in favour). At the time of the survey, the country whose population most strongly opposed Turkish membership was Austria (con: 81%), while Romania was most in favour of the accession (pro: 66%).

So interesting!

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15 guaranteed EY cabin crew conversational questions/topics:

1. Where are you going?

2. How’s your roster?

3. Where do you stay?

4. Do you have a boyfriend?

5. Who are your flatmates?

6. What’s your staff number?

7. How long have you been here?

8. Do you know [insert name here]? or perhaps Have you flown with [insert name here]?

9. What were you doing before?

10. Sex

11. Relationships

12. Company gossip

12. Crew gossip

12. Bruno movie

13. Layover discussions

14. Sex and relationships

15. Anything, just said in a thick Indian accent.

Especially that last one.