Night #1

Today marks the beginning of my middle eastern experience.

Its sandy and cool winds greeted me. It is indeed a pleasant time to visit this place during winter as compared to the scorching and glaring summer. In fact if I may compare at all, the weather was a lot more pleasant than my few encounters with people along my way here.

For a start, my flights to Kuwait was a "bumpy" one. I was initially bumped around by quite a number of people on the plane, particularly my neighbour. Don't get me wrong, I found her to be a nice lady, but she had this thing about putting her jacket on and off during the entire 7-hour flight, and never for once failed to elbow me in her struggle with her jacket. As I tried to inch myself away from her, I found myself bumped by the few people who were pacing up and down the aisle... Arghh.... Generally I realised the idea of personal space is non existent here. They stand close to you even if you are of the opposite sex. I found this "invasion" intruding my personal space and very very uncomfortable.

The concept of queuing is often observed to be not practised by the women. It was interesting to observe that they seemed to have special privileges to be able jump in front of everyone else and ignore the attempted protests.

Besides those, I am very glad to be here. It has been a long time since I had a nice long break. This is a opportunity to seek other challenges and try new things. Currently my challenge is to stay awake and try to overcome my jetlag. Till next time then...